Ranma groaned through parched and cracked lips, woken out of the deepest sleep he had ever had be the feeling of something nibbling on one of his fingers. "G-get off…" he muttered, trying to turn his head, but found that he felt as weak as a day-old puppy. Worse actually, Ranma couldn't remember a time when he was this weak, not even when that damn moxibustion weakness point had been used on him.
It took him several moments, but Ranma was finally able to open bleary eyes. Looking up he hoped that the mirror had done its work, and that he wouldn't see the Tendo house or anywhere else he recognized. And he certainly got that wish.
Instead of anything that looked human-like Ranma stared up into trees that weren't quite like any trees he'd never seen before. They looked shiny almost, and while their trunks looked like oaks, their leaves looked like pine, save for small flowers here and there which for some reason were on the portions of the branches pointing down toward the ground rather than the sky.
Here and there those trees gave way to even larger trees, ones that looks like baobab trees except their colors were all wrong. Rather than the normal sort of gray brown trunks they looked black and green, and they had vines hanging from their branches which seemed to sway gently in the wind.
Okaayy…. Ranma thought, wanting to pull at his pigtail for a moment, a habit he'd gotten into when he was thinking, but he was simply unable to get up the energy to so much as twitch his hand. Even so, his thoughts were still relatively clear. This is interesting. So where have I landed? Africa, South America? I'm pretty damn certain I've never seen any pictures of trees like this so some kind of rainforest is the best guess.
Slowly Ranma looked down to where he still felt something nibbling at one of his fingers. He grimaced slightly when he saw his hand, the hand he had been holding the mirror with. It was badly cut about, sliced here and there when the mirror shattered, slicing his hand badly though he also noticed that he wasn't holding any of the shards of the mirror itself any longer. Given his limited knowledge of magical devices Ranma decided that probably meant it had used all of its energies and simply disintegrated. It wasn't the strangest thing he had ever heard of after all.
Though the thing licking daintily at the blood on his hand... It was small, about the size of two of his fingers put together, and it looked like a cross between a mouse and a lizard. It had reptile eyes, but fur, a small mouth and six legs that looked like those of an iguana or something, but it had the tail of a squirrel. He slowly licked his dry lips and said softly. "You're the strangest little critter I've ever seen. And I've seen quite few strange things in my time."
His voice startled the little critter off, and it raced away. Ranma shrugged, making a note to bathe his hand in hot water to kill off any germs the little thing might've been carrying. Wearily he closed his eyes once more, trying to take stock of his body. He didn't feel any broken limbs or anything, which was a good sign, but he was so exhausted!
And he had absolutely no ki left to speak of, just barely enough to keep his body running. Still it worked, and I'm not about to complain. After a moment he began to concentrate, sending out his senses and trying to connect to the ambient chi in the world around him.
That was how he termed it anyway, ki was inner strength, chi was the ambient energy of the world. The difference between the two energy fields had been explained to him, but since he'd gotten both the Japanese and Chinese explanations, they had sort of jumbled together, leaving him only certain of the name both schools of thought used for the same energy field.
Ranma had thought up a technique after watching Happosai drain energy from girls underwear and girls themselves to do the same thing. Though it wasn't so much draining as simply connecting himself to the infinite loop of the energy all around him. It was not something he had ever attempted before but right now, he just needed at least a little to move around with.
And for some reason, I can't feel the little loop I set up to feed my ki space. The technique Mousse used and Ranma had learned drained a tiny, very tiny but constant trickle of power from the user, the cost of keeping it running increasing or decreasing by how large a ki space or how much organization you put into it as well as your skill with the basic technique.
Mousse had taken it to extremes, and actually poured far more of his ki into the technique than any of Ranma's other rivals actually had access to. Since he had found that out Ranma had always wondered how good the boy would become if he stopped pumping all that ki into what Ranma saw as a gimmick rather than a real skill, but now he'd never find out.
Ranma had never gone to that extreme of course. He kept two small ki spaces, one for magical items people had used on or around him in the past, and one for everything else. Neither were organized of course, since that would have taken more energy. But not even feeling the little bit of ki I put into it…that either means the technique failed for some reason and I didn't bring any of my shit with me, or… Ranma shook that thought off and began to concentrate, sending out his mind into the world around him.
His eyes opened wide however when what he had thought would be a trickle was instead a torrent. Holy crap! That should not have been that easy! It was as if the chi of the world was simply waiting for him to draw on it. That was just weird. Cautiously Ranma reopened the connection to his environment, trying to control the torrent as it flowed into him, re-filling only his physical energy. For just a moment, there was a sense of something, an emotion, but Ranma couldn't quite grasp it and it was gone before he could even say it was there with any certainty.
Moments later, a process that should've taken him several hours was finished and he stood up, cracking his neck and stretching his arms up above his head explosively. He had taken enough to get his body up and going, not enough to fill his ki reserves since that went against his beliefs. Take what you need and no more from nature, else it would harm the area around you. Though here that might not happen so quickly as it would back in Nerima. Where the hell am I?
He stared around him, taking in the trees and everything else around him much more clearly now, and noted that baobab trees he had noticed before seemed to have small spikes sticking out of their trunks and the vines that fell from their branches. Nasty. Somewhere nearby he heard what sounded like a wolf's howl except it hiccuped, sounding very odd indeed, and he could see or hear lots or tiny birds or other things moving about.
Nearer to where he had landed, Ranma could see a smallish impact point where he had been lying. Scattered widely around it however was the remains of what he had been holding in his ki space. "Fuucckkkk…."
Ranma really didn't like to think about what that said about how low his own reserves had gotten. His ki space had never failed him before, not even when he was fighting Saffron or Herb. If it had failed, then he might have literally been an inch away from dying. And if I came this close without that blast of Ryoga's helping me…
He laughed suddenly, scaring a few more birds and other critters away from having a rummage around his scattered junk. "Thank you Ryoga you asshole, you might've screwed me over way more than I ever did you, but that last attack of yers might've saved my life."
He looked down at himself wincing a little. His pants were ripped and he had a few tiny bruises from where things had imploded towards him when the ki space gave out, sending everything inside outward like an airtight bag bursting. His hand was badly cut about, and his chest too had some lacerations on it. Everywhere he looked any of his skin that had been exposed looked as if it had been badly wind or sunburned. His body also creaked and groaned in a way he was unused to, as if it had been put under great strain or perhaps pressure recently.
His stomach gurgled, reminding Ranma that regaining some physical energy wasn't quite the same thing as filling up his physical form. "First, I find something to eat, then I'll try ta figure out where I am. If the little critters here've already eaten all my emergency food I'm gonna be pissed, or more pissed than I am now." Ranma knew he still had to really deal with his anger and grief issues caused by the events in the past week.
Routing through the stuff he had kept in his ki space he quickly separated it into useful and not useful piles. The unusable pile was much larger than the usable one. Damn, he thought to himself shaking his head, I really build up a lot of junk didn't I? The unusable pile consisted of used towels, the fluffiest of which he grabbed, old videos he had seen a time or two, maps of places he had been with his father, several dozen weapons he'd 'confiscated' from Mousse, a few take away boxes of food that he never got around to eating from Shampoo's place which were well past their sell by date, and even a few from Ukyo's.
The usable pile was much smaller, but still contained a lot of the necessities. It consisted of four sets of underwear, one Chinese silk shirt, his old long-sleeved communist shirt and pants combo, one muscle-T, a dozen exercise bars which were actually still edible despite a few of them having been torn open. It also contained a few surprises: a tiny flashlight and a Walkman that actually worked for all that they had been banged up something fierce when his ki space had given out.
The best parts were a large backpack, the same one he'd used for years on the road with Genma, a first aid kit, an outdoor cooking kit, and a sleeping bag. Those last three he'd added to his ki space the moment he'd learned how to do it in the first place, and they had proven useful time and time again.
After gobbling down four of the energy bars, Ranma disinfected his hand with some of the rubbing alcohol from the first aid kit, then bandaged it lightly. With his ki healing the cuts would be gone within a few hours, or at least he hoped they would be. But he would still have to be careful about weird ass diseases in a place like this. It was true that he hadn't really been sick his entire life, but that didn't mean he was going to take any chances. Then after pulling on the muscle-T and a new pair of pants Ranma packed his backpack as well as he could.
That took him some time, since he didn't have the ki available right now to enlarge the backpack's interior. He ended up tying the sleeping bag to the top of the backpack, but had to leave the first aid's kit's box, stuffing its contents in here and there. By the time he was done the sun was right overhead, shining down into the forest or jungle. Looking at the unusable pile, which included the love-pill bracelet and a few other magical items, he decided to dig out a hole and bury the stuff. He really didn't know if there was anyone around here, but some of those items they were just too dangerous to leave lying around on the jungle floor.
With that done, Ranma hopped up from where he had been standing on the floor of the jungle up into the canopy quickly leaping up until he stood standing on top of one of the trees tops, staring around him. Once he reached the top of the tree he had to pause, gasping in breath for a moment. Then he looked around taking in the view with a faint smile on his face.
Nowhere where Ranma looked could he see even a hint of civilization, which reinforced the Amazon jungle/Congo idea he supposed. Turning around 360° Ranma stared up behind where he had begun to look around, noticing that he was on the side of a huge mountain that was gradually heading up into the distant clouds. Ranma laughed somewhat crazily. "I've always enjoyed nature and livin' off the land, but this is a little ridiculous."
His smile widened into a grin when he pulled out the Walkman, taking one of the earbuds and sticking it into an ear. It had been a gift from Hiroshi, who was into American rock for some reason. One of the songs however was just too damn appropriate for the moment, and he put the headphones on his head as he began to move forward, one ear still uncovered so as to let him listen to the surrounding sounds while "Welcome to the jungle" began to blare.
Deciding to head further up the mountain in an effort to get a better idea of the lay of the land Ranma turned in that direction, making his usual good time through the canopy. He stopped at one point to fill up all his water bottle, which haven't had had any water into the last at a small stream marveling at the clear water and the small fishes that actually thankfully looked like normal fishes is of a type he hadn't seen swimming around in it.
After that he took to the canopy once more, heading further up the mountain as the day wore on. As he moved through the canopy on autopilot his thoughts were elsewhere. His emotions thankfully had settled down from the roller coaster they had been, the challenge of his local environment having driven out his anger and grief at his fiancée cheating on him and his mother reacting as she did. For the most part anyway, Ranma knew it would come back when he settled down for the evening, but right now he could set it aside to concentrate on the major issue at hand.
His ki was flowing better, stronger and faster. Even with the local chi being so easy to access and so powerful, regaining enough energy to move around easily should've taken him far longer than it did. It was as if his ability to regenerate ki had been heightened tremendously. But there was something else there too, the chi carried things to him, connected in a way to the material world that was so beyond his understanding it was insane. So beyond his comprehension Ranma refused to allow the chi to interact with his ki reservoir, cautious of it and the effect his brief spurt of hate had on it.
Ranma paused suddenly, feeling eyes upon him, not human eyes but animal, though what had warned him he couldn't say. Before he could figure out where the feeling was coming from, several large apelike creatures bounded towards Ranma from the trees surrounding the one he had stopped at. Like the little creature that had been nibbling on his fingers they looked like a cross between a mammal and a lizard. They had long lizard like claws coming out of their paws, but bodies that looked like a monkeys', and faces that looked sort of like a lemur yet with a mouth full of large fangs.
They all roared some kind of challenge, charging at him from all sides. Ranma frowned, looking around for an escape route then decided to hell with it, and charged to meet the ones coming at him from the front, leaping into the air which seemed to startle them. He slapped one hand down using it as a springboard to flip himself over the two coming at him from the front, his other hand lashing out with a punch that caught one of the beasts in the side of the head mid-leap, sending it tumbling down to the floor of the jungle below with a startled squeak, though not doing much other damage, as weak as Ranma was at the moment.
Landing on the next tree over Ranma chance to glance around him. He then noticed down below what looked like small family units hurrying away on the lower bows. There even seemed to be a few very crude huts scattered around on the lower boughs. "Oh."
Now knowing why they were attacking him Ranma decided to simply run off, quickly racing through the trees. Noticing that a few of the hunters or guards were still chasing him Ranma frowned and sped up further, going as fast through the canopy as his weakened state would allow. With that he left them behind quickly, though he had to stop and rest for a few hours afterward. Geez, is this how normal people feel all the time? I need to find a place to stop and start working on building up my strength and reserves.
After his rest Ranma reoriented himself to move up the mountain again, now not letting himself be lost in his thoughts as he took in the surrounding with much more seriousness. Doing so he noticed several animals on the floor of the jungle. There were a few varieties of small critters that scattered here and there as he moved through the canopy and one large herbivore of some kind that looks like an armored rhinoceros the size of an elephant and with an elephant's trunk.
Just in case it proved intelligent Ranma waved at the thing, but it placidly kept on eating from the leaves of one of the baobab trees. It's prehensile nose was able to reach into the spikes of the tree to pull out the small flowers that were everywhere on it, unmindful of the vines that were trying ineffectually to grab or choke it. Ranma made a note of the tree's action too, and steered well clear of the possibly carnivorous trees.
Ranma kept on going through the day, moving higher up the mountain, but never leaving the jungle behind or breaking out into any other kind of terrain. Soon it was almost dark out, and he frowned pausing on one of the more normal looking trees to stare around him looking down into the canopy in particular to check to see if there were any of the monkey lizards around. Thankfully there didn't seem to be, and he found a particularly large branch to lay out on for the evening.
He decided not to use his sleeping bag, afraid that if he got too comfortable hit tried to move in his sleep and roll off the limb. Instead Ranma leaned his backpack against the trunk using the sleeping bag as a pillow and tried to get to sleep with the unfamiliar noises of the jungle all around him. He desperately needed it.
His dreams were disjointed affairs, very odd ones in very different ways. Some were simply memories: the fight back on Earth, his battle with Saffron, his fiancée's words and his mother's recriminations. All that he had suspected he would be hit by once he closed his eyes. One of his dreams however was very disturbing, almost as much as the pit which he'd been tossed into to learn the neko-ken.
The dream didn't really have much in the way of imagery, it was mostly a feeling. A feeling of darkness pressing in, a shadow over the sun blocking out all light but it wasn't as if there was one source of light but thousands, all of them very weak individually. Even when they were brought together they were still very weak, far too weak to break through the shroud of darkness. There was malevolence in that shroud a lurking evil, a desire for destruction, revenge and above all power.
It tried to push in on a few extremely bright lights, which had burned some of it away. One by one they failed, leaving only one light burning away against the shroud. Somehow, Ranma didn't know how, but he knew that light was supposed to represent him.
That dream-realization woke Ranma up, staring around him in the dark of the jungle making certain that someone wasn't really searching for him. The sounds of the jungle had obviously changed in the night, but there was no other indication of danger. After staring out around him he fell back to sleep, and the feeling of the shroud was gone as if the presence behind it had moved on unable to find him.
The other dreams he'd almost expected but not quite, their tone if not their content. Given the night before, Ranma knew he'd probably be dealing with the male equivalent of wet dreams which his friends called whack-dreams for some reason. But the content of these dreams was well off what he had thought.
He had thought he would dream about a few of his fiancés. Yet the next morning he woke up after vague dreams and not so vague imaginings focused on a few of the other girls in his life.
His imaginings featured Hinako-sensei, who despite her need to drain ki to retain her real age had a very nice, tight body, with all the muscle of a trained dancer and, as his friends always made certain to point out, huge knockers. There was also one about Kasumi which made him feel guilty for a very different reason than the one he had about Hinako, and for some reason a few dreams Minako and Makoto from the Sailor Moon anime, which was Kasumi's favorite anime. Nabiki too featured prominently in his imaginings though those always ended the moment she opened her mouth afterward, invariably demanding money or something else to keep quiet about it.
Akane didn't feature in a single imagined scenario, not that first night or any other. She did appear in a few memories-turned dreams, but they never ended well. Ukyo and Kodachi didn't show up at all, but Shampoo did rather frequently, though more often than not in the imaginings side of things rather than memories-turned dreams side.
Coming fully awake that first day in his new environs, Ranma groaned finding that his pants had become drenched once again. "Note to self," he murmured as he pulled his pants and underwear off quickly exchanging them for a clean pair. "Need ta get this under control 'fore I find some civilization."
Over the next few days Ranma slowed his progress during the day, taking longer breaks to deal with his thoughts and emotions now being free from the Youthful Mind technique. He destroyed several large boulders that were sticking out of the jungle canopy, ranting and raging but eventually getting over his issues with all those he had left behind.
It was actually rather therapeutic, allowing Ranma to work through even more issues than he had thought he had, not just with Akane and his family but everyone he'd dealt with. He even was able to figure out, at least a little with the help of the romance book, how a lot of the problems had been his own fault. Though Ranma would never admit it aloud a lot of the stuff in Nerima had become so bad because Ranma himself didn't care enough to put in the effort to try and really find solutions, simply coasting along, not caring about anything but learning new techniques.
Devoting his entire life to the Art like Genma had shown him had hampered his ability to deal with other people, yet even so Ranma should have been able to notice that things tended to get worse when he responded in a Genma-approved fashion or ignored things in the hopes they went away. I really fucked up by the numbers sometimes didn't I? Still don't have any idea how I could've gotten Shampoo off my back and still gotten Cologne ta train me. But I might've, well, I guess, I kinda did lead Ukyo on at first.
And looking back on it it's pretty obvious that always pointing out how my female body was better than hers, or that she might have issues with bein' seen with a girl half the time, especially since she always thought I was a pervert. Ranma tried not to think of Akane's name, since that seemed to be a trigger for some of his anger issues. But damnit, she did the same thing, not just with Ryoga but with that guy from the monster zone too. Why the fuck could she be nice to them right after meetin' 'em, and not me after she learned o' my curse?
During these episodes he noticed that his emotions were actually upsetting the local chi, making it simmer and crackle as if it had taken on the rage and grief of his emotions. It was a very weird effect, as if the chi was actually emotional ki, but it was easy enough to deal with. He knew the hazards of using emotional ki like Akane or Ryoga did, and cutting himself off from the ambient chi allowed him to ignore its feedback effect on his own emotions. It was just one more mystery to add to the list Ranma had been building up since arriving wherever the hell he was right now.
Two weeks passed, and Ranma had finally gotten rid of all of his anger issues, returning to his normal laid back self, though there was a lot more going on under the surface than had been the case back in Nerima. Every night after his normal katas he would read one of the medical books that Dr. Tofu had. He didn't understand a lot of them, but he was getting there slowly, especially on the alternative medicine stuff, moxibustion, pressure points and other such.
However his ki reservoir was only slowly refilling itself thanks to his distrust of the local chi, and having prioritized sending his ki to aid his healing. His aches and pains were mostly gone, but the skin issue had only begun to clear. Ranma wasn't certain why that was, he was simply happy his skin had begun to turn back to normal. But Ranma had run out of emergency bars about ten days after he arrived wherever he was, making his ability to replenish his ki much slower.
He was beginning to think of trying out some of the local animals to see if any of them were not poisonous (always better to assume they are and be surprised when you're wrong) when he at last broke out of the jungle at last, coming to what looked like the outside of a huge caldera. He had seen it coming, which was why he knew it was a caldera in the first place, but the rock face was almost sheer, with few handholds.
Ranma was about to turn away and find another direction to head thinking that the view he would get from up there wouldn't be worth the effort of climbing when he heard a dull roar in the distance. Much louder than any animal could've produced, the noise was coming from almost directly overhead. Frowning Ranma retraced his steps jumping back further into the jungle and stopping on one of the highest trees in the area to stare up into the sky.
From there he saw silhouettes barely visible moving through the upper atmosphere. They soon resolved themselves quickly into several large shapes, which seemed to gleam dully in the light of the sun.
They kept on coming down, moving towards the interior of the caldera, resolving themselves further into five large ships of some kind, though four of them resembled one another, while the fifth was larger and seemed less maneuverable. They all looked about as aerodynamic as bricks though, which made Ranma wonder how the hell they were still flying at all, and then it suddenly clicked on him. "Weird ass trees that no one's ever seen or taken photos of, even weirder animals that look like a cross between mammals and lizards, and now flying ships that look a lot as if they should crash the instant they try ta lift off. Toto, I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore..."
Despite the thought that he had somehow landed on an alien world Ranma almost sighed in relief, knowing now that he had been right to head up the mountainside. After all, ships like that wouldn't be simply touching down randomly. There had to be something there, some city or other.
Ranma eyes narrowed when he saw lights began to blossom moving from the ships down towards the ground and other, far fewer lights from the ground up. Ranma hadn't read that much science fiction books, but he had read a few graphic novels. Those had to be weapons of some kind, and that couldn't be good. A second later and Ranma began to hear faint booms in the distance.
Frowning heavily and wondering what the hell was going on Ranma moved toward the caldera again, jumping up it in a way that would've made the monkey-lizards green with envy. Quickly he was on top of the caldera's edge, staring around. The edge was a natural cliff face about forty feet up from the center of it, but Ranma easily jumped down and made his way towards what looked like a smallish town of some kind which was possibly six miles or so deeper inside the collapsed top of the volcano.
The area between him and the town was covered with small orange and red bushes of some kind he hadn't seen yet, but not enough camouflage in the light of day to let him close without someone seeing him. Frowning Ranma paused, concentrating and pulling the Umi-Sen-Ken technique around him before racing forward, still using cover as much as he could just in case.
The largest ship had landed in the center of the town, which Ranma could now tell seemed to be a kind of shanty or mining town of some kind. Despite the oddities of the buildings, much more rounded and octagonal than square as they would be back on Earth, there was something about them that screamed that the they weren't really permanent dwellings for the most part. There just seemed something lopsided or ramshackle to them. He had seen the like in China several times, though what the heck they were here for he didn't know.
Four of the ships continued to circle over the town, their weapons blasting out with concussive force occasionally. Thanks to this overhead coverage by the time Ranma had reached the town most of the action was over. The attackers were in the process of looting the town, smashing into flimsy doorways to grab up anything they could find.
However Ranma was surprised to note that it didn't seem to be materials of any kind that the attackers were really here for. Rather they seemed to be searching for the people. Everywhere Ranma looked the pirates were driving the people of the town towards where their ships had touched down on the outskirts at what looked like some kind of landing pad.
As Ranma drew near enough to make out details on the people in the town and those attacking it Ranma paused in consternation then shook his head slightly kneeling down behind a piece of debris from some kind of hover car or something that had slammed into the ground here, killing its driver. Of course, as if I needed any more proof that I'm not on Earth any longer. Stupid stinking magical devices, well I asked to be someplace else, and I definitely got that!
None of the people he could see, either the attackers or the town's inhabitants were human. A few looked like they had evolved from something relatively close to humanity, the only physical differences being in their coloration and the size of their eyes, though their hair was much more uniform looking in texture than . After all very few humans had naturally light pink or dark purple colored skin in his opinion, and blue was an almost unknown color in most human circles as well.
These were outnumbered by others however that were more obviously not human. There were several dozen individuals that had somewhat long necks and very small heads without a hint of hair on them, along with another race that looked almost exactly like one of the Christian devils, complete with horns. Others looked almost like, and Ranma shuddered when he looked at them, furry demons from hell only crossed with some kind of werewolf.
Still others, and these seemed to make up a large number of the attackers, looked like the orcs from old-fashioned fantasy novels. Another race had orange scales or skin and three eyes, one on a prehensile stalk in the center of their foreheads. They were as obese looking as the orcs, but this type of alien seemed to be the ones in charge. The six of these aliens Ranma could see were giving out orders to the orcs.
They too seemed to be taking orders over what Ranma assumed were radios on their heads. They paused to listen before shouting orders at the others who were forcing the majority of the townsfolk towards the two waiting ships at gunpoint. Ranma was astonished to also note that some of the orc-like creatures were using huge pikes or halberds of some kind. Their ends seemed to shake a little in place, which was also odd.
Ranma took it all in at a glance, his tactical mind which had allowed him to be adaptable in so many martial arts contests coming to the fore here aided by the Youthful Mind having been removed. The orcs seem to outnumber the other races, but most of them use those halberd things rather than what I guess are lasers or similar. And every group of them is commanded by one of the orange skinned ones.
As he watched one of the orcs brought his halberd around to slice into the back of one of the long-necked creatures, who had been moving much slower than his fellows and seemed stooped, possibly with age. As the old alien collapsed to the ground from the blow Ranma grimaced angrily, his hands flexing with a desire to rush out and attack the bastards.
Here and there he could see other bodies dotting the landscape of the town, including what looked like a clump of some other kind of alien, smaller of stature from what he could see from here. He wondered idly why that race had been weeded out from the others and executed like that, but frankly he didn't care about the reasons, only the fact that these bastards seemed more than willing to kill.
Ranma had been taught many things by Genma. A lot of it had proven false, and Genma didn't follow even a third of what he preached. But some things had stuck with Ranma, even now when he could fully understand how Genma had screwed him over. His love for the Art, his desire to be the best he could be was one area. The other was the Code of the martial artist. At its simplest form the Code stated that all life was precious, and that the strong should protect the weak.
But the darker aspect of the Code was if you were prepared to take a life, then you were also prepared to lose yours. These people had shown themselves utterly ruthless, willing to deal out death to anyone who didn't seem to be strong enough or whatever other criteria they had in choosing who they would be taking with them.
Ranma therefore had to be willing to match them. He wasn't happy about it, but he knew he had to be prepared to take their lives here. Or else he might not be the only one paying the price for his hesitation.
Moving forward Ranma was careful not to bang into anything that could make a noise, and always steered clear of the guards who looked like orcs, fearing that if they had a better sense of smell than humans they might be able to smell him. The Silent Thief technique tricked the mind into ignoring the individual, but Ranma had never tried it against anyone who had a better than average sense of smell, not even animals. He also hoped none of the aliens had some kind of sonar, since he didn't think the Silent Thief would stand up against that.
Nearer the ship Ranma scowled angrily watching the women being separated from the men. Several more men were gunned down after protesting that and Ranma's teeth ground together audibly despite his best efforts to control himself. After his 'health education' over the last few days he could all too easily figure out the reason behind separating the womenfolk.
But the womenfolk aren't gonna be as guarded once they're taken onboard the ship. Ranma didn't want to start a fight out here, not with all the civilians around and not without knowing what kind of weapons those ships could turn on him. But inside I'll be able ta keep things close. And I don't care what race they are, I don't even care if my ki is so freakin' low I probably can't pull off much ki attacks, if I can get in close I'll slaughter them.
With that rather grim thought Ranma ducked back around what looked like some kind of control tower for a moment. Coming out of the Umi-Sen-Ken for just a second he reached into his now redone ki space and pulled out a bottle of water he'd warmed at a spring a few hours back. Here goes nothing he thought pouring the water over his head, being careful to not get her shirt wet. She then pulled on a large and face concealing cloak from one of the nearest dead bodies before moving out quickly, crossing the distance between the control tower and the last group of females being loaded onto one of the two ships.
Just as Ranma had hoped the inside of the ship was a sign of some confusion. It was a large hangar bay of some kind but it was overcrowded at the moment with the incoming prisoners and their guards. This allowed Ranma to squeeze into the center of a group of the women before coming out of the Umi-Sen-Ken.
Because they had felt her before actually seeing her, none of the females around her, which represented several of the races he had seen, noticed him or gave him a second glance. One or two of them did a double take staring at Ranma's red hair then down at her bust but they were too busy with their own fears and concerns to really bother looking too closely at the redhead.
All around him there were barked orders, and Ranma grunted irritably. Great I should've thought of that, can't understand a word they're sayin'. Ranma knew he had a decent ear for languages, he'd been able to pick up Putonghua over the last few years thanks to Cologne and even Shampoo occasionally helping, though mostly to get close to him and try to seduce Ranma with her body. He'd learned English easily enough on the road, and could speak a smattering of Chosŏnmal, tiếng Việt, and even quite a bit of Lhasa Tibetan, all of which he'd learned passing through those countries with Genma.
But even so learning a new language would take time, and he'd need a reference point of some kind too, and reading it would be even worse. Think of that later, Ranma ordered his own brain. Now is not the time, and a battle isn't the place to start learning shit like that. I'll let my fists do my talking for a bit first.
Soon enough Ranma and the rest of the female prisoners were being hustled along one corridor, while the men that had already been brought into the ship were being herded in the opposite direction. The attackers didn't seem to care about segregating them by race, instead separating them by good or bad looking, which seemed to follow the human idea despite the alien's own body types.
They were lead to the end of the corridor, where there was a single door leading into a large holding area. The floor was littered from the refuse of what Ranma assumed had been its last inhabitants, as well as dozens of very cheap looking, ratty blankets tossed here and there.
As Ranma was hustled in through the doorway one of the guards grabbed her shoulder, then a hand was pulling at her hair as one of the orange skinned aliens talked to one of his fellows in seeming excited tones. Up close Ranma could tell that they were most definitely meat-eaters, all of their teeth came to points despite missing several of them here and there, and their skin was definitely scales rather than skin.
"Look at this one, wonder what a base-type human is doing out here, and check out the chest on her! How much you want to bet she's a slut that took up with one of the miners? Well, are you a good whore girl?"
Luckily for both the guards and Ranma's plan, Ranma didn't understand a word of what was called Galactic Standard, nor did he do anything other than grabbing her hair. If he had and given Ranma's nightmares about men in general touching his/her female form, she might not have been able to control herself. Instead Ranma simply glared at the guard then stamped on his foot before moving inside. Having carefully gouged the strength of the stamp of course, he didn't want to shatter the asshole's foot after all, not yet.
While the guard hopped up on one foot for a second yelling at her angrily and waving his gun the other one laughed. "We're not supposed to shoot any of the pretty ones, and she's one of the prettiest of the lot. You know the boss'll want to sample her personally before they start breaking her, and he'll take any damage you cause her out on your hide."
"I hope by the time he's done she's not as pretty anymore! That hurt!"
"You can be such a crechling." said the second one shaking his head irritably. "Come on, there's four more that can be put in this room before we start going through the next group."
Soon enough the door to Ranma's prison closed, and he moved over to it rapidly, putting his ear against the door. The last slave who'd been pushed in was one of the odd catlike looking females, and she looked at him quizzically. "What are you doing? You don't think there's going to actually be any chance of us escaping, do you? I wouldn't bother even dreaming about that. These bastards seem to be old hands at slave-taking."
The redheaded young woman she was addressing waved one hand as if almost shooing her off, but the cat-woman stepped towards her, reaching out to grasp her shoulder. "Listen, I saw you stamp on that one guard's foot, get it out of your system now. Later on if you do that to any of them they'll probably shoot you, and might shoot lots of us as well in reprisal. It depends on how valuable we are to them." She spat the word valuable then cocked her head when the redhead flinched a little under her touch.
Ranma hesitantly pushed the older woman's hand off her shoulder, thankful beyond words that it was a hand rather than a paw, given that the woman's semi-catlike appearance was already freaking her out that would've been a little too much right now. Looking around Ranma once more took stock of the women around her.
All of them were youngish, and all of them ranged from good-looking to downright gorgeous. Those humans that simply had different color schemes were exotic and immensely attractive, making Ranma happy he wasn't in his male form since he doubted he could have kept from reacting to them despite their current situation. Even in his female body Ranma could feel herself react to them, but thankfully not as noticeably.
That didn't even consider one of the alien females in particular. She looked almost human in appearance, her body that of an extremely fit dancer, though her breasts were larger than the equivalent would be on a human woman. She was bald, but had two long head tentacles falling down her back, tied with some leather bands. As Ranma watched their ends seemed to twitch in what he thought was some kind of nervous reaction. She was also wearing what looked like underwear of some kind, putting her body much more on display than the others, which caused Ranma to flush slightly and look away hurriedly lest her reaction(s) start to become visible through her shirt.
Turning back to her interlocutor Ranma shrugged, a faint blush still on her face. "Wish I could understand ya, but I can't." He said aloud watching as the furry-demon woman's eyes widened in surprise that he wasn't speaking the same language.
"What language is that? I've never heard that before. Why aren't you speaking Galactic Standard?"
Ranma frowned, trying to figure out a way to start the process of learning a new language without anything in common. A moment later however all their attention was diverted as a low throbbing sound went through the deck below them. Then there was a warning blare from a speaker overhead, and the thrum increased dramatically. Ranma felt the moment the ship lifted off, then some kind of artificial gravity kicked in as the ship powered away from the town and up into the atmosphere and space beyond.