Climbing Together 11 (Patreon)

Howdy All. Getting back into Magic harddddd... I will not be able to get even a condensed chapter out, having again lost chunks of my time

Howdy All. Getting back into Magic harddddd... I will not be able to get even a condensed chapter out, having again lost chunks of my time to RL. However, I will have a chapter out by Sunday.

Hey everyone, I don’t draw or program. Ergo: me no own.

Here’s the winner of the Patron Only Poll!

This has not been Grammarlied, although Hiryo has indeed seen it, and pointed out a few major issues, particularly one immersion issue. He also went back again to look at chapter 10, and I will upload the re-edited version of that chapter this weekend.

Chapter 11: Out of Port, Out of Sorts

At around the same time that Shampoo, Mai and Ranma were finding new and salacious ways to test their endurance, imagination and flexibility, Chun-Li was not having nearly as good a night. This was because she was currently stuck in the examination table in the police precinct’s own medical wing.

Not that Chun-Li had intended to be stuck in the doctor’s office this late. Rather, the doctor the police retained on hand for injuries, at the precinct Chun-Li was currently working out of, had come barreling into her office demanding to know why she hadn’t made her appointment with him earlier that day. He had not taken her dry response of ‘paperwork’ well, and had ordered her to accompany him back to his office, where he was now going over her leg, despite her protests.

Of course, Chun-Li’s leg was still not up for taking her weight, which meant she had to go everywhere via crutches. Her thigh had been badly slashed along with her ankle and foot on the same leg by the Spaniard’s claw-like weapons. Her thigh was the worst of her injuries, having been lacerated in three long strips, nearly hitting one of her main arteries. The doctors had been able to stitch her up, and with that and a few blood transfusions, Chun-Li was on the mend. She couldn’t put any weight on it, and it had yet to start really healing, thus she had wraps going up and down her leg.

The injury had tied her to her desk, although that was not exactly a soft option at this point. There was still a lot of work to be done on following up on the Triad raid, and Chun-Li, going over some a lot of the paperwork had found some inconsistencies. Some might well be genuine mistakes, but others not so much, and there was something she was quietly furious about which pointed to the fact that pointed to that being the case.

Up to this point, four specific trials had been postponed continuously, and recently simply canceled outright by someone in the government. No, Chun-Li did not think these reports going missing was at all a coincidence. Someone high up was trying to bury Chun-Li’s case against these four, and she was not going to have it.

Even now, with the doctor looking over her leg, Chun-Li had insisted on bringing along some of the paperwork she was working on to look over, wanting to figure out where the evidence against the quartet had gone.

“Hmm, there’s no sign of any kind of disease or anything, but some of these stitches needs to be redone, both on your thigh and your ankle,” the doctor said, causing Chun-Li to frown and look up from her sheet of papers.

“Wait, what? I didn’t feel anything, though?”

“It looks like the snapped stiches on your thigh just happened. Did you bang your knee recently?”

“Yes, when you barged into my office I jumped a little and banged it against my desk,” Chun-Li said dryly, to which the older man looked a little sheepish. “Am I losing blood or anything?”

“Only a little bit, if you don’t want a larger scar than you’ll already be getting, these need to be redone a bit. Although, I’m surprised that you were able to pull out this amount of stitches just by banging your knee, and that doesn’t explain the snapped stiches on your lower leg,” the man said, professionally keeping his mind on task rather than the fact that Chun-Li had been forced to strip off her overly large pants in order for him to heal away the wrappings and examine her thigh. If I wasn’t a doctor, the knowledge that Chun-Li wears such sheer, black undies would be amazing for my gossip cred around the precinct. Well… that, and the, the real reason why I was so insistent she let me examine her injuries.

Shaking that thought off, and still looking down at Chun-Li’s thigh, the older man asked, “You haven’t tried to exercise your lower body since getting these injuries, have you?”

The young woman very carefully said nothing, and he sighed, finally looking up at her. “I read your medical report, Chun-Li. You’re not supposed to try to exercise on this thigh for at least two and a half weeks. It hasn’t been nearly that long since you took the injury. No wonder simply banging your knee finished the job of popping some of these stitches. Suddenly I don’t feel so guilty.”

Chun-Li pouted a little, but shrugged, and allowed the man to do his work. However, when she saw him move over to prepare a needle of some kind, she frowned. “I don’t need any anesthetic, Doctor. I didn’t even notice I was bleeding. Just get on with it.”

“I’m not going to break from proper procedure just because you’re a so-so tough martial artist inspector,” the doctor said, shaking his head firmly and fighting back an urge to panic. “Just lay there for a bit.”

While somewhat annoyed, Chun-Li understood the man’s desire to follow procedure, and subsided. Was it that surprising, though? She thought, having seen the doctor’s eyes widen when she tried to refuse the anesthesia. She soon shrugged that off, though, going back to glaring at some of the paperwork she’d brought along with her. There were more important things to worry about right now.

Unseen by Chun-Li, the man gulped to himself, as, while one hand began to prepare the anesthetic needle, the other hand reached under his pocket, where he pulled out another syringe. This one had a far larger aperture, and while it too had anesthetic within it, it also had something else: a microchip of some kind that was so small the doctor could barely see it with the naked eye, something that had astonished and appalled him in equal measure when he first saw it. Just, just don’t think about it. You, you need to do this or else…

His face firming, the police doctor placed both needles on a tray, hiding the second needle under pair of plastic gloves, the man moved back over to Chun-Li, sitting the tray on a small table there. “Now, you might feel a slight pinch…”

“I probably won’t,” Chun-Li grunted, shaking her head and not even looking away from the reports she was reading. Testimonials from some of the sex workers (willing or no) the Triad had used and pictures taken of the crowd had disappeared from lockup, and she was determined to not only find out where it went and restart those four trials, but also to find a pattern to how it had been done.

And when I do, whoever is trying to get out of what’s coming for them is going to get a double helping of justice, both the person who did it and the person who ordered it! Dammit all, I knew there were a lot of police on the take, but for there to still be policeman willing to ignore the law on the orders of someone else is far worse than I thought.

Chun-Li did not even look away from her work as the doctor had her chair leaning back, then her leg pulled out straight. She did object though to when he brought over special kind of screen designed to block the view of the patient from what was going on. “I don’t need that either.”

Internally cursing, the doctor nodded equitably, shaking his head. “Fine, that I will allow.” Unlike using anesthesia, whether or not to watch what was going on was fully in the hands of the patient.

Chun-Li watched as the man injected her thigh in several places with the anesthesia, noting absently that the man had been right. Several of her stitches had indeed split, and there was some blood coming out of one of the main slashes in her thigh.”

The doctor worked on her thigh wounds for several moments. Once he was finished with the thigh, he moving down to her ankle, where another slash mark also opened. This one was much smaller, but Chun-Li didn’t think much of it when the doctor used the anesthesia on that wound too. With his back to her however, the doctor was able to pull up the other syringe, using it instead of the syringe full of only anesthesia for the last injection.

Hiding that syringe in his coat, the man breathed a sigh of relief. Done. Now my family will be safe, I, I hope.

That would prove to be the last thought the doctor had as the door to his office burst open, followed by several gunmen, who had somehow gotten into the police precinct without anyone raising an alarm, opening fire. The doctor was quickly riddled with bullets, and without him standing between where she was lying down and the doorway, Chun-Li would also have been.

The doctor’s inadvertent sacrifice saved Chun-Li’s life.  The instant the door was smashed open, Chun-Li dropped her papers, grabbing the back of the examination chair and as fire riddled the doctor’s body, she flipped herself backwards over her head. As the doctor’s body collapsed to the floor, she landed in a crouch behind the examination chair, using the bulk of the chair to protect herself from the ongoing fire. Machine guns!? Since when did the Triad still have access to machine guns, I though we found all of their caches?! And how did these two get into the precinct with them?!

In the doorway stood two men, one crouching and firing into the room, while another man was firing from one side. They were soon joined by another on the other side. Chun-Li guessed he was the man who’d kicked open the door, breaking the lock on it prior to his two partners firing into the room.

Growling, Chun-Li picked up a syringe that had rolled away from the tray the doctor had been using, hurling it towards the doorway before ducking back into cover. The hurled needle stabbed into the neck of one of her attackers, and he collapsed, his hands rising to his jugular, but the other two kept on firing, keeping Chun-Li’s head down. She grabbed at anything that came to hand, hurling it up and over her temporary protection, but given how she had to arc her shots, Chun-Li couldn’t toss anything with enough force to bother either of the two remaining attackers.

It was only when one of their guns jammed that she was able to poke her head out from cover and aim again. Rolling out of cover on her good leg, Chun-Li reached and grabbed up the tray that the doctor had been using before hurling it at the kneeling man, hitting him in the forehead. As his head whipped back and he stopped firing, Chun-Li was up, pushing off of the floor with one leg.

Chun-Li whirled to through the air, dodging the incoming fire from the man who’d gotten his gun unjammed, lashing out with a kick from her one good leg in the air before landing on her hands in front of the other. Chun-Li was so strong even in the air, with leg muscles alone, that kick sent him hurling backwards into the far wall.

Now, as she did a handstand, Chun-Li’s good leg lashed out again, a piledriving kick that took the man who had been kneeling in the doorway in the head, sending him backward to join his fellow.

Unlike the first man, whom she’d only partially tagged in the chest this man flopped to the ground, dead with a broken neck and skull.

The first man she had kicked tried to recover, but by that point, Chun-Li’s one good leg had been pulled back in again, and she hopped forward, lashing out with another kick. This time she caved in the man’s chest, pinning him against the far wall of the hallway.

She held him there for a few seconds, grimacing in pain from her wounded leg being up in the air like this, until she felt through her foot that his convulsions had stopped, then slowly flipped herself back up onto her one good foot, grimacing as she looks down at the dead doctor, then the three attackers, only now realizing they were wearing police uniforms. “Dammit! I knew the Triad was going crazy, but to send killers into a police precinct like this? And dressed like police themselves? That’s bold to the point of stupidity!” she growled, as the sound of running feet hit her, and an alarm began to sound.

Outside the police precinct on a nearby rooftop, Vega gently put his binoculars down, reaching into a pocket. After a moment, he smiled faintly as the small device in his hand began to beep. There are such magnificent toys coming out of the tech department these days. Small, made mostly of plastic, undetectable by any metal detector, but with a battery life of several weeks, and able to send out a tiny almost imperceptible signal to any individual with the right equipment. I still cannot believe that Fang was able to get this to me so quickly, let alone the other tracker I demanded. The man is quite intelligent for an Asian, although I cannot say I am altogether pleased with his decision to take me off from Chun-Li.

How that decision was reached, Vega did not know, but instead of telling Vega he was cleared to try to kill Chun-Li again once his arm was healed, he had been ordered to place a tracker on her now. Vega wondered why, but not very much. His own interest in Chun-Li had waned, knowing he could well have plucked that flower, even with his broken arm, given the injuries she had sustained in their battle.

No, Vega was far more interested in the other two lovely ladies, who had thwarted his designs on the young policewoman. And unlike Chun-Li, who apparently my employers wish to simply track rather than kill now, I received no orders about them. Fang was also more than willing to help me in the form of the other tracker, which I have already put on that new boat of theirs. Thank goodness that buffoon down at the docks told me about the Japanese beauties interest in boats, or else, even Fang’s organizational skills couldn’t have gotten me the tracker in time.

That tracker was much bulkier, and was made to be waterproof, stuck to the bottom of the boat which Vega himself had done, while the two ladies and their lover were busy aboard. Hearing the noises of the night’s events above him had been most irritating at the time. Knowing that the two flowers he wished to kill at the height of their beauty was sullying themselves with a boy had somewhat diluted his interest in killing the pair. Nevertheless, their preoccupation had certainly made his task much easier than it might otherwise have been if any of the three people aboard the boat had been coherent enough to hear the noise when he connected the tracker.

And there won’t even be any loose ends. The good doctor’s family never even knew I was watching them, let alone threatened to kill them to force his compliance, he thought to himself complacently as he moved off, leaping from one roof to another.

It had not taken much to prod the local corrupt politicians and taking action. Indeed, they’d already been planning something of the sort. All that the Spaniard had needed to provide was Chun-Li’s location within the precinct at the appropriate time. The trigger-happy gunmen had done the rest, killing his own patsy along the way. Wherever you go, pretty one, Shadaloo will follow you. When you least expect it, they will have you. Until then, no matter how you dance, they will follow your steps. Whereas my own two dance partners may elude me for some time going out to sea, as they have no set itinerary I was able to discover, eventually, once my arm is heeled, they will be mine.

With that thought and a final chuckle, Vega disappeared into the night of Hong Kong.

Unaware of Shadaloo’s sinister machinations, once she recovered and the bodies had been cleaned up, Chun-Li once more pulled an all-nighter. Setting aside her original job for the night, she bent her mind to trying to figure out where the three gunmen had come from, only to come up entirely blank.

The three men weren’t in any system whatsoever, despite the fact that they weren’t foreigners. Indeed, they looked to be of prime military age, had scars and calluses to show it. Yet they weren’t in the government’s databases. Not their fingerprints, not their faces, nothing. Which should have been impossible given how OCD the Chinese government was about documentation.

Running into a dead end on that point around five in the morning, Chun-Li decided to set it aside, and return to the work she had been doing previously. That is, trying to find out who was making significant portions of the information gathered about four certain high officials in the CCP that had been watching the underground tournament disappear.

During this, she was interrupted again, this time by her phone going off going off. Answered it, then her eyes widened. “Superintendent Yao? What can I do for you this morning, sir?”

For several moments, Chun-Li said nothing, her eyes widening. Then her face firmed. “Sir! I must protest, the evidence…”

The man on the other end of the line cut off her off abruptly, causing Chun-Li’s jaw to clench. “Sir, you can’t be serious. Guan Yo and the others, they were caught red-handed. Regardless of their possible importance for the Secretary of military defense, we can’t…”

She tried to argue back, she tried to shout, but the man on the other line was firm. Eventually as he kept talking at her, Chun-Li just seemed to sag in place, all light going out of her eyes for a second. “What is the point of the police force, of a law when it cannot be used against those in power?”

The voice on the other end spoke again, his voice firm and cold, and finally, Chun-Li just sighed, nodding faintly. The last vestiges of her spirit seemed to rally after a moment, and she said bitingly, “I’d ask how you live with yourself, but I’m pretty positive that the mansion, the servants, and everything else helps a lot with a guilty conscience, doesn’t it?”

With that she hung up, ignoring whatever else the man was going to say, leaning back in her chair. She stared up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then reached to her chest, where she pulled off her badge, staring at it. “Justice is supposed to be blind, the law supposed to be for everyone. It’s not supposed to play favorites, and it’s certainly not supposed to be bought. Fucking Commies are going to ruin Hong Kong just like they’ve done the rest of China.”

Letting the badge drop negligently on her desk, Chun-Li turned around in her chair, wincing a little at fresh pain from her injured leg, which had not enjoyed the brief but high intensity workout she’d given her other leg earlier that night. She stared out the window of her office, out over a small park nearby, and the equally small buildings around the police precinct, taking it all in. I love my home, and now, now…

How long she stayed there simply staring out the window, her mind in turmoil, anger, anxiety, disgust and a deep wrenching sadness warring with one another, Chun-Li did not know, but eventually, a quiet knock on her door brought her back to the here and now. She turned around, debated reaching for badge and putting it on, but deciding not to bother. The rumor mill what it was, the rest of the police here and indeed probably elsewhere throughout the city would know what was going to happen to her eventually anyway. “Come in.”

To her surprise, it wasn’t another policeman, but rather Major Heidern who walked in. “Major. I’d ask what I can do for you, but at the moment, I’m in no mood to be helpful to anyone, even you.”

He looked at the much younger woman for a second, shaking his head faintly. “I take it then that Yao handed down his edict? I did warn you that something like that was going to happen eventually, although the order actually comes far higher than the superintendent.”

“You did. And I knew it was a possibility. But to hear it from his mouth, that was another story,” Chun-Li said, shaking her head.

If she had just been ordered to stop looking into the four men the CCP had deemed necessary to have free, Chun-Li could perhaps have stomached it, with a lot of reservations. Yet it seemed as if the upper echelon of China’s government had wanted to save more than those four, and Chun-Li’s efforts had stopped that from happening. Because of that, or perhaps some other reason, Chun-Li had been told in no uncertain terms that she herself, the leader of the sting operation against the Triad, would no longer be required to serve Hong Kong. Her contract with the police was up for review in two months and it would not be renewed.

Furthermore, Chun-Li would not be welcome anymore in Hong Kong or even China after that time. Essentially, she was being told she needed to leave the country willingly, or she would be exiled from it forcefully. That had come as a major shock to her system, one that she had not been prepared for.

“I suppose it’s a good thing that the recruitment request from Interpol came so recently,” Chun-Li mused after explaining that, although she still sounded listless, even as she spoke about something that been a lifelong dream of hers. “Yet knowing that Hong Kong, that my city is still going to be riddled with corruption when I leave, knowing that I’m being basically forced out rather than leading of my own volition, it makes it a bitter pill to swallow.”

“Well then, perhaps it’s a good thing that I have another offer for you,” major Heidern said smiling faintly. “That is, if you wish to stay within China, I can offer you the means to keep fighting the good fight, inspector, regardless of what Yao told you.” His smile widened faintly as Chun-Li looked up at him, an eyebrow corking and a bit more life entering her features. “You see, while there are powerful people within the Communist Party that wish to sweep a lot of the corruption under the rug, there are others who see it for the debilitating disease that is, hence the creation of my unit. A unit that could do with someone like you…”

OOOOOOO

Ranma found himself waking up the next morning in a somewhat uncomfortable position. His upper body was curled around something of a similar size, while one leg was stuck up at an angle onto the boat’s sofa, while the rest of his body was on the ground of the boat. A blanket, the origins of which Ranma couldn’t quite remember, lay half on, half off of him. More of it was wrapped around whatever he was holding at the moment, really.

The gentle rocking of the boat had helped him to fall asleep, but now that he was waking up, for the first time in years, he felt a little sore after sleeping. His back was twanging at him from being kept in this position for so long and his leg was feeling all tingly.

It took Ranma a second to realize what that could be, as most of his attention, understandably, was on the feeling of the woman’s body he was spooning against now. That, and the fact that he could smell someone cooking nearby. He was still a Saotome, after all, and even after starting a relationship with Shampoo, some things wouldn’t change.

For a brief moment, Ranma’s mind could not figure out what was going on, the memories of how he had fallen asleep in such a strange position not coming to him. Further, if he was still spooning with Shampoo, then who was cooking? It certainly smelled a lot stronger than it would have if they were sharing a tent or cabin as they had in the state park where they’d stayed the winter, and it had been one of the other girls’ turns to cook in the morning. No, the meal was being prepared at most three yards away, with no intervening walls between his nose and the meal.

Then the full memory of the night hit him, and the rest of his brain followed his nose into the land of wakefulness and his eyes opened. Looking down, Ranma blinked, seeing the black hair of Mai in his arms rather than that of Shampoo, and for a moment, his flight or fight instinct fought the rest of the memory. Now that she’s sober, there’s no way that Shampoo’s going to be happy with what happened last night, right? My life doesn’t work that easy. No, she’s going to take it out on me, take it out on Mai, and everything is going to…

Ranma’s slowly panicking thoughts, slowed by the fact that the two girls had frankly exhausted him more than any amount of martial arts ever had the night before, juddered to a halt. Because Shampoo wasn’t just cooking. She was in fact whistling a little, now that Ranma was conscious enough to hear it.

Slowly pulling himself away from Mai, Ranma was able to twist around and look toward the kitchenette out of the small, sunken area where the sofas lay. There, Ranma saw Shampoo moving around with purpose, her head moving side to side in reaction to the song she was humming. Even from the admittedly odd angle of the floor, and through the intervening stools and counter, Ranma could see how happy her body language seemed.

She also seemed only to be wearing her underwear. From this angle Ranma couldn’t see much, but he could see the play of the muscles on her bare back and shoulders, the way her hair bounced off her shoulders and back as she moved, and the bra straps going over her shoulder and around from the side.

After shaking his head once, to banish the desire he felt at that sight, Ranma’s thoughts were still kind of muddled, the memory of the night activities, the exhaustion that had finally caused him and the others to fall asleep after they had, as one new manga he’d seen recently would put it gone Plus Ultra with the new activity and concern about how all of this was going to play out warring within his mind.

Okay, that’s a good sign. And if she woke up before me, well, I suppose it’s a good sign that I still have my boy bits at all. Given how exhausted I am, and considering the position I woke up, I don’t think my Sleep-Fu activated at least. Still, while she looks happy now, and I know we all agreed to it as it was going on, there’s a big difference between that and looking at this whole threesome thing in the light of day, all sober and no romance-type stuff happening.

As he was thinking that, Mai began to stir in his arms, muttering about, “Too hard a bed isn’t good for my back. But the full body pillow is nice.” She too was a little slow to come back to reality, but when she did, Mai twisted around his arms to look up at Ranma, her eyes glimmering with delight, a faint, but warm, loving smile on her face.

Ranma stared back, struck dumb. Mai was gorgeous. Ranma had known this for, well ever since he met her at that martial arts tournament, frankly. But to see her like this, her hair in disarray from sleep, her face devoid of any makeup, those soft, amber colored eyes sparkling, was something else entirely. To say nothing of the smile she was wearing on those full, so kissable lips, a smile whose warmth Ranma knew was directed at him. Fuck me… I’m lost… Andy, you utter moron, how could you not love this woman!?

Seeing he was awake, Mai looped an arm up around his neck. Ranma didn’t stop her, still staring down into Mai’s eyes, and a second later, she pulled his unresisting head down towards her for a kiss. Despite their mutual bad breath, the kiss went on for some time, while in the background, Shampoo’s humming stopped, although Ranma was in no position at the moment to notice.

For one thing, looking back down at Mai had turned him away from the kitchenette. For another, when someone like Mai was kissing you, any full-blooded male would undoubtedly give her all their attention in the world, even without the initial look that had accompanied this particular kiss.

Eventually, Mai pulled back, smiling. “Mmmm~… and a very good morning to you~,” she purred, before looking over Ranma’s shoulder.

As she did that, reality crashed back in an Ranma, and his eyes widened, his body stiffening, his jaw and neck locking and the momentary flushed, happy look on his face turning white with fear, wondering suddenly if either he was about to be attacked, or if he had just wrecked everything he had with Shampoo. Damn it, I’d prefer violence to that… by a fucking wide degree! Mai’s amazing, gorgeous, devoted to the art, strong of will, smart, funny, and all that, and maybe if things hadn’t worked out with Shampoo and I met Mai on my own, I’d be happy with this, but I don’t want to wreck what I have with Shampoo!

That was as far as Ranma’s panicked thoughts got before Mai, still smiling, pulled out of his arms and stood up.

Ranma could not stop himself from staring up at Mai from where he still lay on the floor, his eyes tracing down her body as she stood up to the artful curve of her neck, the muscles in her shoulders, then to her magnificent, breasts, so large, so perfect, the heft of them coming back to his mind as if his hands were holding them again as he had the night before more times than he could count. Then his eyes raked down to her core, the hardened abs there that showed her dedication to the art before progressing further.

He even found himself looking at her feet as Mai stepped over him, giving Ranma a view straight up her legs to the bare cleft above, which had started to throb a little from their kissing.

He rolled over lightly, ignoring the still tingling in his leg for a second as Mai moved towards the kitchen, wearing a bright smile as she continued to speak in Japanese, the same language she had addressed Ranma with a moment before. “Morning, Shampoo. That smells good.”

“Thanks, Mai, though I think that your kiss gave our man the blue screen of death,” Shampoo snickered as she spoke in the same language, staring around Mai to Ranma.

Mai didn’t answer at first, simply moving around the kitchen and pulling Shampoo into a hug, despite the fact that she was holding a plate of pancakes. “Let’s make it two for two then,” she nearly whispered before leaning down to give the shorter girl a kiss almost as passionate as the one she’d been giving Ranma a moment before.

While only the top portion of their chests was visible, Ranma could make out one pancake sandwiched in between their chests, as Shampoo hadn’t bothered dressing. Seeing that pancake slowly being squished Mai and Shampoo as Shampoo kissed her back, Ranma reflected, This is the first time I’ve ever been jealous of food. Not certain what to think about that one. But hey, this is a good sign, right? Right? Despite the evidence before his eyes to the contrary, Ranma couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it, his brief time in Nerima had shown that romance just wasn’t supposed to go this smoothly, to say nothing about certain comics.

Chuckling into the kiss, Shampoo slowly shifted the plate of pancakes out of the way so she could pull Mai into a deeper hug. Their chests now pressed into one another, Mai’s bare breast’s pressing into Shampoo’s barely clad ones. The kiss they had been sharing deepening as well, their tongues licking and moving around one another in an intricate dance for a few seconds before Ranma’s stomach decided to interrupt things by roaring so loudly it sounded as if someone had suddenly deposited a tiger in the room.

The two girls broke off, looking over at Ranma, then back at one another, before laughing, leaning their foreheads against one another.

“Why don’t you go take a shower, Mai?” Shampoo asked, giving the other girl a quick peck on the cheek, and stepping back so that Mai’s bare, naked body was no longer pressing into her own. UMMF, I’ve heard of the term built for sin, but Mai’s body is the perfect mix of that and martial arts toughness! It would almost be enough to make me jealous if not for, well, everything else.

Mai looked into Shampoo’s eyes for a second, then grinned, kissed Shampoo back on her nose of all places for some reason and pulled away as Shampoo’s face scrunched up in confusion. “I’ll be back in a second, although if you already had a shower, why are you just in your underwear? Are you trying to tell us something, or is that going to be the mandatory outfit on this boat going forward?” Mai asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

Shampoo giggled, then looked over at Ranma, who having suddenly realized that he also was naked, had grabbed at the sheet in a vain attempt to protect his modesty. Not that he has anything to be modest about, Shampoo thought with a certain amount of gleeful complacency, remembering how Ranma had reacted to her own body last night, the things they had done, some of them many times in a row. More the exact opposite, really, he’s got a lot to be proud of. MMM… “Hehe, maybe if we can get Ranma to agree to wear something like a speedo, or a fundoshi?”

“Not gonna happen,” Ranma said, trying to stand up, only to fall to one side, as the leg that had been feeling like it had pins and needles in it failed to respond in a way that a martial artist’s limb should never do. “Gah, leg’s asleep!”

Watching their man flail for a second had both of the girls laughing wildly, before Mai, with a final kiss to Shampoo’s cheek, headed toward the bathroom. “I’ll be quick loves, I promise. Although, I think I might make it mandatory that after fun times, we take time to shower before falling asleep. If every night is going to be as… strenuous… as that one was, I don’t like the feeling of waking up all crusty. And we end the night in a bed, not on the ship’s deck.”

Ranma blanched a little from where he was massaging his leg back to life, taking a moment to smell himself and agreeing that sounded like a good idea, although the idea there would be more nights like last night still, to a large portion of Ranma’s mind, seemed far too optimistic. In contrast, Shampoo just nodded in firm agreement. Ranma didn’t move until after the hatch to the sitting room/kitchen had closed behind Mai, whereupon he stood up.

As he did, Shampoo, who had just turned back to her cooking, blinked, staring at the fact that Ranma had somehow, while his lower body had been covered by the sheet, pulled on his pants without making any kind of movement that she had noticed. “How did you…”

“Martial arts clothing change, I haven’t used it much, but Mai did show us both how ta use it, ya know,” Ranma said, smirking just a little as he teased Shampoo.

Shampoo harrumphed but couldn’t say anything as a sizzling noise grabbed her attention. She turned quickly, rescuing a plate of small breakfast type sausages that were about to burn. Even as she worked though, she heard Ranma’s steps moving up behind her, one leg dragging just a little bit from where his footsteps would normally flow one into another. Even when simply walking Ranma showed his martial arts training, a poise and balance in every step that no non-martial artist could ever match.

She smiled as he moved up behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Shampoo, are you… Last night you weren’t fully, um, you and Mai were both drinking a lot and…”

“You’re worried that in the light of day I’m going to be angry or sad or something?” Shampoo turned lightly letting Ranma’s arms fall off of her shoulders as she put one arm around his waist, leaning up to kiss his collarbone and jawline. She only pulled away when Ranma’s stomach let out another loud gurgle, followed by her own.

Turning back, she concentrated on her cooking, a wry twist to her lips. “I would’ve thought that seeing Mai and I kiss like we did a second ago would’ve made it clear, Airen.”

“It did, but… And I know this is kind of weird coming from me, given how much trouble I have getting emotions out, but I think I’d really like to hear it straight. Are we all right?” he asked, even as his arms wound around her stomach as he pressed himself into her from behind. She looked up at him, and one of Ranma’s hands rose to trace Shampoo’s cheek. Like Mai, she wore no makeup, but that only made her violet eyes pop all the more, her small, kissable lips drawing his gaze even as her hard abs drew his fingers. “I, I don’t want to lose you, Shampoo.”

Shampoo reveled in that touch. The way Ranma held her brought to mind the time they had kissed o the roof of the Tendo Dojo, the way he held her as if he really believed she was a precious jewel, as her name implied. That, along with his declarations last night, the memories with Mai, both last night and for the last few months, her laughter, her touch, the look in Mai’s eyes from last night, was more than enough to make Shampoo certain in their course going forward. “We’re all right. I love you, Airen, and I know you love me.”

Ranma’s arms tightened at that, and he whispered into her hair that he did, causing Shampoo’s smile to widen noticeably, before she continued, finally putting to rest Ranma’s worries. “And we both love Mai too. I think that’s been building up for a while. We are going to need to sit and talk about this, and I think that there are going to be some issues going forward, but I think between us and Mai, yes, we can make this work. Although there are some questions about last night that I’m going to ask that girl. She’s entirely too clever!”

“Heh, ah, heh, I get you. And I’m glad we’re going to try to make this work. I didn’t… If you had thought last night was a mistake, we would’ve had to deal with a lot of problems, but, I’d deal with them with you. As much as I love Mai, I loved you first you know?” Ranma thought of for second, then hastily added, “And not just because you and I were together before we met her, or that I met you first or anything like that! In fact, I think if I met Mai on my own, without you around, she might’ve well scared me off in a lot of ways you know? I might’ve started acting towards her like well Andy does, but without the whole childhood friend thing or...”

“That means a lot to me, Airen,” Shampoo said, and it truly did. Despite their friendship, Shampoo had felt a bit of jealousy occasionally towards Mai simply because of how good looking the other woman was. To know that Ranma felt she was just as good looking was an amazing boost to her ego. “But it is also good that we don’t have to.”

She then chuckled. “And I think you need to stop, while you’re ahead Ranma. You get the right words out first, and then you just try to keep on adding to them, which isn’t always a good thing.”

Nodding morosely at that, Ranma went back to simply hugging Shampoo, until Shampoo flicked the spatulas she was cooking up towards his head, threatening to smack him in the four head with the greasy object. “Go set the table and be ready to take a quick shower.”

“I’m a guy, quick showers are the norm for us, not like you slow as snails girls,” Ranma said, snickering a little as he stepped away, grateful that whatever was going on between the three of them, everything was going to be all right going forward.

Contrary to Ranma’s expectations, Mai was actually back quite quickly, with Ranma only having just finished setting up the counter, talking to Shampoo all the while about some spices and other things she wanted to add to the kitchen. Ranma had mostly agreed with that, but had insisted they also get as much fishing lines and nets as they could. Fish would help add to their onboard stores easily, and Genma had taught him a lot of tricks to attract fish. He’d never used them in the open ocean, but he was certain they’d still work.

It took Ranma barely three minutes to shower, before he was back, fully dressed. Unlike Mai, who was wearing what looked like a barely there pair of panties under a silk negligée. Somehow, during the time Ranma had left take a shower, she’d also convinced Shampoo to take her bra off and put on an apron. The effect of the two girls dressed thusly was highly distracting, which apparently was the object, considering the giggles and the looks the girls shared as Ranma stood, poleaxed in the hatch leading into the sitting room.

However, when Mai and Shampoo set out the food, Shampoo became serious for second. “I think Mai should sit in the middle. We’re going to be questioning you a bit, sister, and with this set up…”

“It is kind of hard to have a serious conversation when you have to lean around the person in the middle to speak to the third person,” Mai said with a nod. “Some of the other boats I had looked at for us had a better kitchen and table set up, but they didn’t have the solar panels and everything else for long lasting time out at sea. We have to make compromises in everything, I suppose.”

“Well, except for the Art,” Ranma rejoined, sitting on Mai’s opposite side as Shampoo took the side nearest to the outer hull. Or is it called a bulkhead because we’re inside? If we’re going to be traveling by ship, I might need to work on that kind of naming-type stuff, Ranma thought, before deciding to bite the bullet. The two girls had shown up to this point that both of them were fine with everything, but for some reason, he felt like he needed to take point on this.

“So, Mai, when did you start to realize that…” despite dating Shampoo for so long and the events of last night, Ranma still hesitated, cursing his father for his training about how emotions make you weak for a second before he could force the words out. “You were in, in love with the two of us? I mean I’m not questioning that you are. Er, Shampoo and I er, feel the same, but I don’t think either of us would’ve, um, realized it. You did, and then… well, looking back on it, a lot of last night feels as if you planned it out. I’m not complaining or anything just…”

“You should remember what I said before, Ranma,” Shampoo groaned with an eye roll reaching behind Mai to flick Ranma in the ear. And I am very grateful that my Japanese got so good we can all have this conversation without any stupid pidgin gabble. “You get the right words out first, and then you start to add things. Stop while you’re ahead!” she emphasized the last sentence with a flick to his ear with every word.

In contrast, Mai was giggling under her breath, not just at Shampoo’s actions but also at Ranma’s words. “Hey, at least he is able to get some of the words out at all. I’ll take that any kind of communication frankly over just blushing, stammering and running away. Especially, when the words are so heartfelt.”

She turned fully to face first Ranma, then Shampoo on her stool, showing them both the bright grin she was currently wearing. “And as for when I realized what was going on between the three of us consciously, that happened when Shampoo and I were waiting for you to wake up in the hospital.”

Mai explained that moment in the restaurant, when she realized how shallow her relationship with Andy had been, how much she had realized just being around Shampoo had meant to her, how she would have chosen traveling with them over being with Andy, how she had realized she had come to love the pair of them. When she finished, Shampoo nodded slowly. “That makes sense. And, as Ranma put it, just to get the words out, I love you too Mai.” With that, she leaned over and gave Mai a kiss on the cheek, her lips lingering against Mai’s smooth skin for a moment.

Instantly realizing his cue, thanks mostly due, again, to the fact that he’d been dating Shampoo for so long, Ranma nodded firmly, leaning over to give Mai a kiss on the cheek, whereupon Mai began to blush at the pair’s attention. “And I love you too. I want to make this work!”

“Thank you,” Mai said, reaching for Ranma and Shampoo’s hands, taking one in each of her own before squeezing. “Thank you for accepting me. And I want to make this work too. I’m not going to try to push you out Shampoo, or you Ranma. I just, I want us to be a real triangle, each corner supporting the other, each equal.”

“I like that imagery,” Shampoo agreed, nodding her head, then looking down at the counter ruefully. “Much better than a line anyway.”

That won some laughs from Ranma and Mai, and all three of them turned their attention to their food for a few moments. Once their martial artists’ stomachs had been fed appropriately, Ranma asked, “So, where do we go from here? I’m not exactly the world’s best planner.”

Mai nodded. “Actually, you’ve proven a time or two that you can plan ahead Ranma, don’t sell yourself short. As for what we should do, we’ll want to remove that one partition that can be removed to change two of the bedrooms from normal sized bedrooms into a master bedroom. Then we will want to switch out the two beds for a king sized one. I can’t remember right now if they are supposed to be able to link together to somehow form a single bed, or if we’ll need to buy a new one, but that should be the first thing we do.”

Tabling a thought the idea of buying a new bed had just given him, Ranma joked, “So that’ll leave that one bedroom on its own as, what? Storage room? Or are we going to keep it as a bedroom for when I’m in the doghouse for some reason?”

Shampoo smirked maliciously at him, reaching around Mai again to poke him gently in the shoulder. “More like for your own safety during that time of the month if Mai and I have our periods line up with one another again.”

That caused a shiver to go down Ranma’s spine and he nodded hurriedly in agreement. “God, don’t even joke about that, Shampoo!”

Having lived in the woods for several months with four girls, and before that, with Mai and Shampoo in even closer proximity for several months, Ranma knew precisely how terrifying a woman could be at that time of the month. Although he’d already had a good idea of that thanks to the Tendos, the quartet of girls, particularly Shampoo, were way more terrifying than even Akane had been. Akane’s mood swings had been worse, but oddly, she wasn’t nearly as prone to violence during that period as normal, whereas Shampoo’s first reaction to literally anything during that time frame was to smash the issue, Ranma, a loose root that had tripped her, the food for being too hot, was violence.

Mai, in contrast, was more…vocal in her distressed time every month. As in, she grew a mouth worse than a sailor and flayed anyone who displeased her with a surgeon’s precision and a sadist’s delight.

Thankfully, despite the old myth that women’s menstrual cycles always matched up if they were in close proximity for too long, it only had rarely happened between Mai and Shampoo. The two (possible) Tendo sisters on the other hand? Well, Ranma had made a few trips over the winter into town for chocolates and other goodies to sate the savage beasts.

The two girls laughed at his reaction, and then Shampoo frowned a little, sending a pout at her Airen. Or really, one of them, anyway. Sister-wife as I’ve heard the term for another woman sharing a man’s attention is just… too blah and seems to assume the man is the only connection. I love Mai too. Not as much as I do Ranma, but still. I’ll need to figure out another nickname for her. “By the way, you’re not calling me Xian Pu any longer? I’m hurt.”

The difference between the two names was more noticeable in Putonghua rather than Japanese, yet even as his willpower began to drain out of him at the devastating power of Shampoo’s pout, Ranma had a response for this ready. After his own fashion anyway, as getting the words out was still hard, in Japanese. “Heh, well, remember, you were the one who introduced yourself as Shampoo ta me. It took a while for me to realize that it wasn’t a direct translation. Although you are precious, and you’re as gorgeous as any jewel.”

At that, Shampoo, despite everything they had done the night before, began to blush while between them, Mai began to giggle. Hearing the sincerity in that blunt compliment was enough to set Shampoo’s heart to thumping and with Mai between them, she couldn’t even respond appropriately to that kind of a comment. That’s cheating!

However, Ranma wasn’t done his, admittedly, unplanned assault on the capillaries of Shampoo’s face and continued without even noticing the effect of his first fusillade, his view blocked by Mai and her hair for the moment. “But you’re not um, something I need ta hoard or protect, ‘cause you can do that yourself. Just like with Mai, er, your strength’s just part of why you’re so amazing. So um, it just, just doesn’t feel like I should be calling ya that all the time. Makes it more special, you know?”

“I know right now you’re lucky we’ve got other things to do today or else none of us would be leaving this room, let alone the ship,” Shampoo mumbled, shaking her head, while Mai also flushed a bit at the compliment sent her way there. “Stupid, romantically blunt Airen. That should not be a thing!”

Realizing he’d won some points there, Ranma grinned, but deciding not to keep the romantic feeling going, he went back to an earlier point that he had been thinking of when Mai brought up the idea of buying a new bed for the master bedroom once it was set up. “Speaking of buying stuff, I think going forward we might want to think about another way to get a steady supply of money other than trolling for idiots.”

When the others both looked at him, he waved his hands around them to indicate the ship. “Let’s face facts, without Ken being so free with his money we would’ve taken months, maybe years before being able to buy this boat. And this boat will come with a lot of issues, the need for gas, for food, repairs maybe.” He sighed pensively. “That’s not to say anything about actually rolling the idiots in question. In Japan and China, maybe in a few other more places we can get away with that. Elsewhere? Maybe not so much.”

Mai agreed with that, while Shampoo hummed, not saying anything. She didn’t really have a lot of knowledge about the world in general, nothing beyond a map of Asia she’d seen once, and what she had occasionally seen in the news on TVs as she passed by them, anyway. That, and she knew of the United States and big things like that, but nothing on the ground, so to speak, that could help them in other nations. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Well, think of it like this. In Japan, there’s this big stigma against guns right? Even the Yakuza don’t really have access to a lot of guns, and it if they do have access, they’re not exactly flashy about it,” Ranma explained. “Elsewhere though, places where the people in power are open about their corruption, that’s not going to be the case. Instead of the local Yaks, we might have the actual military after us. Which doesn’t even mention places like Burma, where the police and military are one and the same, or other places like that where the local police go around armed with machine guns or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Mai chuckled dryly, shaking her head. “That proves once and for all, Ranma that you would never make it as an American with their obsession with guns and everything.”

“Ken didn’t seem so bad about guns, he only brought them up a few times in conversation, and only when we were talking about the Triad,” Ranma pointed out with a snort. “Don’t stereotype, babe.”

As Mai stuck out her tongue in disgust at the term babe Shampoo drawled, “Yeah, but he’s rich, and isn’t it a fact of life that the rich have to be eccentric? So he decided to replace martial arts with guns.”

Despite that, she joined the others in laughing at Shampoo’s words. It was a known stereotype that Americans were all crazy for guns, but like most stereotypes, all three knew that it probably didn’t have any real basis in reality.

Yet, the point about guns was well taken. While their toughness training meant that handguns didn’t matter much to Ranma at this point, and both girls felt that they would get to that point eventually, larger caliber guns, and particularly fast firing guns were a different matter. Something that Mai brought up now as she agreed with Ranma’s point, before wondering aloud how they would be able to train against something like that.

“Very, very carefully,” Shampoo and Ranma returned, causing all three of them to fall into chuckles again. As they did, Ranma looked up at the two girls, his two girls, and shook his head with a wry little smile. Everything’s changed, yet everything’s staying the same. Damn, how long have we been dating Mai without knowing it? Heh, yeah, yeah, I think we can live with this most definitely.

Eventually, the conversation got back to making money, and Ranma brought up the idea of using his martial arts construction skills. Shampoo was okay with the martial arts construction, but she had never really studied it, busy as she was with martial arts acupuncture at the time. “Although I could use that too, come to think of it. Er… but it might be harder to get people to trust a wandering acupuncturist.”

For a second, Mai thought about then agreed with both points. “I agree with you Shampoo, although if we stay in any area for a while, any kind of medical help might be a major help for the locals that might garner us a lot of good will. As for martial arts construction, that could actually bring in a lot of money, way more than rolling idiots could, unless we get really lucky, and as Ranma put it, getting really lucky with that trick might mean getting really unlucky in terms of guns pointed at us. We could even make a big production about it, draw in some business, then work a few days and earn enough month for our stay in whatever nation we’re in at the time.”

Mai shook her head then, not noticing how both her lovers watched her hair swirl from side to side, seemingly mesmerized. “However, I think we all need to up our training more. I don’t think either myself or Shampoo could have lasted even a few minutes against Yamazaki. Toughness training will likely be impossible aboard our boat, but more speed training, and--”

“More sharing of techniques,” Shampoo stated, getting Mai to nod firmly as the Amazon had taken the words right out of her mouth. She turned to look at Ranma, and Shampoo leaned forward to do the same, their eyes boring into him for a moment. “Your fight with Ryuji, in particular, Ranma, tells us you’ve been holding out on us. No more of that! No more secrets and when it comes to the Art, or…well, you know.”

“Agreed,” Mai stated firmly, looking at Ranma with a stern look in her eyes that had not been there a moment before when they were talking about their relationship. Because there was something that had to be stated right now. “You’ve been holding out on us, Ranma. That whole Blue Burst thing. I know you built it up from the Stripping Fist but where the heck did the whole draining concept come from?”

“Er, well… um, you remember back at your dojo, how you and Shampoo had that day after Andy and you broke it off officially?” Ranma began, before explaining how he and Jubei had found out that Ranma’s Blue Burst had a pulling in component to it. Hearing how he had then adapted that technique on the fly during his battle with the Mad Dragon had both girls shaking their heads in admiration but knowing that he had kept his progress with the skill to himself had both of them taking him to task about it.

“If it’s about ki moving through your body, Ranma, I can help you just as much as Jubei could. Especially since I trained with Master Oro over the past week and learned two techniques about ki that I think we’ll all get a lot out of,” Mai argued, before adding thoughtfully. “And Shampoo and I both have enough ki to let you practice your draining technique on us… even if the whole burst thing might be too painful to really train with.”

Although I will have to remind both Ranma and Shampoo about what Master Oro said about the downsides of taking in someone else’s ki, Mai thought. That Dark Hado stuff he mentioned sounded horrific.

Luckily for Mai, Shampoo’s thoughts had followed her own. “Speaking of Master Oro, didn’t he say something about there being a danger to taking in another person’s energy and mixing it with your own? Something about the Dark Hado? I don’t know why he used that term for it, but Mai, you said there was something like an infection that could happen?”

Ranma blinked, having forgotten that, and Mai snorted, quickly explaining. When she was done, Shampoo shook her head. “No.  Even if we don’t think an enemy might be so diseased, I have no interest in trying any such thing.”

Reminded, Ranma also nodded agreement, promising to be careful with the draining aspect of his new technique. “Um, yeah, we all need to be aware of the Dark Hado thing. I talked about it once with Master Oro, and one of the ways to start to, um fall into that kind of thing is to use emotion based ki.  We’re all okay right now, but we need to be aware of it going forward.”

“Agreed. He mentioned that with me, too,” Mai nodded her head firmly. “Emotions make it easier to call on ki, but it starts to infect your pathways quickly, the stronger the emotion the faster. Anger’s the worst, followed by hatred.  He even mentioned things like confidence,” and here she looked at Ranma who snorted, knowing why he was getting that look. “begetting arrogance, Greed, and even a desire to grow stronger becoming a need to dominate others.”

“hmm… well, I understand that, I suppose. We Joketsuzoku don’t use emotion-based attacks although I never heard the reason why before. The whole sticking aspect of that technique of yours, Airen, that is amazing. I could see both Mai and I using it, pulling someone’s arm out of commission or just dragging it out of position,” Shampoo went on, frowning pensively. “If you make any further progress with it, I think you should tell us that, just like we’ve shared our training in the Yin duplication, element creation, and mental defense techniques. We all need to be open about progress like that, not just Mai and me, Ranma, especially with a technique that could be so dangerous as your Blue Burst.”

“Yes dears,” Ranma stated, pouting a little at the gentle dressing down. Gah, why did that bother me worse than any of the shouted insults from Akane or from my Pops? Disappointing these two somehow hurts worse? Ugh, this whole love stuff is weird.

This response caused both girls to smile, and Mai to grin and lean in to kiss his cheek as Ranma and Shampoo had done to her moments ago. “Good boy,” she cooed. “In return, I’ll help you with identifying, which of my weapons are real, and then I think it’s time we start to really incorporate more of the rope weapons into our various styles. I’ve got some ideas there.”

Not to be outdone, Shampoo hopped to her feet, moving around Mai to give Ranma a rather thorough kiss. As she cheerily swayed back to her stool, Ranma’s outlook on things had noticeably improved.

“Well, then!” he said chirpily, causing Mai to giggle at his sudden energy. “For my part, I think that, yeah, I can probably teach you both the various parts of the Burst technique. Beyond that, I think we should definitely figure out a way to practice speed techniques on the ship. To that mind, we might want to install an aquarium, and then…”

OOOOOOO

While the conversation between the trio continued, Chun-Li sat in a café. She had set up this café as a place to meet Shampoo, Mai and Ranma the day before, while the pair had been buying things for their new ship but she had arrived a few hours early. Indeed, she’d been there since the café had opened. For some reason, Chun-Li didn’t want to go back to her temporary apartment, which the police had assigned her after her own apartment had been attacked by the Spaniard. Nor did she want to stay at the police station. The attack on her combined with the discussion that morning had left a sour taste in Chun-Li’s mouth, and she had wanted to get away from the setting of both quickly.

Not that her decision to come here had been a spur of the moment thing. No, this café was one she had frequented quite often over the years since joining the Hong Kong Police. First of all, it was a place where Chun-Li could buy a single piece of food and then keep on going to the coffee bar for refills, it being set to one side away from the main counter.

Today, Chun-Li had even brought along her own coffee mug, which was around the size of her head, to cut down on the number of trips she’d need to make on her wounded leg. After the night before, it was quite a bit sorer than it had been before. Normally, that at least would have been frowned upon, but she was well known here, and no one batted an eye at the policewoman looking down gallons of coffee as if it was life-preserving water in a desert.

(In actuality, the local baristas didn’t think of bothering her partly because of the badge, partly because, even ensconced in one of the small cubicles, a girl as good looking as Chun-Li around the place was good for business. With one of her legs in a brace up to well above her thigh, that aspect had faded, but they still didn’t think about chasing her out.)

The second reason she came to this specific café so often was that Chun-Li knew she could sit at one of the booths at the far back, and not be observed from behind, or indeed close by if she wanted even more privacy. That was good, considering the two offers she had in front of her at the moment. Two ways forward that could shape how her life went for the next ten years.

Heidern’s offer is… tempting. The idea of cleaning China up city by city, if need be, to get rid of all the corruption and graft. Nevertheless, while he had hinted at having powerful backers, Heidern’s team also had powerful enemies in the Communist Party. The kind of enemies that deal with poison in our food, false allegations and worse, let alone simply tell me my services are no longer fucking required.

Corruption was just a way of life, especially on the political level, among the CCP, something that Chun-Li had not been forced to face before the Triad investigation had basically rounded up more than a dozen politicians, rich fools and so forth among the crowd of clients trying to partake of what the Triad was offering. Knowing point-blank that she had lost her job because she was too damn good at it, and that at least four scumbags were going to walk despite her best efforts hurt Chun-Li.

That conversation, if it could be called that, with the superintendent had forced Chun-Li to realize it was only a matter of time before Hong Kong just became another part of China, just became as corrupt and controlled by the CCP as the rest of it. Although I suppose in a way it’s good that no one is trying to get any of the true criminals out of jail. I think I’d prefer to have all of them six feet under, if that was the case, particularly after last night and those three assassins. Hell, with Ranma and the other martial artists on call, I might even be able to get away with it.

The thought was a little dark to Chun-Li,Chun-Li even now, and she shook her head, sipping at her coffee again, before picking up all of the folders, putting them under her arm, and heading over to get another tray of donuts for herself. The best part of being a martial artist is you don’t have to watch what you eat. Whatever you eat, you’re going to burn out quickly enough anyway, she thought, with some amusement as she saw some girls her own age or a little older looking at the pile of doughnuts that she had just ordered with a mixture of shock and jealousy.

The jealous looks continued as she turned away, the girl’s eyes going down to Chun-Li’s hips and rear even now that she was walking with a crutch. As did the eyes of many a man in the area, but Chun-Li was used to that, not even bothering to smirk as she made her way slowly over to her table. Heh, you’d think the injuries and their dressings would be a turn off, but no.

Sitting back down, Chun-Li munched on one of the doughnuts as she put the folder from Major Heidern to the side. No, I do want to fight the good fight, but I feel like fighting it here in China, that’s like trying to stop a landslide that’s already in motion. But… it does come with the offer of further training…

Shaking that thought off, Chun-Li looked at the offer from Interpol her father had passed on. He had sent it over to her after she had told him about being in charge of the Triad raid. He wanted to meet up with her in Hawaii, but more than that, he had sent an entire folder via computer email, the file password protected, encrypted, and with a lot of other protections on it that she had not seen before.

Because of this, even more than the folder with the written form of Heidern’s offer in it, this folder had not left her person since she had printed it out and before too much longer she would burn it, not even trusting security at the police precinct at this point. The fact she had been attacked by three men dressed as fellow police officers had been the icing on the cake of her paranoia, after the amount of police who had been found to be on the take and the attack on Ranma at the hospital had he been sent to.

That was neither here nor there. What was important was the information contained within the soon-to-be incinerated folder. According to the information within, mostly analyses from Interpol and a few bits of raw data, there was a new criminal empire out there, a worldwide one.

Not only was this empire new, but very powerful, it seemed to be a cross between simple criminals and terrorists, with far more representation in the martial arts than any other gang out there. This goes well beyond the normal underground fights, for certain. Along with that came some interest in the mystic realm apparently, although that area hadn’t been given as much weight in the folder as Mai, after watching what Ryuji had been able to do as well as Ranma’s curse, felt was appropriate.

I didn’t believe in magic or anything like that either, but Ranma’s curse can be nothing else. Then there’s how Ryuji was able to stand up and almost keep fighting despite the fact that he had his arm turned into so much slurry and should have been bleeding out. To say nothing of his ki attacks. I can understand those, even if I am left wondering how the hell he had so much ki. And even there, Interpol doesn’t seem to put much weight behind the reports of similar attacks being used by the enforcers of this new criminal empire.

And then there’s the high science aspect, Chun-Li thought in some bemusement. Interpol seems to think that whoever is behind this is trying to maybe make a nuclear weapon, but I don’t know if I believe that from the reports. Although, the missing scientists and the other stuff, that is deeply concerning. Way more terrorist activity than criminal, and it was one video recording of that that makes me think about ki attacks, even if Interpol thinks it was some kind of hidden energy beam, or, what was it ‘cyborg laser?’

Snorting at that particular analyst’s imagination, Chin Li sipped at her coffee, thinking, Which just means that dealing with this organization is right up my alley. It’s got martial arts involved in it, and it’s fighting the good fight in a way even staying here in China won’t let me do, perhaps literally and not just in terms of the size of the criminality I’ll be fighting. So why am I hesitating? Why haven’t I told Major Heidern outright no yet?

Closing the folder, Chun-Li set her hand and the coffee mug on top of it for a moment, closing her eyes as once more the list of martial arts masters and others that Heidern had contacts with came to mind. The fact of the matter was that after seeing Mai, Shampoo and, more, Ranma fight, Chun-Li was no longer certain of her own skills in martial arts as she had once been. Before meeting Ryu and the others, Chun-Li thought she had been about as good as a martial artist could be. But meeting them, learning of some of their ‘little’ tricks, then seeing Ranma fight with the truly monstrous Yamazaki? All of that had burst that proverbial bubble for Chun-Li. And then to learn that Ryu and Ken could both use ki, and were on the cusp of creating their own ki attacks, while also having just as much if not more durability than Ranma? That had made it even worse.

Training with Major Heidern came with the added benefit of further training with his crack team, along with more than two dozen extremely well-advanced martial artists. In that way, it was much better than working with Interpol, who seemed to think the mystical and martial arts side of this new criminal group was but a sideshow, a whim of whoever led the shadowy organization rather than a real passion or a source of serious recruitment. Then again, I doubt any of these analysts would ever believe that marital artists might become strong enough to ignore bullet wounds and lash out at range with energy attacks. FUCK, but I want to do that… but that attack on me, the knowledge that Heidern’s own unit might not have the government’s backing for much longer… Ugh. I need more sugar, to figure this out, Chun-Li thought, munching down on another doughnut.

Despite the brain food however, Chun-Li was still pondering her choice an hour later when Shampoo and Mai showed up.

Staring at the pair, Chun-Li decided that both of them were looking far too chipper and happy with life for her tastes at the moment, even fueled with coffee. They also seem to be walking with a bit of a limp, both of them. I have seen that kind of walk before. Heck, I’ve had that kind of walk before. Looks like at least four people got lucky last night.

Chun-Li waved her friends (Mai certainly was one, Shampoo, not so much, although Chun-Li didn’t put as much import on their so-called rivalry as the younger Amazon girl) over. “So, I take it you and Ranma had a very special night last night Shampoo? But you Mai, who was the lucky guy? I didn’t think Ken was getting anywhere with you.”

“Oh, hell no,” Mai gagged, shaking her head, pausing before sliding into the booth. “Andy put me off Americans entirely I think, and I’ve never been into blondes. No, I am very much a one-man kind of gal, much like this one.” She smirked over at Shampoo, putting an arm around Shampoo’s shoulders as Shampoo put one around her waist. This move had several nearby men staring, given how closely the two women were pressing their bodies together. This was made even better considering both of them were wearing jeans so tight they looked painted on and almost equally tight t-shirts. “In fact, exactly like this one.”

Shampoo smiled, hugging Mai tighter even as, ignoring the reactions they were getting from the crowd of lunch goers around them, she looked at Chun-Li with a side eye. It was somewhat narrow and annoyed that look. Much like many others Chun-Li had seen from Shampoo since she had been injured. The Amazon still wanted a rematch, but with Chun-Li injured as she was, that wasn’t going to happen.

That and the trio want to leave Hong Kong, but it’s like Shampoo sees my inability to heal like Ranma did before they leave like a personal affront. It’s not my fault I never even heard of ki healing before you three came around, damn it. And I know you said you can’t heal as quickly as Ranma, you crazy hick!

Shaking that thought off, Chun-Li stared from one woman to another, getting the implication of Mai’s statement easily and honestly astonished by it now that she set her thoughts on Shampoo aside. “Really? You two are, what, sharing Ranma? Both of you, with one man? I could never see sharing someone’s affection like that.”

Mai could have said something about having too much pride in herself to lower herself that level, but she didn’t. She fully understood both of these two had pride as women and martial artists, didn’t want to get on Mai’s bedside to go along with Shampoo’s. It was simply a choice that Mai could never see herself accepting.

Shampoo however just smirked, shrugging her shoulders, leaning up to give her taller girlfriend a kiss on her neck, that set many a tongue to wag. China, and in particular the melting pot that was Hong Kong, wasn’t nearly as repressive on the idea of public displays of affection as Japan was, but seeing such things between two girls was still a little out there even with all the hugging the twosome had been doing. “Don’t knock it until you try it.”

Chuckling, Mai sat down, pulling Shampoo down into the others seat with her, before gesturing with her free hand towards the folders that had been placed under Chun-Li’s deceptively heavy looking coffee mug. “Damn, girl, that coffee mug looks as if you could use it as a blunt force weapon. Is there a specific reason you look like you decided coffee was the equivalent of water and needed to be drunk in liters?”

“Oh, you might say that. It’s been one incredibly annoying all-nighter for this particular inspector. I’m not going to go into it now, though. The problems facing me are just that, mine,” Chun-Li snorted, taking another gulp of coffee, grateful that it was still warm. This let her rather-too inquisitive mind shift back to the pair of women across from her, and the man they’d apparently decided to share.

I’ve heard about sisters sharing things, and even best friends, but I’ve never been close enough to another woman to share a shirt, let alone a man. Although, I thought I had felt a few vibes from the two of them that made me wonder if Mai and Shampoo were involved, rather than Ranma and Shampoo.

Still, the idea of all three of them getting involved with one another hadn’t occurred to her. She said so aloud, then shrugged. “Still, whatever makes you too happy I suppose. It’s not like it’s any of my business.”

“What, not going to try to grill us for details? I thought that was traditional among girlfriends,” Mai quipped, shaking her head. “Not that we would give you any real ones. Just generalities. As in damn was it good!”

As Shampoo nodded in agreement, the two girls’ eyes almost glazing over in memory for a second, Chun-Li rolled her eyes. “That’s nice, but I’m no virgin, girls. My own boyfriends have never been martial artists, artists yes, and one of them in particular was quite accomplished. You’re not going to shock me with anything.” As Mai got a look on her face as if she was thinking about taking that as a challenge, Chun-Li snorted. “But seriously. Congratulations. I hope the three of you are happy together.”

Both girls beamed at her, and Chun-Li barely stopped herself from twitching a little. OKaaay, yes, there’s a little bit of jealousy right there.

Not because the girls with Ranma. No. Chun-Li wasn’t shallow enough to be jealous at something like that even if Ranma was kind of her type, outside of his age and his general attitude. The same could be said for Ryu. In fact, Ryu was a lot closer, since he was more stoic, plus he was a bit older than Ranma, and buffer looking.

No, it wasn’t the fact the pair had a boyfriend that made Chun-Li jealous. No, it was the whole package.

These two have been living their best lives, wandering around, living off the land and learning the Art, enjoying every minute of it with good company and a life goal of ‘get better’, without any strings attached or offsetting demands. Foot loose and fancy free, as that one American song put it.

And here I am, overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and now been told bluntly that a good quarter of my work is going to go down the crapshoot even as I try desperately to keep the trials and everything else going. Knowing that my future in my own home city is, is fucking over, and knowing that there’s no way I can achieve my goals as both a policewoman and a martial artist. Damn, when did I become a cynic, oh yeah, it comes included with the badge. But if I stay here, I won’t have a badge for much… fuck!

For a moment, the dam that Chun-Li had put up against her superior’s blunt words in the morning before broke. Depression, anger, revulsion and raw sadness threatened to pull Chun-Li’s mind under. I have two futures to choose from, but I’m being forced to leave behind so much, and neither of them are what I would choose! I wanted to join Interpol, yes, but not like this, not like an exile from my home!

“Are you all right?” Shampoo asked, frowning a little as she stared over the table at the other Chinese woman, setting aside her annoyance with the fact that they wouldn’t be able to settle the score between them for the moment. That still got her Amazon blood in an uproar bit, but Shampoo was willing to push through it to show some consideration for a fellow woman who looked as if she was dealing with quite a lot at the moment. “You look like you are wrestling with a bear, or at least a bear inside your own head and it just pushed you into deep water.”

“I… heh, interesting analogy, there.” Chun-Li blinked, coming back to the here and now, reflecting that image really did fit all too well. “I kind of am, um both the wrestling with a bear and drowning. I…” Briefly, Chun-Li explained what was going on. As she did, Chun-Li realized that without going into any details of what her supervisor had said, it just made it seem a little worse here in Hong Kong than it really was, but frankly, Chun-Li was a little bit past caring. The fact that she would soon need to leave her city, the only home she’d ever known, having stayed here when her father had joined Interpol, of basically being ordered to leave the police force, which she had joined as soon as she could, entering the Academy instead of college, hurt.

Moreover, she still wasn’t certain which way to go. When you’re not the one making the choice to leave, it just makes any choice of where to go all the harder. Yes, again, Chun-Li knew that she had been intending to leave at some point, even if her martial artist side had suddenly begun to rear its head and demand she grow stronger. To know that she was essentially leaving ahead of being kicked out and knowing she wouldn’t be allowed back was a very different thing.

Mai and Shampoo listened attentively, and when Chun-Li was finished venting at them, giving more away than she really had wanted to, for a bit, Mai looked over at Shampoo. It took a while for Shampoo to realize what Mai was implying with that look and the little hand gesture as if encompassing Shampoo from head to toe but eventually she understood.

Reluctantly, Shampoo turned back to look at Chun-Li, who had gone back to munching on her donuts as if they had personally offended her, shaking her head slightly. “If you want to stay in China, there are ways you can find to become stronger. My own clan, the Joketsuzoku, they would welcome you. My grandmother is… she might not have the raw power of someone like Yamazaki, but she has mountains more of skill, and the clan is always willing to offer a certain amount of training to an outsider woman. You might be forced to pay in terms of knowledge, or maybe acquiring technology for the village, but that’s a small price to pay for such training.”

Even if, as an outsider you won’t be offered the really advanced techniques. I’m kind of concerned about Great Grandmother’s reaction to my sharing what I have with Ranma and Mai, frankly, but I wasn’t about to try to hide it, Shampoo thought.

“That’s… That’s nice Shampoo. I, I mean that. But for me, getting stronger can’t, it just can’t be the be-all and end-all as it is for you, as much as part of me, a big part wishes it could be,” Chun-Li said. “I also want to fight against criminality, against corruption and, well, simple evil like the slave trade we cracked open with your help. But if I stay here in China, Work with Major Heidern, well, there’s only so much I’ll be allowed to do in that area.”

Both Mai and Shampoo nodded, although Shampoo did so with a scowl. As a Joketsuzoku, she was very much not part of the Chinese Communist Party. That didn’t mean that she liked hearing how her country was controlled by such a corrupt system. Shampoo was proud of her Chinese heritage and that struck at the core of her pride in her nation.

“You could always take justice into your own hands,” Shampoo stated, her jaw clenching. “Trust me, I was tempted to go on a one-woman rampage when I saw some of the cultural artifacts the Mad Dragon was going to sell off to foreigners. Sometimes you have to understand that what is right and what is lawful won’t match.”

“I, I can’t do that!” Chun-Li protested. “I’m a policewoman, Shampoo, not a, well, a wandering martial artist like you. I have to work with the law.”

“Even if the law is being used to keep you from putting a criminal behind bars?” Shampoo taunted.

“Ahem, before you two get all heated, what was the other offer you were thinking of?” Mai interjected. Unseen by Chun-Li, she pinched her girlfriend, sending her a look. There was a time and place for taunting one’s rival and now wasn’t one of them.

“Ah, that one’s from my father. Interpol wants to recruit me like it did him, and normally I’d be all for it, but, well… being forced out isn’t really making me happy about it. kind of downplays the whole martial arts thing. My dad was my first master, but I know I’ve surpassed him in skill by a wide margin simply because he didn’t keep training once he joined them, they prefer guns, wiretapping and high tech stuff,” Chun-Li continued. “So right now, neither choice I’m being forced to make right now seem good to me.”

And, okay, maybe I want to find a partner too, Chun-Li thought, coming to the realization as she looked across the table at the two other women. Seeing Ranma and Shampoo as she had since the moment they’d met, and the friendship between Mai and Shampoo, while Ranma was in the hospital, had brought to mind sharply how, well, alone Chun-Li was, something that she hadn’t consciously considered until right now: how alone she had been since joining the police force. She wasn’t really willing to date anyone else on the police force and just could not connect well with anyone who didn’t understand the trials and tribulations they went through on a day-to-day basis enough to create a long lasting relationship.

The last one she’d had was with a bookstore owner and had only lasted a month. The time before that, a fitness instructor. The bookstore owner tried, but he just wasn’t able to understand the world she lived in, whereas the fitness instructor eventually decided he didn’t like having a girlfriend who was stronger than him. Which had been hilarious at the time, coupled with the fact the bookstore owner had been a better lover.

There weren’t even any other young martial artists around, none that she had met before meeting these two and Ranma anyway, not on her level. And there is no way I am dating a movie star like Fei Long even now that I know his Art is for real. He’d be way too high maintenance! Ryu is a possibility, I’ll admit. He is… kind of right up my alley I’m honest, but he doesn’t seem all that interested in anything but the Art either. Ken could be good for a tumble, but I get the impression that we don’t have enough in common to build anything long-term. And that’s what I want, not something short term, doomed to end.

Surprisingly, Chun-Li found herself admitting some of that aloud, and Mai chuckled a little shaking her head. “Companionship can come in its many forms. It doesn’t always have to be boyfriend or girlfriend, although, for my mind, that’s the best kind.” At that, Shampoo put her arm around the other girl again, and Mai did the same, loving that Shampoo was so tactile with her affections.

Looking across at Chun-Li, she continued. “However, if you’re finding yourself torn between your martial arts aside and your desire for justice you should know that America has a lot more martial artists than you might think. For one thing, the place is huge. Not as big as all of China, sure, but trust me, there’s a lot more to the US than you might know just by watching TV and the news. Beyond Ken, there’s Andy and Terry Bogard.”

Mai briefly explained about the two Bogards and her relationship with them, their basic skill level and what they were up to. “I don’t think either of them are the dateable sort, and trust me, I am speaking from experience when it comes to Andy. He wanted a demure housewife kind of girlfriend.”

The Japanese girl snickered at Chun-Li’s look of utter contempt at that before shaking her head. “But they are both extremely strong martial artists. In fact, I would say that Terry at the very least is stronger than myself and Shampoo. I think he’s also a little bit stronger than Ranma, although they tied in their first and only actual fight. If you run into them and can get either of them to take you seriously, which isn’t going to be in easy, then they might be able to help you get stronger. I also know of several acquaintances through Jubei in America. Unlike the Bogard brothers, I don’t know how much help they would be in terms of using your ki, but they could surely help you with your strength, speed and so forth.”

“There’s other martial artists there too. Yokozuna Honda talked to Ranma and I about a Native American of his acquaintance who he respected, a break dancer from… Brazil I think it was and others. You just need to know where to start looking,” Shampoo agreed. “If staying in China comes with too many issues in the long-term, you can get what you want elsewhere.”

Chun-Li frowned. “Okay… so I didn’t realize that. I’ll… take those names Mai, thanks. Like I said, my desire for justice is always been a bit louder in my head than my desire to become a stronger martial artist, but if I can do both, that suits me down to the ground,” Chun-Li smiled in thanks at the other young woman, then shook herself, picking up her folders and putting them under her armpit.

“Well, since you both ordered drinks, let’s get them to go. I need to find a trashcan I can burn these folders in,” Chun-Li said cheerily. Oddly, knowing that Interpol was the right choice for both her most prominent desires made the idea that she wouldn’t be allowed to come back to Hong Kong once she left far easier to swallow. Well, that, and knowing that I can reach out to other martial artists if this new criminal empire really is involved as it seems in that world. I know that Interpol’s analysts think it’s just a sideshow, but I don’t think so. “And then, you said you wanted my help to shop for some stuff for your new boat?”

Over the next few hours, Chun-Li helped Shampoo and Mai around the city, enjoying having two other women that she could speak with about martial arts and other stuff like that, not ever having had a close female friend that she could speak about that kind of thing with. They made for an interesting scene: three incredibly attractive women talking about the proper ways to launch a kick or punch while airborne or coming out of a rolling tackle while purchasing blankets, mattresses and other sort of things. The trio also found a few items to add to the kitchen, some spices and other cooking supplies that Mai and Shampoo hadn’t gotten the day before and wanted and some more supplies for the bathroom and ship in general.

Each purchase was sent to the ship directly, as neither Mai nor Shampoo had the ki space necessary to carry it all. And unlike Mousse, Shampoo’s childhood friend turned myopic stalker, neither girl had trained with their ki spaces to the point where the entryway would enlarge beyond the size of a few feet. Yet, say what you would about Hong Kong, there were always runners around willing to drop off purchases and things.

The biggest of the items the pair bought, as well as the heaviest was a tarp to go over the back of the ship, which could be tied down in place to cover the open area there in case of bad weather. Conversely, they also bought a few solar powered items as some free weights. They weren’t the best, and certainly weren’t up to their normal standards, but they would help a little bit when it came to exercising aboard the ship. Using them in the water would also make for good training, in Mai’s opinion.

Exercising on the ship was something that all three lovers knew they would need to work on, since the boat wasn’t nearly large enough to allow for full-on spars. They would need to think of alternatives or lose some of their edge on a daily basis. Swimming would be a major way to exercise.

In the late afternoon, the trio of ladies met up with Ranma, Ryu and Ken back at the docks. As they arrived, Ranma was being poked in the chest by Ryu as he spoke in Japanese. “…Fully expect to get a spar in with you the next time we meet! I wish we had time to spar this morning, but the master kept us hopping. Then, when we were free, you were busy here. That’s not going to save you the next time.”

“Save who, exactly? You’re sounding a little cocky there, Ryu. Maybe you should spend some time away from Ken before you pick up any more of his bad habits,” Ranma quipped, sending a zinger at both young men, with Ken protesting mildly, while Ryu looked as if he was horrified by the very idea.

He responded violently, flashing out a punch towards Ranma’s face, which was deflected. The two of them exchanged a few more punches before the three ladies could get within conversational distance, but stopped before it became too serious, both of them laughing.

Shampoo and Mai both smiled as Ranma’s eyes lit up as he saw them, his smile going from ‘martial arts mad’ type smile, to a far more tender one when he looked at his two lovers, switching to Putonghua as he addressed them. “Hey girls. The stuff you send all loaded. You plop rest of what you bought inside. I’ve been smacking up other fishermen, sailors and so forth for advice, and even reading the drivers book for this thing.”

Since I’ve never even driven a motorcycle, I needed to, Ranma thought wryly. Mai might be comfortable captaining our little ship, but Shampoo and I should be able to spell her at the controls at least. But we might need to think about getting our hands on some fake boater IDs or actually try to earn some at some point.

“I’m shocked you’re willing to put in so much effort on something that isn’t the Art, Airen. And remind me to keep working with you on your grammar and vocabulary. You’re getting better, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.” Shampoo gently teased in the same language. “We’re still going to be spending a few weeks, maybe more, in China, after all.”

Beside her, Mai just smiled happily at Ranma for putting a desire to help Mai and be useful on the ship ahead of sparring with Ryu. She knew that would not have been easy, and that just meant it mattered more to her.

Standing next to Ryu, Ken looked between Shampoo, Mai, and Ranma speculatively. Something’s changed between them. Now… could it be? Looking at Mai specifically as she moved to drop off some of the bags that she was holding onto the back of the boat, he caught her eyes and gestured with a head tilt towards the two lovers before waggling his eyebrows at her.

Mai surprised herself by actually blushing a bit, and Ken smirked. Oh it is, hell that’s juicy, Ken thought, patting himself on the back for having helped Ranma as much as he had to make last night romantic. I didn’t realize I was doing it so he could make two ladies happy, but a job well done regardless.

Somehow, the conversation between Shampoo Ranma and Ryu had shifted back to martial arts, with Chun-Li joining in by the time that Ken turned his attention away from Mai. Reaching across, he patted Ranma on the shoulder companionably, gaining the younger man’s attention and smirking wider at him. “You do know you are living the dream, right man?”

Ranma blinked. “What, owning a ship? Considering how rich you are, your family probably owns one already.”

“We do, and you know that wasn’t what I was talking about.” Ken waited, staring deadpan at Ranma, while Chun-Li and Ryu looked on quizzically, but Ranma just stared back, confused, and Ken sighed. “Right, subtle cues aren’t your thing, are they? Well, just remember you are going to make a lot of people jealous if you three are open about the recent change in your relationship.”

At that, Chun-Li understood what Ken was talking about, and nodded her head sagely. “Shampoo talked about some of the rivals you had back where you were living before you and she got together, I wouldn’t be surprised if you gathered a lot of other rivals once they learned about your… current domestic lifestyle.”

While Ranma wasn’t dense enough to not understand what the two of them were talking about at that point, Ryu still looked a little confused. That went away though, as Shampoo smiled, moved over towards the side of the wharf and leapt aboard the ship, smacking Mai on the rear as she passed by.

The laugh rather than the shriek the solicited and the wink Mai sent Ranma’s way was enough for Ryu to understand and he began to blush. “Oh, oh! Wow, I… Are you sure that kind of thing won’t take away from your pursuit of the Art?” he stammered, trying hard not to let his mind go there.

He failed. Despite the immense self-control and dedication Ryu had for the Art, he was still a young man. Good grief… that’s, um, wow.

“Considering that both of my lady friends are just as martial arts mad as me, I don’t see how,” Ranma answered with a shrug.

“Oh, um, I suppose. I just well I never understood the interest in that kind of thing,” Ryu admitted, lying to everyone there, including himself. “I just haven’t met the right sort I guess.”

That, at least, was true. None of the women he’d interacted with before coming to Hong Kong had been martial artists at all, let alone ones near his own level.

Ken threw an arm around Ryu’s shoulders. “Oh, and what with the right sort be for you, my brother from another mother?”

“Who knows? Someone interested in the Art at least, and someone good enough at it that… what did you call it at one point, when we were reading comic books together and were younger? The Lois Lane syndrome? Yeah no, if I have to rush off to protect or rescue my girlfriend every moment, that doesn’t really appeal,” Ryu stated, getting his mental feet under him again.

Chun-Li snickered at that, and Ranma smiled, gesturing with the thumb over to his shoulder to the two girls already on the boat. “Well, that wouldn’t have been my kind of idea of a fun time either, which makes me all the happy for how strong Shampoo and Mai are. But, considering that we wanted to leave with the tide, as the locals put it, I think it’s about time we wrap this up.”

He shook hands with Ryu and Ken, then Chun-Li, with Ryu and Ranma both promising again that they would fight the next time they had both time and a place to do it that wasn’t too fragile. Mai and Shampoo both shouted farewells as well, before Shampoo went below, putting the things they’d bought away for the moment. Setting up the interior of the ship the way they wanted it to be would be something they could do while at sea, since they had already taken down the modular wall between two of the cabins, which would have been harder to store on the ship.

Meanwhile, Mai headed up to the small bridge. There, the statuesque woman began going through the safety procedures that she’d been taught the day before when they first purchased the boat, powering up the ship’s engines.

“You know, it only just occurred to me to ask, do any of you actually have a boating license?” Chun-Li asked, staring first towards Mai, then at Ranma.

“Nope. Mai and Shampoo spent a bit of time sailing the boat around the day before when they were looking to buy it, but that’s about it. But that is going to be part of the fun.” He smirked then, cracking his knuckles a little, as he looked down at her wounded leg. “I don’t think any attempt ta arrest us’d go all that well for you right now, though so ya better not try.”

“I don’t know, I could be convinced to help,” Ryu joked, smirking a little back at Ranma. “That way we’d have our spar right now.”

“Hey! It was just a question. And I’m afraid you three are going to find it a lot more difficult than you might think. Still, I’ll bid you good luck and farewell for now. Hopefully, the next time we meet won’t be because you’re getting in the way of another police operation.” Chun-Li snorted, shaking her head. “Although knowing the three of you, I can’t help but think that you’re going to be getting into some kind of sticky situation somewhere.”

“Yeah, with my kind of luck, that’s not exactly a prediction. More like a forecast,” Ranma said, before sending the policewoman and his two fellow martial artists another nod and then leaping up over onto the ship. Untying the ship from the docks, he pulled in the rope, before shouting towards Mai that they were good to go.

Slowly, the ship moved out of its assigned docking area around a few other ships before Mai aligned the nose of the ship towards open water. At that point, she began to slowly increase the speed, still a little leery at the controls of the craft.

Ranma joined her, and, after a moment’s hesitation, put his arms around her. She hummed in approval, a sound he could barely hear over the noise of the engine. “So, how fast can this thing go? And is it always this noisy?”

“Ehh, it’s more about how fast I want to go than that,” Mai said with a laugh. “As for the noise, yep. It’s less noisy inside, but up here, this is nothing. It’ll be noisier when we really start to go faster and are out on the water.”

Ranma scowled at that, just as Mai was forced to dodge around another vessel. It barreled past them, it’s sides lined with what looked like a dozen young men and women, laughing and partying it up despite it only being midafternoon, so close that the large wave they left behind splashed up and onto their ship. “GAH, you assholes!” she shrieked, having gotten soaked by the wave. Funny thing, I could have sworn the wave almost shifted trajectory for a second there.

Behind her, Ranma sighed, shaking her red hair out of her face. “Well, that’s just great. This better not be some kind of omen.”

Having seen all this from the wharf, Ken snickered. “Damn, rich young idiots, they’re the same all the world over, aren’t they?”

“Look in a freaking mirror before you say that.” Ryu snorted, smacking his friend on the shoulder. “I could see you becoming that sort all too easily if you didn’t decide to pursue the Art. And speaking of the Art, let’s get back to Master Oro. I want our ki attacks to be second nature by the end of the week.”

Nodding at that, Ken turned away from the departing trio, walking with his best friend down the wharf toward the rest of the city. Chun-Li joined them a second later, making good time despite her crutches. The two younger men looked back over at Chun-Li, with Ken quirking an eyebrow. “So, how exactly were you injured again? Shampoo grumbled something about that, but didn’t go into any detail, just how she was annoyed the two of you wouldn’t have a chance to have a spar.”

“I doubt the word she used was spar, but as for my injuries, a claw-using assassin attacked me in my home. Luckily, Shampoo and Mai were visiting me at the time, and the man either didn’t realize it, or didn’t know how tough the two of them were. And no, I don’t have a description of the man’s face, or anything that could be used to identify him, since he wore a white mask.”

Chun-Li snorted. “Well, unless I demand that every man with blond hair and the city go around shirtless, and I’m afraid my authority doesn’t stretch that far.”

Ryu and Ken both slowed down a bit to let Chun-Li keep up with them, which she acknowledged with a smile before she asked, “What’s next for you two?”

“We’re going to be staying in the city for a few weeks, maybe even a full month to learn from Master Oro,” Ryu answered. “He’s got a lot to teach us in terms of energy manipulation and meditation. Yourself? We could ask him if he’s willing to take on a third student.”

“While that might be nice, I’ll actually probably be leaving around the same time as you, then.” Chun-Li scowled, the bitterness of being told in no uncertain terms to leave or be sidelined surfacing again, before she could stop them. “The investigations into the Triad and the underground fight circuit are going to be coming to a close at around that point, whether I want them to or not.”

“Ouch. More not than want there, I think,” Ken grimaced. “Let me guess, politics?”

“You got it. Even a few of the foreigners are going to get away with having been there with a slap on the wrist, damn it.” Chun-Li kept on scowling before a thought occurred to her. She paused in place, resting on her one good leg for a moment with most of her weight on her crutches, staring thoughtfully at Ryu and Ken as a few moments of the conversation she’d had with Shampoo and Mai went through her head. Specifically the part where Shampoo had tried to convince her that justice might not always follow the law. Am I really considering this?

Yes, Chun-Li concluded after only a few seconds of thought. Yes I am.

“Come to think of it, if you’re going to be here for a month anyway, could I interest you in… well, becoming the equivalent of a martial artist-inspired Robin Hood? There are a group of six men specifically who are going to get off scot free despite being up to their eyeballs in corruption, and I can’t say that I like it. My hands are tied, and my face is far too well-known to get away with anything. But I do know of several ways someone with the proper skill set could make their lives miserable...”

Men did one another, and Ryu shrugged, before Ken smirked. Ryu then nodded, and both men turned back to Chun-Li. “Tell us more.”

OOOOOOO

Genma had finally been able to cross from the Korean peninsula into China, a journey that had taken him far too long considering he had been forced to go over some of the same terrain as before. That was always a bad idea for someone like him. A wandering panda always drew some attention, and Genma’s own activities, dine and dashing, gangster mugging and so forth, did much the same among the populace. Worse, it did so among a portion of the population that had a penchant for violence and access to weapons. Even here in South Korea that was the case and he’d had a few fraught moments before he hit the shoreline.

Crossing into China was easy. Moving forward from there, was way harder than it should have been. Why the locals in Dalian had overreacted, Genma still didn’t know, but a large portion of the local infantry was sent into the streets of Dalian. For a mere dine and dash! What is the world coming to?!

Now, though, Genma had finally been able to get away from his pursuers long enough, and as he settled down into the depressurized cargo area of a commercial plane, Genma shook his head, grateful for the fur of his cursed form. Ugh, I hate having to rely on these flying coffins, but given how I’m under a time limit to catch up with the brat, I have to take every advantage I can. But what is up with that response?! Armed men with machine guns, urban camouflage, night vision goggles to hunt down a dine-and-dasher?! I know the boy and I didn’t even enter Dalian proper before this, so there’s no way they could have recognized me.

Near the front of the cargo area, the workers Genma had snuck by continued to work loading up the plane. Thankfully, it looked as if Genma’s dip into the sewers and then through a public bath had thrown off his pursuers. They seemed to know about my panda form too. My attempt to throw them off by hopping into the panda cage at the zoo nearly got me caught, blast it! What is… could this have something to do with what Rose and I did in South Korea?

That thought bothered Genma a lot, but after a few minutes, he shrugged. It wasn’t like whatever was going on there would be able to keep chasing him if he put more distance between South Korea and himself, right? Regardless, I need a nap.

Nine hours later, the plane landed in someplace called, as far as Genma could tell from what he overheard, Xiamen Gaoqi. After a hasty change back to his normal body, Genma escaped the environs around the airport with some difficulty, going to ground quickly afterward. Now, all I need to do is find a ship bound for Hainan… you know, I really should try to start learning how to read Chinese… Genma pondered for a moment how to go about doing that, before his attention was grabbed by a nearby food stall. But first, more important things.

Perhaps if he had taken a day to at least read a map and memorize some of the names for the ports on Hainan, Genma’s next little misadventure might not have happened. Perhaps he should have kept an ear out as he boarded a ship he thought was going there. If he had, he might have known that the ship had in fact just come from Hainan, rather than was going there. That the ship was now heading to Beihai, instead. On a fishing voyage that would take it out into sea for weeks. Genma would not be meeting his son in China proper.

OOOOOOO

The sea was a very vast place, even one that was as heavily used as the areas around Hong Kong. It was almost impossible for ship as small and maneuverable as the one they had to actually run into something unless he did on purpose. This was a very good thing, because, as Chun-Li had thought, actually piloting a ship was a very different thing out on the open ocean than in the calm waters of the port area. It took Mai almost the entire first day out to get used to it.

Unfortunately, Shampoo and Ranma both discovered that being on a small ship like this while out on the ocean was a vastly different thing than either swimming themselves, in Ranma’s case, or being on a much larger vessel in Shampoo’s. Getting their sea legs under them was easy. Getting their sea stomachs on the other hand, not so much. Both of them threw up at least once throughout the day, although thankfully, by the time the sun began to set, Ranma’s stomach had at least gotten used to it.

In contrast, Shampoo was still looking a little queasy and waved off any idea of even entering the sitting room, let alone having a meal. Luckily, Ranma was able to whip something up for herself and for Mai that could be eaten up on the bridge without the smell of it wafting to Shampoo where she lay out nearby.

Having been splashed earlier, Ranma hadn’t bothered to transform back. Out here on the open water, it just felt like she would be tempting fate when it wasn’t really necessary.

“If I wasn’t already feeling a little better than I was when this first hit, I would be cursing you right now, Mai!” Shampoo growled from where she lay out on the padded bench behind her in the bridge. It was curved to one side of the bridge next to where the controls and the ‘captains’ chair sat.

“Find something to take your mind off it,” Mai mumbled between bites of the skewer that Ranma had made, giving the redhead a wink and a shoulder nudge with that arm even as she kept her other hand locked onto the wheel. “The waves seem to be evening out, and between that and the medicine you took, you should be good to go in a few hours more.”

“Are we going to keep going throughout the night, or drop anchor?” Ranma asked, eating her own skewer quickly before using a wet wipe on his hand. Leaving Mai for a second, moved over to gently stroke Shampoo’s forehead and temples, which had her closing her eyes for a second before opening them. Having her eyes closed did not help at all.

“We’re going to be dropping anchor soon, actually. My night vision is pretty darn good, but I’m not comfortable driving this thing to want to chance that at night,” Mai admitted. “The sun’s almost gone now, and when it’s gone, I’ll power down and we can drop anchor.”

“Do you want me to have a turn?”

Mai looked at Ranma quizzically, and she shrugged, gesturing down to the controls. “I read the manual, and since my stomach settled down, I’ve been watching you do it, and you know how good a learner I am for anything physical like that.”

“While I do know that, every fiber of my being is saying that is a bad idea,” Mai answered bluntly. “We can try tomorrow morning if you want and if it’s a calm day.”

Ranma pouted a little at that, then shrugged her shoulders. Moments later, she sat between her and Shampoo on the deck. One hand took Shampoo’s while the other held a clean bucket, just in case. “Okay, well, let’s talk the Art, and what we can do with it aboard ship. Beyond swimming, anyway. Heh. I might’ve not been able to convince you two to swim to China with me, but I wager by the time we’re in India, we’ll have swum just as much.”

“Yeah, but the difference will be we’ll have taken time to get out and not prune as much between spurts. And Mai and I had time to buy new swimsuits for both in the actual water and for out of it, for both us and you,” Shampoo snickered, before holding her stomach with both hands, groaning a bit. “UGH. Stupid stomach, let me think about Airen in sexy speedo!”

While Ranma blushed, Mai giggled. “Yeah, that was fun. The look that man gave us when we bought the Speedo was priceless. I swear he muttered something about how my boyfriend must be stuffing socks all the time. More fool him if he really thought that.”

Blinking, Ranma looked up at Mai. “What does stuffing sock have to do with a speedo?”

That caused even Shampoo to giggle, although it broke off quickly into another groan. Mai on the other hand simply shrugged, turning slightly to look down at Ranma with a salacious smirk. “Let’s just say that some boys like to advertise far more than what they’re actually packing. A problem that you’ll never have to deal with.”

Ranma still didn’t get it, but Shampoo took pity on him, explaining, “It’s the male equivalent of stuffing our bras for girls, Ranma.” She then held her stomach again. “Right, take my mind off this, martial arts. You have ideas, don’t you, lay them out for us?”

Grinning and deciding to ignore the odd sock thing, Ranma nodded firmly. She began to talk and was still talking later that night as Mai slowly powered down the engine. She even kept talking as she went to the back of the boat and dropped the anchor.

With Shampoo still looking green and the breeze helping her as well as the lack of speed, Mai and Shampoo bunked down there with her on the bridge for the first night, curling up underneath a heavy blanket, leaning back against the padded bench. They only transferred down into the ship once Shampoo’s stomach was fully back to normal.

Beyond their stomachs, getting used to life on the ocean took them about a day, with getting used to living in the actual boat itself taking some time. Living in the ship, the enclosed space and the noise of the ocean at night was also something to get used to, as well as the noise from the seagulls, who quickly proved to be noisy little bastards, as Ranma put it. Sharing a single bedroom permanently, especially one that was smaller than the double-bed hotel room, was a little annoying. The closeness of the hallway and the hatches, the constant need for Mai and Ranma to duck their heads, and so forth also bothered them.

The only area where this wasn’t the case, was in the kitchen, as both girls were more than used to cooking with limited resources. A microwave, electrical stove and cooktop were a luxury for Shampoo, and Mai had rapidly gotten used to cooking with far less. They still lacked in terms of some specialized plates, forks and so forth, but it was still nice.

Still that first full day at sea was, despite the seasickness, quite a fun time. All three of them enjoyed being around one another now that Shampoo and Ranma could be open about their own affections, and Mai had joined in. Little touches, caresses and looks just made everything much nicer, with the two girls in particular just loving the idea of being able to be so affectionate without other people around. Not an hour went by without one of them kissing Ranma or one another.

Again, the small kitchenette provided a lot of moments for the two girls to be touchy-feely with one another, while Ranma watched, something both enjoyed. Within a day, Shampoo and Mai had both agreed that they would handle the entirety of the cooking, while Ranma would handle cleaning up and making sure the bathroom was kept spotless.

However, they were martial artists, and training was not just a way of life, it was a passion, a calling to all three of them. As soon as Shampoo regained control of her stomach, they began to run into issues on the boat. Footing was not an issue, but space was. Exercising inside the ship was tough, but doable to a certain degree. The two smaller cabins didn’t have enough space for a spar, especially after they set up one as a weight room. The other was big enough for katas, but that was enough for now, even if the weights were so much less than Shampoo, let alone Ranma, could handle.

The area at the back of the ship was the only area big enough for them to spar, and even there wasn’t enough space for Mai or Shampoo to use their weapons. Using rope weapons at anything but touching distance was practically impossible. Mai could barely get a few feet between herself and her opponent to throw one of her fans. Luckily, she was almost as at home in the air as Ranma, even if her style didn’t lend itself to aerial combat as much as his.

As for Shampoo…

“Aiyah!” Shampoo cried out as she tried to land on the protective railing to one side of the open area, only to slip off. Instead of slipping forward, she did so away from the deck and wound up almost smacking her head onto the railing before she finished her descent into the water alongside the speeding ship.

Ranma rushed to the railing, looking down at her, while Mai stopped the boat quickly. They had been experimenting with going at a slow speed while sparring. If they didn’t practice while traveling, they’d have to stop the boat for at least half the day at least. But even Ranma had trouble sparring at any speed, and weightlifting was almost as bad with the up and down motion of the ship. “You okay, Shampoo?”

“Aiyah, nothing’s hurt but my pride,” Shampoo said, before swimming around to the back of the boat and the metal ladder there. Tossing her chui ahead of her, she pulled herself out, and Ranma gulped, staring, as she leaned over, wringing her hair out. “Ugh, swimming with my chui is not exactly pleasant. Does anyone know what happens if you open a ki space in the water? I don’t have long sleeves on, but I could have stuffed them into my pockets.”

Ranma stared, not really listening. Indeed, it was all he could do to not drool, while behind her up on the bridge, Mai licked her lips. Shampoo had opted for a pair of her normal exercise pants, but white rather than light lavender. She had also opted for a t-shirt and breast bands as usual, preferring them to a bra while she was moving around rather than a sports bra, claiming the sports bras chafed. However, just like the rest of her, both Shampoo’s breast band and shirt were soaked. It clung to her for a moment, standing there in in her equally soaked pants, which clung to her legs, from her waist down.

Looking up when she received no reply, Shampoo saw both her lovers staring back at her looking as if she’d just brained them with her chui. It took her a second to realize what was going on, then she smirked, before she casually stripped off her shirt, tossing it to one side. This set her chest to bouncing despite her breast band, and Ranma’s eyes widened completely unable to look away.

Still smirking, Shampoo moved forward, pulling Ranma into a kiss with her hands on his shirt. As Ranma’s eyes closed and he began to get into it, Shampoo’s hands, gripped his shirt harder. Before Ranma could realize what was happening, he found himself in the air, and then slammed down into the deck. The blow to his back didn’t bother Ranma much, but the kiss and the impact had him so off balance, Shampoo was able to sit on him one hand rising from his shirt to tap at his forehead. “I win!”

“Heh, um, I ain’t complaining, right now,” Ranma admitted, staring up at her, his hands, which had been around her wrists, going to the seat of Shampoo’s drenched pants. He began to knead her rear, then moved his hands up to her bare back. “Seriously not complaining,” he repeated, while Shampoo bit her lip, beginning to slowly hump her Airen.

Needless to say, training for the day was put on hold for a bit. However, from this mishap came the decision to only exercise in swimsuits. Even Ranma didn’t get out of it, spending most of the time on the deck in his girl form. This in turn became a good thing, in a way. Despite the time that he and Shampoo had been dating, they’d never gone beyond kissing or fondling in female form. Within a few days of leaving Hong Kong, both Mai and Shampoo had gone a decent bit further than that with the buxom redhead.

To Ranma, though, the romance aspect of his female form wasn’t quite as interesting as discovering that, male or female, his ki moved the same. This he learned from Mai on the third day out from Hong Kong. Since the incident with Shampoo, despite Ranma protesting that it made for better training, the ship would stop for at least three hours at a time, morning, afternoon and evening, separated by at least two hours going at full speed. During that time, one of them at least would be down using the weight room or the other, despite the waves and the motion of the ship. Similarly, when the ship was stopped and two of them sparring the odd one out would be swimming with the weights, tied to the back of the ship by a rope around their middle.

This proved to be pretty good exercise for the two girls, but not enough for Ranma, who laughed as he saw the girls, first Mai and now Shampoo struggling with the weights in the water. “I told you. I told you that swimming to China would have helped you both gain muscles and endurance, but no, it wasn’t civilized enough for you two.”

“Ranma, better shut up right now,” Shampoo growled, her words coming out almost as bad as Ranma’s Putonghua for a moment in her annoyance and the need to keep swimming with the weights in her hand and strapped around her legs. Performing kata like this is going to be a bitch. Ugh, I hate it, but Ranma’s idea of us using a safety rope might have been a good idea. “Or, or…”

“Or what?” Ranma smirked as he and Mai moved to face one another in the open area at the back of the ship.

“Or no nookie for you,” Mai quipped, causing Ranma to blanch and even Shampoo’s eyes to widen where she was currently treading water. “What, that’s the typical threat for when a boyfriend or husband makes a mistake or taunts his wife/girlfriend on something too much.” She charged forward, lashing out with a series of punches and knee jabs, getting in close and hoping to force Ranma back into the bulkhead beneath the bridge.

“Yeah, but who does that hurt, the husband or the wife?” Shampoo grumbled, going back to her exercises in the water. She didn’t see that her question had Mai laughing so much it let Ranma recover and shift the momentum of their spar.

At night, at Mai’s behest, the group meditated. While Shampoo had been busy with her acting career and Ranma in the hospital, Mai had not been idle. She had instead convinced Oro to teach her two techniques. First was building on meditation techniques they had already begun to use, entering a mindset where they could do something that Oro had called ‘qi’ cycling. Basically, this meant moving the energy in your body in a constant loop for hours on end. Doing so created more energy, and would thus allow the trio to enlarge their reserves. It was something that Ryu and Ken would be learning to go with how to shape their ki. “I’ve tried it once already, and while I’m not certain it works, I think it’s worth a try.”

The other technique was a form of ki sight, the ability to look at someone and see how their ki flowed. “I can’t do it while I’m also concentrating on fighting someone, it just takes too much concentration at the moment but maybe eventually I’ll be able to.”

In front of her, their eyes closed, their breathing coming out slow and even as they meditated. Shampoo sat cross-legged on the deck, while Ranma balanced on his feet, moving through a kata slowly, the movement allowing him to concentrate on the mental side of things in a way that just sitting still would not have allowed.

After a few moments, they had begun to move around their ki within their bodies, just cycling it around through the various acupuncture, or as Oro had labeled them, chakra points, in a specific manner. Meanwhile, Mai watched, practicing her own technique. After a moment though, she frowned. “Ranma, could you go and change for a second, then come back?”

Blinking Ranma frowned, then shrugged. After another half hour upon his return, Mai spoke up again. “Okay, that’s kind of weird. Your energy flows the same regardless of your body.”

Ranma again came out of his meditation, this time followed by Shampoo, who blinked. “Wait, what?”

Shrugging, Mai explained, trying, and hilariously failing, to make her voice sound like Oro’s. “Not only are men and women called to different aspects of qi usage, the Yin and Yang, but the energy of your body moves through that realm in a different manner if you are woman or man.”

“Huh.  Are his meridians, er, his acupuncture points different? The actual flow points, I mean, not just how his ki moves in our Airen’s body,” Shampoo asked, before she was suddenly holding a few needles. Ranma flinched away from her at the suddenness, and Shampoo looked down at them. “Still can’t use this style in combat, drat it. But normally, acupuncture points vary from gender to gender and even in the build of the individual.”

“UM…” Mai had to frown a bit at that question, having only been watching the flows, not taking any interest in the various chakra points. “Um… it looks like it…” Mai had to explain more about what she was seeing to Shampoo, who was the only one who had any knowledge about Acupuncture, shiatsu and so forth. As she did, Mai hummed, while Shampoo and Ranma slowly became aware of the fact her eyes were softly glowing a light amber color.

How exactly did I miss that before? Ranma thought, staring back at Mai. “Er, my ki network’s not the only interesting thing to look at the moment, Mai. Are you aware that your eyes glow when you’re using that technique? I mean, it looks kind of hot in a otherworldly kind of way but…”

Mai flushed a bit, cutting off the technique. Over the past few days, Shampoo and Ranma had realized that Mai didn’t have much defense against compliments aimed at things like her eyes or hair. She had apparently heard a lot of compliments about her breasts, waist, hips and so forth, but not so much about her voice or eyes. “UM, Shampoo, is, is what I said right?”

“Hmm… well, Ranma I think might not be as feminine as a normal girl,” Shampoo teased.  “From what you’re saying it sounds as if the chakra points for most things are the same in either point, but there’s some differences in how much energy is being created by a few of them. I… have no idea what that could mean, other than the obvious in that you’ll probably never be able to use any purely yin techniques, at least none that deal with projecting power away from your body.  Well, that, and like I said, some lack of femininity, in terms of…” Shampoo flushed a bit, gesturing down at her breasts. “er, how these or other things work for their, um, real purpose?”

That had both Ranma and Mai blinking, and Shampoo groaned. “Creating milk, and why you’d need to, I mean. UGH.”

That caused both her listeners to blanch, and for a moment, they were all looking away from one another.  Given the fact the girls had both had shots to prevent that kind of thing, it wasn’t something they’d had to think about before this.  After a moment, though, Ranma blinked. “Wait, would that, er, the fact I’m not entirely like a girl, be why some medicines don’t work as well on me when I’m in this form?”

Shampoo nodded, and relieved, Ranma continued with the change of topic. “Huh, so that’s why pills and stuff to help with the pain of that time of the month never worked as well on me as ya all said they should?”

“Probably, yeah.  And I will thank Amaterasu again that you’re a moody, emotional girl at that time of the month rather than a violent one,” Mai answered, before her lips quirked. “Still, that’s kind of fascinating. I wonder if it would be the same if you had the body of an animal or what-have you? Would your ki flows adapt fully or only partially?”  She became serious then. “But Ranma, I think this means you’ll need more training in the Yin techniques to protect your mind. That kind of assault kind of terrifies me, if I’m honest. And I don’t want you to have that kind of weakness.”

“Hmm… as for your technique Mai, I think it’s a little too obvious to use even if you could concentrate on it and fighting at the same time,” Shampoo said, making her needles disappear before frowning, staring down at where they had been. Hmm… Shadow Needles? Like a shotgun? Hide the reel needles in a group of a dozen fake ones? But how dangerous is a needle if you don’t get it somewhere vital.

Shampoo didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until Ranma answered her. “Not very, unless you can throw them really fast, Shampoo, unless you can add something like Mai’s explosion or fire yin energy to them?”

“OOOOH…. I like that idea. Hmm… not certain how feasible it is, though,” Shampoo mused, before seeing Ranma’s blank look and hastily explaining the last word in Japanese.

Ranma nodded, then grinned and pulled Mai into a hug, kissing her on the lips. “Well, even if you can’t use that technique in a fight, I bet it will help Shampoo and me polish our ki cycling skills and help me with my Blue Burst style. It would help you too, right, so why don’t we make teaching that technique to me and Shampoo a priority during meditation time?”

Mai smiled warmly and nodded, hugging Ranma back for a moment. FUCK me, but I love this! Traveling with Shampoo and Mai was already fun, with us all in a relationship it’s got even better. “Mmm snuggly. Sounds good to me.”

Ranma released her after a second as Shampoo hummed to gain their attention. They looked down at her, and Shampoo smirked. “Well, there’s that and um… there’s this too.” With her two lovers watching, Shampoo reached into her ki pockets. She pulled out two glass containers, each of them about the same size as her two fists pressed together.

Seeing those, Ranma frowned in some confusion, but Mai let loose a loud squeal before reaching down and lifting Shampoo into a hug. “Yes, I knew you couldn’t resist girl, I’m gonna make a ninja out of you yet!”

“Ugh, please no, I don’t wanna be a kunoichi,” Shampoo mock whined. “At least come up with a Chinese equivalent.”

“Okay, I’m gonna need you two to clue me in here.” Ranma was still frowning in confusion, even though he had to smile as Mai danced around the deck with the containers.

“Oh, right, we never told you about some of the things that we found, while searching around the Triad’s hideout, did we?” Mai sat down on the bench, with Shampoo next to her, the two girls leaning into one another as they looked down at the two items Shampoo was holding in her hands. “We eventually made our way up to this apartment area, Ryuji’s own living quarters. There, we found, well, the Mad Dragon was apparently collecting ancient Chinese antiquities and selling them off to someone in Thailand.”

“And Shampoo stole two of them before they could be taken as evidence,” Ranma guessed, smirking a little. He didn’t see any problem with that, provided that there was still more than enough evidence elsewhere to help the police’s investigation, and it sounded as if there had been. If they’ve got anything to do with the Art it’s better they be in our hands than any fussy old museum’s anyway. “And considering what you said earlier, I take it what you took was something to do with martial arts?”

Not knowing that in stealing two of the ancient historical artifacts for her own she had proven one of Chun-Li’s worst nightmares about ki space and its implications true, Shampoo nodded firmly. “Yes! One of these, well, there might be something about the Art in it, but I stole it mainly because it mentions my tribe on the title page along with a Han emperor. It might be a copy of the agreement between the first Han Dynasty emperor and my people, or just some random official document between them. The letters on the top of it are so obscure I can’t tell. But I decided it was important enough to take.”

She handed the other one over to Mai, who took the glass container reverently, staring into it in awe even though she couldn’t read the ancient Chinese. Even Ranma, who came over to look down at it, looked appropriately understanding. “I might not care much about Japanese history and everything, but I know your people’s history is important to you, Shampoo. In fact, if we ever head to Thailand like Ryu and Ken were going to, we can maybe look for the guy who was buying this stuff.”

“I’d like that,” Shampoo stated with a smile, while Mai just nodded. It wasn’t as if Thailand was out of their way or anything, after all, given how their overall plan was to head to India via the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Taking back the first glass-encased manuscript, Shampoo gestured to the second one as she made the first disappear into her ki space again. “This other one is something I almost missed, because the title isn’t all that descriptive. But considering who it was written about Lu Bu and has the words for weapon techniques on it…”

Even Ranma, who’d studied Japanese history and world history mainly knew that name. “Wait, he was supposedly an unbeatable warrior or something, right? Er… three Kingdoms era, or no, that’s the story, um, Eastern Han? Only, while he was undefeated in battle, Lu Bu wasn’t all that good a strategist, and kept on switching sides or something?”

“Or something,” Mai and Shampoo drawled as one, before looking at one another and bursting into giggles.

When she recovered, Shampoo didn’t bother trying to explain the real story of Lu Bu. That was both too convoluted and disputed. Heck, I know there’s a version of his tale in my clan that says he fell in love with a Joketsuzoku, a spy sent to infiltrate all the warring sides, and it was her leaving him that drove him to switching sides so often, following her around in an effort to ‘reclaim’ her love. So who is to say what the real man was like?

Besides, at the moment the man’s character didn’t matter, only his abilities: to which, that Lu Bu was faster, stronger and could hit harder than any other general or warrior of his generation. “There are numerous examples of him facing odds of thousands to one and prevailing, or facing three or more champions at a time and fighting them to a standstill or forcing them to retreat. It’s also known, throughout all the tales about him, that Lu Bu a near perfect symmetry with his horse that allowed him to fight in the saddle far, far better than any other man alive.”

“I remember reading about that. The horse, name was Red Hare, I think? Odd name for a horse, but yeah, he’s supposed to have been able to perform insane feats while in the saddle. Racing for days without rest, riding him up sheer cliff faces, that kind of thing,” Mai supplied.

Tapping the glass protecting the historical artifact, Shampoo smirked a bit. “That’s all interesting, but a few stories passed on in my tribe about the man, speak about how he could make his weapon seemingly heavier than it should possibly be. One moment Lu Bu would be moving Fangtian Huaji around like a feather, the next it would hit like a whole mountain had just collapsed on the person being struck. No matter the kind of hit, even ones that would have been impossible for anyone to put any real strength into.”

Ranma and Mai both blinked at that, and Shampoo went on. “If that is some kind of ki technique, to up the, the weight of a weapon via ki, and I can use it on my chui or Mai on her fans, our striking power is going to go up a lot!”

Wincing a bit, Mai reluctantly decided to bring Shampoo down to earth. “It would, but Shampoo, how do we get it out of that glass case without damaging it? Never mind the fact we’d need to translate it as there’s no way that even you could understand written Chinese that old.”

“Actually, I might be able to, so long as the writings legible,” Shampoo argued, before sheepishly tugging at her long hair for a moment. “The first problem, though, I’ll admit I only thought of after I’d already stolen them and it’s had me stumped since.”

“Getting the glass off is going to be easy enough. Mai could probably create ki blade or something. But those things do look a little too old to survive us trying to go through them. Sorry, Shampoo,” Ranma agreed with Mai, frowning as Shampoo pouted, causing him to hurry along, hoping to cheer her back up. “But, hey! Since I’ve been able to figure out how to both pull in and repel ki and the people using it, using ki to add more weight to your chui should be possible! Now that we’ve got the idea, ya can experiment!”

“While I love how much faith you have in me, Airen, we still need a starting place. And I am not going to let us open this journal just to have it crumble in our grip,” Shampoo stated firmly.

“Maybe, but I’m afraid to say, I don’t think any of us has the tools, mental or physical to really do anything with them,” Mai said. “We can start to research stuff like that when we’re on shore, but even then, it’ll be a slow process.”

“Agreed.” Unless we figure out a way to instantly transfer some of our ki into the paper? But if we messed it up even a little bit, the paper might just crumble or, or burst into flame or something. Paper’s flimsy as heck and parchment like that’s worse, right? The flimsiest stuff I’ve seen ki imbued into is cloth, like the bandana sword trick. This is something altogether different.

“I think we should build on the training you both were doing already back in your dojo, Mai,” Ranma said aloud, wanting to move the conversation along. “Adding elements to your fans, fists and kicks for you, right?” Mai nodded firmly, and Ranma looked at his first girlfriend. “Shampoo, I think you should keep working with mixing more shadow clone attacks in with your real ones. For my part, I need to get better at using my rope dart mixed in with my normal style.”

He sighed, looking around them at the ship and the vast expanse of open water around them, dotted in the distance by a few other ships. “Although, I don’t know exactly where I’ll practice that.”

“Practice pumping your ki into your rope dart and enlarging it. Hurl it out of the back of the boat, get used to working with it at various lengths,” Mai answered promptly. “Then, as a second exercise, practice looping the end around things. The bars that hold up the bridges roof or retrieving small glass bottles from the water we can toss out as targets.”

However, to the other’s surprise, Shampoo shook her head, holding up a hand. “Remember what happened when we were first trying to train ourselves in the toughness training technique, Airen? We spread ourselves too thin, bouncing from that to other training. I think we’re in danger of running after too many targets here.”

She looked ruefully down at the second glass container she was still holding her hand. “I’m guilty of that too, admittedly. But I think we need to make certain that we are covering the fundamentals.”

“Yeah, the toughness training is going to be impossible to follow up on aboard this ship. There’s no way to set up anything similar to what we could in the woods, and even I don’t hit hard enough or over a wide enough area to give you two the same kind of training, let alone vice versa,” Ranma admitted, while Mai agreed with the faint scowl. “Instead, I think we need to work on speed and dodging, push that aspect hard while we’re aboard ship.”

“So we split the day into three parts,” Mai decided. “Breakfast and traveling, then stop for what, four hours of training in the morning? Lunch, then more travel, sparring. Then, evening, meditation and more traveling. We can intersperse more training in once the two of you are able to handle the controls of the ship.”

“That’ll do for an outline I guess, though since you’re the one pilotin’ I’m not gonna say anything about that aspect,” Ranma agreed. “And at least the two of you will be getting out something out of those weights we bought by using them in the water.” He frowned, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe I can also get something out of just swimming alongside the ship once it’s at full speed? Endurance training, for sure.”

Rolling her eyes at that, Mai shrugged her shoulders. “As if you need more endurance.” The look this statement was accompanied by left Ranma in no doubt about what exactly she was referring to, and Mai and Shampoo both laughed as Ranma flushed, looking away.

“Um, heh, I er, well, it takes two, or, er three to tango, y’know?” Ranma tried to shoot back, failing miserably much to the enjoyment of the two girls.

Mai eventually got her giggles under control, and she continued. “Like I was saying, at least one full exercise period should be just for speed and dodging training, and another one for just sparring. The last one, the one for meditation, we can split up into other things. That allow us to experiment and still build on our core abilities.”

Her two lovers, and damn did that give Mai a thrill to think of her friends in that manner, nodded, but Ranma added, “When we get to Hainan, we might want to set up a toughness training area. That technique needs weeks if not months to build up in our system, and training on it for a few months like we did back in the woods with Natsume and her sister before we leave China entirely behind is probably a really good idea.”

He looked down at his hands, clenching them into fists. “Even without the whole insane levels of ki Ryuji had, his durability was fucking insane. He would have just eventually worn me down, taking all my punches and laughing. We, we need to get stronger in that area too.”

“We can also use that time to also learn something of the local language for wherever we’re going next,” Shampoo agreed heartily, trying to move the conversation along before Ranma became a little too serious.

The other two groaned at that but agreed, as it would indeed be necessary.

Five days after leaving Hong Kong, just as the trio had fallen into the daily training routine Mai had suggested, the ship, which was named Rising Star (they couldn’t change it due to some weird Chinese laws about maritime assets) pulled into shore at a small town. They put into shore there because there was supposed to be a small dojo here where the local master had come up with an aerial style of Wing Chun.

Mai, who’d planned out most of their stops towards Hainan, thought it was worth a look, despite not really believing it. Yet even with the trio already being skeptical of the claim, it proved to be a disappointment. It was indeed Wing Chun, but all it had in terms of local flair, was some footwork exercises to work on your balance. Considering how many fishing boats made this village their home that made a lot of sense, but it wasn’t enough to interest the trio, who already had far better balance and footing than any of the locals. Nor did that understanding stop them from beating the local master as well as most of his top students into the ground.

Leaving the dojo, the trio walked back down the path towards the town proper in a somewhat annoyed mood. “You know, if we’re going to make a habit of this, maybe we should start demanding more than just access to any scrolls or training exercises the locals might have,” Mai mused. “Go the full dojo destroyer route.”

“We can’t wager money,” Ranma said instantly, cutting her hand across in a negative gesture. As they had decided to go shopping after visiting the local dojo, Ranma had decided to stay in female form while in port in order to score some free eats. “That’s just not on, it’s not honorable and it’s not right. Asking for housing for a bit or something similar is fine and of course demanding access to their training is fine. Money or anything that could be used like it, no.”

“Agreed, Airen, but, Mai’s right too. If a place like this advertises itself as being something unusual or unique, it should be made to pay a penalty when real martial artists come around,” Shampoo argued.

The purple-haired girl was only half-joking. Unlike Mai and Ranma, who had kept their expectations low, Shampoo had hoped that China would be devoid of the issue she and Ranma had run into after leaving Nerima. Worse, looking ahead, it meant that the group might not find anything of value anywhere along their route. Even that one place where Mai found a dojo whose master had apparently created a mixed Aikido/Wing Chun style might be false advertising!

“Maybe in the larger towns and if we stop in cities we can ask the local dojo master to look for us with whoever locally might know about translating ancient Chinese and stuff to help us with your scrolls, Shampoo?” Ranma asked, reaching over and rubbing Shampoo’s shoulder consolingly.

The other two ladies paused in thought at that, and agreed that made some sense. At that point, the trio tabled the discussion for now, and began to move around the town, picking up more food mainly, particularly bread, fruit and vegetables.

Since they had all begun ki cycling their appetites had risen dramatically over the past two days, to the point that Shampoo and Mai ate almost as much as Ranma had prior to learning the technique, and Ranma ate half again as much as either of them. That had eaten through a lot of their food supplies.

Once they had packed their ki spaces with enough food to last them a long while, an act that had many a watcher goggle, especially when Mai teased Ranma by putting several banana’s into her boob window one at a time the trio talked about getting a second fridge for the storage area. Yet there really wasn’t much room there for one, not with the spare solar panels and other supplies.

Ranma pointed that out, then suggested they could probably stick it in the room they had devoted to weights. “After all, that’s kind of become a second storage area anyway, since we use the weights outside and in the water so much.”

With that agreed-upon, the trio of ladies shifted their attention to finding appliance stores, only for their shopping to be interrupted just as they reached one.

Shampoo was the first one to see the trouble coming their way and groaned aloud. “Don’t look now, but we’ve got a group of thugs incoming. It looks like this place’s a local base has a rather large supply of morons looking for trouble.”

Blinking, Mai and Ranma turned away from where they were comparing freezers in the window of the shop to look down the street. Around them, other pedestrians were getting out of the way of a large group of men, all of whom were dressed in Chinese Communist Party Army off-duty uniforms, complete with hat.

The group of twenty or so soldiers were also wielding truncheons, to that this mattered much to the trio. Rather it was the outfit the soldiers all wore that had Ranma scowling a bit. “Damn, did I look that stupid when I wore that outfit?”

“Eh, you looked cute when you were in your current body, Airen. In your normal body, it did look kind of out of place,” Shampoo agreed. “Your body language just did not match the whole soldier thing at all.”

Mai snickered, saying in Japanese, “Ugh, uniformity,” to which Ranma laughed, although the word went right over Shampoo’s head.

One of the men in the lead looked familiar to Ranma, though and he pointed. “Isn’t that guy in the front there one of the senior apprentices we smacked around earlier?”

Peering at the man, Mai’s snickers faded. “It is. Great, how much you want to wager they’re here for revenge or something stupid like that? So much, for this being a random group of thugs trying to throw their weight around.”

“Yeah, no, that’s almost a certainty,” Shampoo said firmly, hopping forward. “But this at least could add a bit of fun to our day.”

Ranma grinned and joined her, with Mai fanning out to the redhead’s other side. “You lot look like you’re looking for trouble. Good. We were getting bored.”

Seeming to have not heard or at least not wishing to acknowledge Ranma’s confrontational words, the officer in the lead, an older man, who looked remarkably like the younger man that Ranma had recognized a moment before, pointed his trench and at them. “You three, you are under arrest for assault! Come quietly, or else. You vagabonds can’t get away with just randomly beating up upstanding citizens.”

“If you thought we would be coming quietly, you wouldn’t have brought so many people along,” Mai said coolly, bringing her hands up to her cleavage. While not wearing her combat outfit, the blouse she wore still had a large window up top, as she had shown earlier that day when flirting with Ranma.

Now she pulled out twin fans before taking a provocative step forward, cocking her leg in such a way as to show off even more thigh than her short skirt already did, flipping the fans open to either side of her as more than one of the men across from her muttered questions about where the fans had come from. “Let’s just get to it, shall we?”

Before the older man could say anything, Ranma grinned and rocketed forward. A second later, she ducked under a hastily raised truncheon having to nod her head a little in grudging respect for the older man’s reaction time, before her fist caught him in the thigh, hitting him with so much force he was lifted of his feet and flipped in midair, before she whirled around into a kick, lashing out and catching the older man midair, hurling him into several of his fellows behind. Ranma then danced out of the way of the younger man’s trench and as he hastily tried to brain her. She grabbed him by the forearm, twirled, and used him to smack into two others, while Shampoo and Mai charged.

The sight of the three women charging towards him had taken the majority of the soldiers aback, but now they piled in, not that this helped them in any way. Even as a group, only armed with truncheons, not even any knives let alone guns, the group of soldiers were no match for the three martial artists.

Shampoo was methodical about it. Having charged forward, she simply stood in one place letting the attackers come to her in her new position, ducking and dodging as the soldiers attacked her, lashing out only occasionally. That wasn’t to say that she wasn’t doing any damage though. It was just that most of the injuries she was dealing out were emotional.

“Is that what you call a punch? I could throw better punch than that before I left my mother’s tit!”

“Is that a truncheon that you just smacked my shoulder with, or a felt pillow? You’re so weak that I doubt you could lift a cell phone, let alone an actual weapon!”

“That is not a defensive stance that is an invitation to have your teeth bashed in. Get that left hand up further!”

“No, no, no! That is not how you do a leg sweep, get down lower, aim for my ankle, not my knee. You should be used to going down by now given how all you soldiers are so used to kissing the ass of your officers.”

“Seriously, what is that weapon made of soldier? That’s the second time you’ve hit me, and it feels as if you’re hitting me with soft foam rather than wood, why is your truncheon as soft as your manhood whenever you try to talk to and attractive girl?”

“OH…my… god,” Ranma laughed, as she danced and moved, hopped around and smacked soldiers upside the head so hard that they began to see stars. “I am so proud of you right now, Shampoo! Even my old man would be proud of this show of Anything Goes Taunting!” And I didn’t even think of it!

Truth be told, Shampoo probably wouldn’t have thought of it either, but this whole thing was almost a farce to the trio. She still had some pent up annoyance at the local dojo to let out. So why not have some fun? That, and these were her fellow countrymen that were acting like thugs and weaklings. She felt some mockery was warranted.

Mai grinned as she saw several passerby starting to pull out their phones and record what was going on. What they thought of everything, she didn’t know as their Chinese was going too fast and too low for her to hear any of them talking over the grunting and shouts of her enemies, but she decided to put on a little show. She made a production of it, dodging out of the way of attacks with more flare than she normally would, hopping up and around like Ranma, and using her fans to disarm every opponent that came within striking range, playing to the crowd a bit.

In contrast, Ranma didn’t do anything all that special. Well, unless the watchers thought her remaining in the air, nearly floating from one redirected strike to another was special.

Despite taking a lot of fun with it, within ten minutes, the entire group of soldiers was down, groaning, gasping and disarmed.

Looking around, Ranma frowned a bit. “Guess they told the local cops they were going to be fighting us or something? Well, whatever.” With a shrug, picked up the soldier four at a time, holding them under her armpits like so many bits of wood, piling them into a single groaning clump along the sidewalk. “Well, that was fun, although I think we should probably get out of here. We’ll put off buying a fridge for another time.”

“Why?” Shampoo asked, honestly quizzical as she watched her lover and further insult to injury.

“Well, these are local soldiers right? The local bases bound to learn what happened here quickly and send more troops after us. Truncheons and any close combat weapon are one thing. Machine guns and so forth another,” Ranma replied, looking at her first lover in confusion.

“There’s no way they’ll report our actual appearances,” Mai answered for Shampoo, shaking her head. “Twenty grown, trained soldiers, admitting that they were beaten up by three girls?” She chuckled, leading the way back to the appliance store. “No way is that going in anything that could be called an official report.”

Ranma had to agree that this made some sense, and she willingly followed the other two into the appliance store. There, while they had enough money to buy the refrigerator they wanted, the trio ran into a problem. None of them were good enough with ki space to be able to enlarge the entrance to their ki space beyond a certain point. Which meant that they couldn’t actually carry refrigerator inside one. Worse, the town did not have a delivery system anywhere near as good as that of Hong Kong. The appliance store delivered down to the dockyard area, but said it would take the rest of the day before their delivery truck got to this order.

All of which meant the trio of ladies left the appliance store with Ranma carrying the fridge over her head. This drew shocked and astonished looks as they moved through the town, with Ranma grumbling all the while. “Rassa-frasssa, it ain’t fair. We didn’t even use Jan Ken Pon or anything, you both just pouted at me, and I caved. Not fair, not fair at all when you both could do this too.”

Mai and Shampoo just laughed at that and his other complaints as they walked. It was only once the ship came into sight that Shampoo finally decided to address Ranma’s grumbles. “Come now Ranma, don’t you know that it’s the boy’s natural role to carry bags for the girlfriend? Work those arms!”

If she had just said that, Ranma would have simply kept grumbling and moaning even as she kept moving but she didn’t. Instead, Shampoo had smacked Ranma on the rear, causing her to jump a bit, nearly losing the fridge in her arms. “Hey!”

Mai laughed, as did Shampoo, and the two of them raced ahead to the boat. “Catch me if you can Ranma!”

Laughing, Mai joined Shampoo in racing ahead of Ranma, who growling, picked up his own pace. Although the growl faded, as did the scowl that had accompanied it as she watched her lover’s race ahead of her. Life, she thought, is good.

OOOOOOO

Cu Lonxi smiled faintly at the messenger as she handed the man a few golden qian. They weren’t exactly current currency, but she hadn’t met the messenger yet who wouldn’t take them. Indeed, a few messengers had become a little too eager when handed pure golden ancient Chinese currency and had attempted to come back with friends. Yet this young man seemed a little too smart for that, as he pocketed them carefully one after another rather than staring at them greedily. “I haven’t seen you before young man, were you recently assigned to the province?”

“Not exactly elder. I’ve actually been here for number of years. It’s just that I was put on this detail as punishment for… Internet related transgressions,” the man said, a faint frown on his face rather than any kind of blush.

One of the other elders snorted. “Understood. You be careful about that stuff, young man.”

Distance had allowed the Amazon tribe to survive the Communists so far, and every upheaval or change of government since well before the Republic of China without their way of life changing much. Considering several of the elders had been young during the last years of the Qing Dynasty, that should have been obvious, although most outsiders failed to realize exactly how old the old women of this particular village could be.

As for external threats, even the Japanese invasion had not pressed deeply into Bayankala Mountains. That distance, however, did not mean that they were completely ignorant of the communists and how they retained power. Indeed, the indoctrination and soft-control the communists used was more dangerous than enemy armies were and thus it paid to be more aware of them.

The young man nodded in wry agreement, then bowed formally from the waist towards the elders and turned, getting on his motorcycle and heading out of the village. As he went, the youth got a few catcalls from a few young girls of Xian Pu’s age, and he wasn’t far enough away that Cu Lonxi and the other elders couldn’t see the blush suffusing his features.

The others all chuckled, but Cu Lonxi ignored it, picking up the slim package with her name on it, written in a style that Cu Lonxi recognized as coming from her great-great-granddaughter. “Hmm… I wonder what Xian Pu has to say? We have not heard back from her since she left on her rather silly mission of revenge.”

“Well, it’s obvious she’s been up to something interesting,” Elder Lo Ton said, holding up another package. This was marked to the village in its entirety rather than Cu Lonxi herself. “This is the kind of package we’d see when we get in new videos.”

One of the other elders twitched, her eyes widening, but before she could say anything, Matriarch Cu Lonxi shut her down with a glare and a flare of her battle aura. “I’m certain you weren’t about to imply my descendent went the same route as Lu Be, were you?”

That had been something of a very nasty black mark on the council just after the war with Japan ended. A young, extremely antiauthoritarian young woman, who had hated the ‘ageist’ leadership of the clan, had left the village on a husband hunting expedition. Only to never return, instead sending a video of herself… acting like a Dominatrix in porn video from America. That had not been pleasant, to say the least.

The other elder shook her head rapidly as Diande Ruffe, one of two elders who Cu Lonxi liked to think of as her loyal opposition on the council, spoke up, ignoring the byplay as if it hadn’t happened. “Oooh, a new movie? It’s been many months since we had one of those. I’ll go get the TV projector, shall I?”

Lo Ton whistled, holding up the videotape from inside the package she had just opened. “Hah, this is amusing. It seems as if your great great granddaughter has made it into the movies…” she shot a glare at the elder who had been about to speak up before Cu Lonxi had shut her down. “And look who she is acting alongside, Fei Long himself!”

“I always thought that Xian Pu had good taste,” one of the senior blooded warriors said, chortling as she held up a large package the others knew held cinnamon and other foreign spices. Several of the other women around them, who had been picking up packages, all nodded in agreement to that, a light murmur going through the crowd as they wondered what the movie might be about.

They were interrupted then as a man barged into the group, almost but not quite body checking the blooded warrior away to stare around him myopically. “I heard Xian Pus name! Is she back? My love, where are you?”

“Glasses, Mu Tse!” shouted more than one voice, causing the young man to blanch, reach up to his head and pull his glasses down. As he found himself near the blooded warrior, he quailed a little under the glare of the middle-aged woman who he’d almost been rude to a moment before, but he recovered quickly. “Er, your pardon, Mist.”

“Forgiven, for now,” Mist grumbled, walking away with her package.

“And no, our young champion is not yet back,” Lo Ton said, shaking her head at the youth, before deciding to tease him a bit. “Although, I wonder if this is a romance movie? Fei Long is quite handsome, and Xian Pu is gorgeous of course, far more than this other girl on the cover anyway.”

Glancing at the cover, Cu Lonxi saw that was unlikely. The title of the movie was ‘The Black Hand,’ and on one side, there was the heroic, and shirtless, form of Fei Long. On the other side there was a black shadowy hand in the background, while in the foreground Xian Pu and another woman stood, with Xian Pu in a fighting stance and the other woman glaring across at Fei Long.

However, Mu Tse was the clan’s reigning champion at jumping to conclusions, especially when it came to Xian Pu. “Never! Xian Pu would never fall for, for some actor who’s got nothing going for him but being pretty!” he shouted, raising his hand and preparing to launch something from one of his hidden weapons spaces at the videotape.

“Oh stop that,” his own grandmother said, whacking him upside the head with her walking staff. She wasn’t quite as old as many of the other elders, and had yet to, well, shrink overtime. “Even if there is romance in the movie, it’s just acting. You should know Xian Pu well enough to know that yes, you’re right, she wouldn’t fall for some actor. Don’t take out your anger that she is in around here for you to bother out on the videotape.”

“And I wouldn’t say that Fei Long is just a pretty face,” Rin Ser cackled. “He’s also got a nice chest, some nice legs, and probably—”

“Enough!” several voices groaned as one. “Rin Ser, please, we don’t need your particular brand of humor breaking Mu Tse’s mind,” Lo Ton went on. “Come on, let’s just watch the movie, alright?”

Soon, the elders and more than two dozen other clan members had congregated in the village square, where the TV projector and the white screen had been set up. As she placed the movie in the projector, Diande Ruffe hummed, reading the small message in the VCR tape’s holder. “It says here this is an unedited version of the movie, which Xian Pu had the studio promise to send to us prior to edits. Interesting.”

“Huh, that is interesting! Hmm…I wonder how long it took to get to us,” Lo Ton hummed in thought.

Rin Ser nodded, then, as several people arrived with food, Diande Ruffe started the movie.

The movie was a typical action flick, the sort that, outside of hot male bodies jumping around in hopefully scantily clad outfits, wouldn’t have interested any of the Joketsuzoku normally. But Fei Long’s actions scenes were always more interesting, as the action was more real than normal. This was the case in this movie, especially the scenes with Xian Pu, and the first time she appeared on the screen, everyone in the audience began to cheer.

None louder than Mu Tse. “Yes, my love! Prove your superiority over that idiotic outsider! Beat him bloody!”

“He does know she’s acting as an enforcer for the criminal, right?” Diande Ruffe whispered.

“Do you think he cares?” Cu Lonxi snorted.

The crowd watched the whole movie, and other than pointing out mistakes in Xian Pu’s form when she was on the screen, Cu Lonxi ignored it after the first combat scene. Instead, she turned her attention to the sheaf of papers that her great-great granddaughter had written to her. There were two of them, each of them dated at a separate time, which told Cu Lonxi they had been sent and then held down at the district’s mail center for the normal trimonthly mail trip. Cu Lonxi presumed that the video caught up with the letters there, just in time to be sent out ahead of the normal mail delivery due to that young man being on punishment detail along with the rest of the parcels. The second was several pages long.

As the movie continued, Cu Lonxi read through both the letters from start to finish and decided almost instantly that some of the things written in them would need to be brought to the council’s attention. Some of it was simply concerning, and infuriating, while the rest was simply… interesting. Interesting enough that Cu Lonxi was wondering if she could leave the village for a bit.

The movie continued, with the audience enjoying it for the most part, although Mu Tse had to be sat on several times. He kept on trying to attack the projector whenever Xian Pu’s character was injured. Thankfully, his grandmother was able to handle that, so none of the others needed to get involved.

“We’ve allowed that male too much leeway,” a middle-aged woman with dark blue hair growled, watching as Mu Tse was again stopped from launching a few throwing daggers at the projection. Ti Ger was Xian Pu’s equivalent among the Blooded Warriors, a champion several years in a row. Unlike Xian Pu, Ti Ger was also part of the clan’s ruling council, because of her blooded warrior status.  The woman, who Cu Lonxi had heard called ‘sexy butch’ by one particularly stupid outsider male, was the youngest person on the council, and easily the most militant. “He needs to learn some self-control and manners.”

“I won’t argue, but his mastery of the Hidden Weapons Technique is profound,” Lo Ton answered with a shrug. “That kind of skill has given him as much respect as a Blooded Warrior on its own, let alone the fact he too is blooded in combat, unlike every other person his age in the village.”

When the Joketsuzoku used that term, they meant a warrior who had not only fought in a life-or-death battle but had legitimately taken a life. “I dislike his obsession with Xian Pu, but I will not deny his skill, nor should you.”

Ti Ger grumbled but nodded, and the clan continued to watch the movie until it ended. At which point Cu Lonxi gently coughed, catching her fellow elders’ attention. “Ladies, now that the movie is over, let us adjourn to the Council Room. Xian Pu wrote several things in her letters to me that we need to discuss.”

“Oh, like what?” Rin Ser scowled, wanting to re-watch the movie again or bring out some of her Fei Long-inspired movie collection.

“Well, first, it seems that the combat panda and the girl with it were not all they appeared to be. They had recently been to Jusenkyo.” That had many of the elders around her blink in surprise, and Cu Lonxi went on with a chuckle. “How we all missed the fact the guide was with them, I do not know, but we did. And that he was in his cursed form when they arrived in our village.”

“Heh, I know I was blackout drunk at the time, drowning my sorrows at my Do Wel’s poor showing,” Lo Ton snickered. “What’s your excuse, ladies?”

To that, the other elders had no response, and it was a rather shamefaced group that stood up, making their way out of the crowd.

Once the group had adjourned to the council room, Cu Lonxi quickly passed around the two letters while explaining everything about the relationship between Ranma and Xian Pu that Xian Pu had put into them. The elders debated for a time on whether or not the Kiss of Death would be offset by the Kiss of Marriage, as well as the idea of dumbing down, as Lo Ton put it, the Kiss of Death to only a series of contests as Xian Pu and Ranma had apparently agreed to do before the nature of Ranma’s curse came to light.

Eventually, as Cu Lonxi knew they would, everyone agreed. If Xian Pu had fallen in love with this Ranma fellow, and he was reciprocating that emotion, then her actions up to that point were right and proper.

“In fact, all that is very romantic. I approve on that level. Yet Xian Pu writes that she is sharing some of our techniques with him? Specifically, the ‘toughness training’ and the Amaguriken, the training of which he’s modified? Those are clan-only techniques,” Diande Ruffe growled, before smirking a bit. “Although it is amusing that your descendent didn’t realize there was another aspect to the Bakusai Tenketsu training, including the actual technique itself!”

A lot of the elders laughed, but Cu Lonxi met Diande Ruffe’s accusation squarely. “True, Xian Pu mentions several times this Ranma’s dedication to the art, and the fact that they intend to travel the world together to grow stronger. They could not do that and withhold techniques from one another. Besides, both of those techniques are bottom level clan secrets anyway. Better, since this Ranma boy is fully reciprocating Xian Pu’s affections, he will be joining our clan regardless. And if he is as good a martial artist as these letters indicate, I think that can only be a good thing.”

Diande Ruffe scowled at that, along with Rin Ser, who, despite Rin Ser’s perverted tendencies, were very much of the opinion that men in the clan should not be as powerful or trained in the Art as the women. The fact Xian Pu admitted Ranma was better than she was, and even learned faster, was troubling. The argument on this point went down for a few moments, before Ti Ger tapped the floor in front of her with her long nails.

She, like the others, had read through the series of notes that Xian Pu had sent Cu Lonxi, while the debate on the Kisses had gone on. As a blooded warrior, that aspect didn’t matter at all to her. The rest of the information, especially in the second message. “While you all might be interested in living vicariously through Xian Pu and her romance with this outsider male, I think the rest of this is more interesting.”

That earned Ti Ger some scowls, but also a few chuckles. She was right, after all.  Most of the elders treated the various romances of the younger clan members as their own soap opera.

Ti Ger went on. “We all know that the Chinese government is corrupt. All governments are to a certain extent, and we have also known that there is very little we could do about that, nor would we want to so long as they leave us alone as most of the previous governments of the Middle Kingdom have. But slave rings? Particularly the sexual sort? My blood boils at the very idea that such things still happen, and in particular that this group seems to be targeting female martial artists! Like those of our tribe.”

Everyone there grimaced, and more than one looked towards their matriarch, whose hands had stilled in her lap, giving more than one of the others there an impression of striking snakes. Despite having read through the messages before, the implications still infuriated her for one specific reason. Four years ago, Xian Pu’s mother, a Blooded Warrior herself, had decided to leave the village in search of a friend of hers who had gone missing on a Husband Hunting expedition. Neither the friend nor Xian Pu’s mother, Comb had been seen since.

“True. I was… concerned about that aspect myself,” Cu Lonxi said slowly, letting out only an inkling of her battle aura. “I propose that we create a team of investigators to discover whether or not Xian Pu is correct that such slavery exists throughout China.”

Diande Ruffe instantly opened her mouth to object, but closed it slowly, her normal desire to argue with Cu Lonxi in abeyance for a moment, and eventually, it was decided that a team of seven would be put together. Three pairs of various clan members their best spies and information gatherers, would work on this issue under the command of an elder. They would work in teams of two, gathering information for the accompanying elder, Lo Ton in this case, to sift through to determine whether or not Xian Pu and her allies worries were correct or not. Lo Ton was easily the best of them all at moving unseen in urban environments.

If they discovered this slavery ring was indeed endemic? Well, the Joketsuzoku prided themselves on being true daughters of Athena. To leave fellow women, fellow women warriors in many cases, in chains was something they would never allow, even if you set aside the issue of Comb and a few other missing women, which none there were willing to do.

With that decision made, one of the other elders brought up Ranma again, pointing to some of the techniques that Xian Pu described in her letters. “Some of these techniques sound incredibly interesting... and in the case of the Mad Dragon, dangerous. The usage of ki in weapons, the shadow weapons that this Mai girl is supposed to create, those are intriguing, but we have our own versions of such. This Blue Burst style of the boy’s? That is fascinating, especially given what Xian Pu wrote of the battle she witnessed in the underground tournament between him and this local behemoth.”

Ti Ger snarled, the heritage she had been given from her Musk Dynasty grandfather coming through for a second as she made an admission that wounded her warrior pride. “True. That one, well, Xian Pu’s writing of this Mad Dragon worries me. From what she writes of his ki attacks, I doubt I could defeat him… or Ranma once he began this new ‘sticking’ technique of his.”

“I think there, Xian Pu’s descriptions start to fail her, and us. She doesn’t give nearly enough information, drat it. And what is up with how often she mentions this Mai girl she starts to mention more and more as that second letter goes on? Her admiration for this outsider female is coming through almost as strongly in this letter as her love of her new husband,” Diande Ruffe grumbled. “I wonder if your great great granddaughter is trying to recruit her into the tribe.”

“She might be,” Cu Lonxi said thoughtfully, before moving on, choosing her words carefully. “And if Mai is as strong as these letters indicate, she would be an invaluable member. However, I wonder if these youngsters, traveling on their own around the world as they are, will perhaps run into walls in their training they cannot overcome without help.”

“HA! Say it plainly,” Lo Ton chortled. “You want to meet these two outsiders. You mean to try to get ahead of them somehow, make certain your great great granddaughter isn’t sharing too many of our secrets. I agree with the sentiment actually. Letters are one thing, colored as they are by a lovestruck young girl’s opinions. First-hand knowledge on the other hand is altogether better.”

“Especially when you consider this Mad Dragon’s combat abilities,” Ti Ger agreed.

It was actually much easier for Cu Lonxi to get the other elders to agree that she should go and try to catch up to Xian Pu and her companions. Perhaps because everyone there was just as intrigued at what Xian Pu wrote about her lover’s techniques as Cu Lonxi was, or perhaps because of everything else she had written about she did not know. Regardless, the discussion finished with Cu Lonxi getting what she wanted.

However, Cu Lonxi and the group of investigators were not the only ones making plans to leave. Despite the fact that he was about as blind as a bat, Mu Tse had actually quite good hearing. He had heard Cu Lonxi calling for a Council meeting about what Xian Pu had wrote to her. Fearing for his beloved’s safety, Mu Tse had followed, alighting on the rooftop and using the chimney to listen in to the conversation.

Now, he hurried away, moving from rooftop to rooftop adroitly, avoiding the evening patrols through the village as he headed back to his family’s house, the black of his robes letting him blend into the night easily. Xian Pu with another man, no, I will never allow it! Never! But Xian Pu was thoughtful enough to tell us all about her plans, they are traveling along the coast and then out to sea. I will be able to intercept them.

As a male, Mu Tse had gone to the low lands to bring back news and rumors, and, despite his myopia, he had actually had a good idea of the general geography of China. If they intend to head out to sea eventually, they’ll do so through the island of Hainan, and the nearest city on the continent to Hainan is Xuwen. I can get there before they do, wait for their ship to put into port. Then, then this Ranma, this foul man who has somehow hypnotized my beloved will find out he is no match for a master of the hidden arts!

OOOOOOO

The trio made landfall again nearly a week after their first, rather lackluster return to the mainland in a small fishing village near the major city of Zhanjiang. They’d spent two days getting Ranma and Shampoo up to speed on driving the ship, then had slowed still further, giving themselves more training time aboard the ship per day. The next stop was supposed to be something of a break, so the lovers had agreed to push themselves hard before arriving there.

For Shampoo, manning the ship certainly counted. She had rarely been in a car, let alone at the controls of one, so controlling a boat, well, as Mai put it, “It’s at least awfully hard to run into things out on the ocean.”

For his part, Ranma pushed himself hard with the ki-cycling technique Mai taught them from Master Oro. As for Mai, her speed training had gotten to the point where she was able to perform the Joketsuzoku speed technique that Shampoo and Ranma had already learned with her fans open, closed, and while using her Shadow Fan technique.

The village of Nyao Mo Lin was a terraced village set into a series of hills and cliffs, with two really nice looking beach areas set to either side of a series of wharfs, most of which were made for small craft like their own. The village started right behind the beachfront, and continued up through a few terraces, including the hotel Mai wanted them to spend the night in. It was small, but the room they got was well accoutered, and something else also going on here to interest Ranma in particular, the reason why Mai had wanted them to stop here in the first place.

Ranma stared at the sign up for an eating competition, then looked over at Mai, a slow grin crossing his features. “An eating contest? You want me to enter an eating contest? You shouldn’t have Mai! It’s not even my birthday yet.”

“Say that after you win and bring home that money Ranma,” Mai said with a laugh. “50,000 Yuan would tide us over for a while.”

“No worries, Mai. The Saotome stomach is always ready for battle,” Ranma chortled.

“Now I know why you said we didn’t need to bother with having lunch despite it already being well past midday,” Shampoo mumbled, rolling her eyes. I’m kind of two minds right now. On the one hand, I know Ranma will win this, but on the other hand, the idea of my husband taking part in something so silly is a bit off-putting.

Mai however, turned her attention to something else, staring out over Ranma’s shoulder. “Well, I think I’ve just spotted something for me and Shampoo to be doing too. What are they doing down there?”

Shampoo and Ranma turned as well and looked down from where they had been standing outside the hotel along the path that led down from this terrace to the next. Here, the hotel overlooked a very small portion of the beach they had seen when they had been sailing in a few hours ago.

At the moment, a lot of the locals were preparing for what looked like some kind of festival. Hundreds of bamboo rods were being stabbed into the sand underneath the water and groups of women, all of them wearing priestess outfits, were hopping up on top of them, balancing there, then moving from one to another, before hopping off, making certain the bamboo rods could take their weight. “That looks like another kind of competition, doesn’t it?”

“That set up almost reminds me of the Jusenkyo, but at least here, the water isn’t going to change you into something if you fall into it,” Ranma said, shrugging his shoulders and moving to the protective barrier. “Let’s go see what that’s about, shall we?”

His two lovers all both nodded, and together, the three of them hopped up over the protective barrier, allowing themselves to freefall for a time, before each in their own manner slowed their descent, landing lightly on the sand. Their leap had not gone unnoticed, and two of the women in priestess outfits in particular had opened their mouths to scream, only to shut them as the three martial artists landed lightly on their feet.

Mai smiled politely at them and asked, “Excuse me, but what is going on here?”

“Oh um…” after stammering for a few moments, the local girls, most of whom looked college-age or high school age like the three of them, finally began to answer. “We call it the Cat and the Hot Coal Contest. Women and men of all ages come to dance upon the poles. The trick is to never touch one another, or the ground, and you can’t just stay on one pole forever. You need to keep moving. The last one standing, male or woman, is declared the winner. You also can be called out if you’re not moving gracefully enough. This is supposed to be a dance, after all.”

“Hmmm… that sounds like good training to me,” Mai murmured, while Shampoo frowned a little.

Over the months training with Ranma and Mai, she had learned that she very much preferred to stay on the ground. She was highly mobile on the ground and would never turn into a tank like Ranma’s friend Ryoga was supposed to be but neither did she enjoy balancing exercises like this. “And what is the prize exactly? And why is it called that?”

“Oh, it is based around an ancient cat spirit, who apparently danced over hot coals in order to reach his lady love,” one of the other dancers, one that was much younger than the first speaker said, sighing theatrically. “The winner gets two bells, and if you give one to you your perspective boyfriend or girlfriend, you’re going to be tied together for life. Isn’t that romantic?”

Ranma frowned a little, or rather, allowed his frown to appear along with the twitching that had begun in his face when the first speaker had mentioned the C-word. “Erm, H, how accurate is that? Are we talking about actual magic here, or just superstition?”

“Oh, it’s real!” the young girl squealed in excitement. “Every time there’s a winner, he or she gets together with their fated partner, and they lived happily ever after!”

“I wouldn’t say they’re always exactly happy about it at first, but according to the oldsters, things do tend to turn out all right,” the first speaker said, rolling her eyes at her younger acquaintance’s exuberance. “It isn’t magic or anything like that of course, who would believe that in this day and age? I’d say it’s mostly been luck, and the fact that a lot of times there isn’t actually a winner at all. You have to stay up there without bumping into someone else for over an hour after all, and not many people, even people who have trained to, can do that.”

The younger girl made to protest, but the older woman waved her to silence. “It’s just that there was a winner a few years ago, and she and her husband married almost right after the event was over. They’ve been together since, which restarted…,” she gestured to the younger girl, “this.”

“Hmmf, don’t you have a romantic bone in your body, auntie?!” the younger girl stuck her tongue out, and flounced off, moving to join a few others of the same age.

“Setting aside her silliness, can we not take the bells?” Mai questioned. “This sounds fun, but I’m not interested in that kind of thing.” Well, I am interested in romance, but I’ve already got my two lovers, and I’ve no interest in trying to find another fated one or whatever. Nor do I want to get involved in that kind of magic either. Although I wonder, why this little contest wasn’t advertised online, while the eating contest was? Weird.

“OH yeah, of course,” the older woman stated, frowning in puzzlement. “If you were thinking though that the bells are somehow sacred and shouldn’t be taken away from the village or whatever, don’t. They’re little knickknacks, the local temple puts them out at this time every year. Although as far as I know, the winners of the contest always keep the pair they claim. Again, though, there isn’t always a winner.”

“In that case, I’ll take part in this competition. It sounds fun,” Mai said with a smile. She looked over at Ranma and Shampoo as they walked over to where someone looked to be taking down names near the start of the boardwalk area. “It also sounds like good training. From the looks of it there look to be a lot of other contestants and dodging through them without touching them at all is going to be difficult along with keeping your feet on those poles.”

“Setting aside my flashbacks to Jusenkyo, I gotta agree with you on that. Although, I am more than happy to take part in the eating competition instead,” Ranma snickered. “That prize is mine.”

“You sound awfully confident about that, but I wouldn’t count your dumplings before they’re steamed!” a new voice interrupted the trio, causing all three to look over to the dockyard area nearby. The speaker was a younger boy, maybe a year or so younger than Ranma and Shampoo. His stance was somewhat lazy looking as he leaned against the guardrail separating the boardwalk from the beach but Ranma could tell he had a martial artists frame.

Next to him stood a young girl of the same age. Unlike Shampoo or Mai, she was more cute than sexy, with a gymnast’s kind of body in a Chinese qipao, and her hair done up in long braids that wound up from one portion of her hair down to another. To Ranma’s mind, it made it look almost look like someone had outlined mouse ears with her braids. “Kensou’s right! The pair of us is also entering that tournament, and I’ll have you know, the pair of us have never lost an eating competition before!”

“There’s a first time for everything kiddies,” Ranma smirked, tapping his flat, toned stomach. “The Saotome stomach doesn’t lose.”

“We’ll see about that!” the boy, Kensou, said, before turning and walking off. He turned back after a second, pointing at Ranma. “And we’re not that far apart in age, man! Don’t come crying when this ‘kid’ beats you!”

“I think you’ve made a pair of rivals Ranma,” Shampoo snickered.

“Just so long as they’re not the kind to swear eternal vengeance and try to follow us out to sea, I’m good with that,” Ranma laughed, before looking at Shampoo. “So what are you going to be up to while were taking part in these contests Shampoo?”

“I think I’m going to hit up the local library while I can. Maybe I can see if I can translate at least more of the titles of those manuscripts. Then I’ll come and root you both on,” Shampoo answered with a shrug. She had no desire whatsoever to join an eating competition, and only slightly less desire to join the competition with Mai.

The other two nodded, and Mai signed herself up for the competition that night. Ranma’s eating competition would happen during the afternoon, and the trio headed off to let him sign in.

None of the trio, nor the other two young martial artists they just met, noticed two pairs of eyes watching them. These pairs of eyes belonged to two young men standing on the prow of another ship that had arrived earlier. One of them was in his late twenties, the other in his early twenties. They wore Chinese formal wear, as if already ready for the festival later that night, although the look on their faces was hard and unyielding. There was a certain coldness there, expressions that took away from their relatively good looks.

If Mai had perhaps looked at them with her ki sight, she would’ve seen a flickering aura around the pair of them, almost a ghostly miasma creeping out of their eyes and mouths. Whatever the case, the pair of men seemed to exude an aura that compelled others to stay away, including a few hucksters around the boardwalk, trying to sell their wares or advertisements of the local competitions.

“The girl with purple hair. There is something interesting there, something ancient she is carrying. I cannot tell if it is one of our scrolls, but I can sense it,” the older of the two said, his eyes following Shampoo not as a normal young man’s eyes would, but like a thief looking at a victim. “She also moves like one of those mountain harridans.”

“The other woman does not, yet of the pair, it is the woman with the black hair who is burning with more controlled yin energy. She would be perfect to bring the local spirit out of hiding so that we can feast,” the younger man said, smiling faintly. “What is this called, brother? Catching two birds with one net?”

“We will take the purple-haired one first, when she is alone. No need to take any chances. Then we will wait until the local spirit has appeared for the girl. Eat the spirit, and kill her. No witnesses. Nothing can be allowed to stop our return to life,” the older one growled.

“Of course not, brother. All of the middle kingdom will tremble when we, Qin Hailong and Qin Konglong, walk once more in our own bodies, rather than these pale reflections,” the younger said, before they both moved after the three martial artists, deeper into the village.

End Chapter

Fun fact: Dragon Naturally Speaking somehow wrote out ‘transient’ when I was saying ‘truncheon’ how bizarre. 

I decided that I wasn’t really introducing more of the occult into Mai, Ranma and Shampoo’s understanding of the world/their adventures in a big enough way, so I decided to add to this next adventure more. Another reason behind this was the fact that I needed to slow Ranma, Shampoo and Mai down in order to allow Mousse and Cologne to catch up to them before they leave China proper. To make up for the lack of real martial arts types of zaniness, expect a double helping of that next chapter. I hope that you all enjoyed this show of how the three are growing together as they go forward.