Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Gold Digger Fan Fiction ❯ Golden Oportunity ❯ Chapter 07 ( Chapter 7 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Notes - Okay, it has been a very long time since I last updated this story. One has to ask why, well it comes down to a couple of reasons. The biggest one is that I tried to take the story in the wrong direction and got stuck, I just couldn't figure out what to do with it, but a part of me wanted to go on anyway. Then I decided to bite the bullet and removed 25kb worth of work and started over, I was worried I might have done something horrible, but it turned out to be what I needed to do after all. In less than a week I jumped this story from 45kb to 140kb and boy does it feel good to get another long chapter out for this story.

New Web Site: http://shi_hanna.tripod.com/

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Golden Opportunity
Chapter 07
Cory D. Rose
ertle2@msn.com
(c) 2002
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Ranma came awake with a start and had to spend several seconds determining why he was feeling so strange, then he opened his eyes and realized several things. The first was that he was back in that odd tank thing again and that there was a mask across his mouth to allow him to breath as he floated there. It did nothing for his eyes though and they stung slightly from being in the green liquid of the tank. The second was that the liquid of the tank was warm enough not to trigger the curse, he was thankful for that at least, it gave him a bit of his dignity back. He was still in pain, but not as much as he'd been in when he passed out after the fight. He sighed into his mask and tried not to get depressed, once again he had taken on an opponent that was far stronger than he was and either won or lost. At the moment he wasn't to sure what he had accomplished with that fight.

That ninja reject had certainly improved and with that strange power of his he was all but unstoppable, but it ticked him off to think that after all the training and sacrifices he had made in the name of the art he hadn't been able to defeat the jerk decisively and in the end he had won by using a technique he hated. His Neko-Ken had been screaming to be let loose at the beginning of the fight and he had resisted because his control of the technique was so shaky at the moment. It was much too easy to access now that he had completed the final leg of the training, he was almost afraid of what he might do if it got out of hand when he was using it. That last blow to Daishi's stomach had been right along side the idiots stomach, he could still picture the glow of his Ki Claws as they passed through the stone skin like a knife through butter.

Had the moron even survived his last ditch attack? Ranma hoped so, killing Daishi wasn't something he wanted on his conscious and there was a very good possibility that he had done just that in those final moments. Sighing, Ranma looked at his body and noticed that most of the wounds he'd received in the fight had been fixed, his arm looked like new and all the bruises he had received were gone. The pain was still there, though reduced to a dull ache over most of his body. He also knew that he didn't like to be cooped up like this and looked around to see if it was alright for him to get out of the tank. There was a lid above him and a large machine of some kind surrounding the upper part of the tank.

He sighed, why did Gina have to be so obsessive when it came to technology? Did she really think that hanging around in a tank like this with nothing to do was good for a person? He needed to move around, stretch a little and get all the kinks out of his muscles, not float here and turn into a living vegetable for fun. Yelling proved to be just a useless as well, what sounds the mask didn't muffle completely sounded odd while submerged and clearly didn't travel far. He folded his arms and thought about breaking his way out of the tank. The flimsy stuff in front of him wouldn't last long against a determined attack if what his increased senses were telling him were true and as he ran his hand over the glass merely confirmed it.

Just as he was getting ready to knock on the side of the tank, breaking the glass was a last resort, to get somebody's attention, the large machine slowly lifted up into the ceiling and he could see Gina in the outer room sitting behind a computer console sipping at a cup of coffee. She waved tiredly and touched a button. "Ranma stay there for a few minutes while while I get the everything shut down. Okay?"

Ranma nodded, at least he had something to wait for now, and spent the time using his Ki abilities to scan his body, he'd already done a physical check, now he needed to make sure everything was in order inside himself as well. The fight with the new Daishi had been very intense and nearly killed him in the end, it had taken every last bit of skill and will power he had to overcome the guy. After a few minutes of scanning he hadn't been able to find anything out of place, thought he was feeling a bit odd now that he had pumped up his Ki level a bit. Gina's tank seemed to have altered the way his Ki moved within his body so he relaxed into a meditative trance to relax his mind and body to try and get himself balanced again, both physcially and mentally.

After about ten minutes he heard some slight burbling or girgling sounds reverberating through the tank as a set of vents opened at the bothom of the tank and the liquid drained into the floor. Just like last time this took about five minutes or so before the tank itself lowered into the floor and let him out. The lid had detached from the glass cassing and risen into the ceiling at the same time. Gina came out from behind the console and handed him a towel, he didn't miss the odd look she gave him as he dried off. For some reason he felt uncomfortible in front of her, even if he was still wearing his boxers. This pair were soaked clear though and were getting a bit restricting as he stood there drying off with a much to small towel. The blonde stared at him even more intently, if anything it had gotten worse as he dried off. He waved his hand in front of her eyes, but she didn't even blink as her eyes tracked down his body and examed in gleaming muscles.

"Is something wrong, Gina?" He asked.

Gina drooled.

"Gina?"

Gina started and backed up a little, slapping herself a couple of times to knock the dirty thoughts out of her mind, she blushed bright red. "...heheh...sorry about that, just daydreaming a little." Gina said in a high-pitched nervous voice and had to remind herself that he was only sixteen years old. Another part of her mind reminded her that Ranma was just getting into his prime and that meant he could do things now that older men had problems with, she slapped herself again and started thinking about a cold shower. *

Ranma shrugged and decided that the faster he got out of here the better, whenever girls looked at him like this things always got weird. "That's okay, where are the rest of my clothes?"

"I'm afraid they were trashed in the fight, I had them cut off you, but since we're at the mansion you can just head up to your room and get some more." Gina said as she grabbed a white robe out of a nearby closet and handed it to Ranma. She considered not giving him one and watching him walk to his room as the scene was caught on her lab cameras, but figured that would be going a bit far and he might catch her at it. She grinned, like anything like that had ever stopped her before.

After taking the robe and wrapping it around himself, Ranma started to feel a little weird again, but he didn't think much of it as he manipulated his Ki to fix the problem once more. It was little easier to fix this now that he knew what he was looing for, that meant he could fix it without going into a trance like he'd done in the tank. He must have been injured a lot more than he thought by that guy, after a few seconds of concentration that odd feeling vanished once again and he put it out of his mind. He stretched a little and turned to look at Gina, he ignored the odd look on her face again. "Thanks Gina, that fight took more out of me than I thought."

"No problem Ranma." Gina said with a yawn. "It gave me a chance to reacclimatize myself to this time zone."

"What time is it?"

"We arrived here and got you in the tank some time in the morning, it's late afternoon now."

"Oh great, I wake up from a forced nap and I have to go right back to bed?" Ranma smirked.

"You still have a few hours yet, but I'm crashing, I haven't had any sleep for close to a day and a half now." Gina smirked back as she waved good night and staggered out of the room and headed for her bedroom. She had something else in mind too and it would take a few hours to set up in time for Ranma's morning workout.

"Good night then." Ranma said.

He headed out of the room and made his way back up to the top level of the house and to his own bedroom. There were things he had to think about now that he had survived this, he just couldn't figure out where he was making his mistakes during all his latest fights to bring him to this level. For the last two months he had been training harder than ever and yet every fight he got into had led to his defeat or a near thing. Training under his old man had always had him practicing and fighting at this top form. Ranma knew this was one of the reasons he was so good, but without the old man there to keep him at that level he seemed to have lost his edge somehow, he had to get it back.

Daishi had been able to turn himself into that monster, but Ranma knew he should have been able to take the jerk down with no problems. Instead the guy had nearly killed him because he hadn't been able to dodge fast enough. He wasn't sure, but Gina had mentioned that Daishi was enhanced in someway that made him dangerous, could this mean that the guy's enhancements had been transferred to his new form as well? Ranma didn't know, his thoughts had been so mixed up lately that he sometimes didn't know up from down. Every since going to Jade he had been off balance, even with all that training he just hadn't been able to get past it. A part of his mind blamed this on his inability to grasp the last of the Neko-Ken training for so long, he was divided emotionally and it affected his fighting ability.

He knew that he his abilities had increased to some pretty height levels, way beyond his level from when he first arrived here. Studying that book on Ki had been very informative and it had stressed several times how one could become unbalanced and lose all the advantages of Ki manipulation. The book had been kind of reluctant to give out straight answers, instead saying things like his old man did about jumping with one's heart, comments that took a while to decipher. Julia had told him some of the same things, but she had shown him how to manipulate his will power to accomplish what he wanted and that had given him more insight into the book. Still, Ranma had thought he had most of those techniques mastered and added to his skills before he even went to Jade.

He was causing his own problem because of this, but how in the world was he going to get it fixed? No matter how many times he asked himself the same question the answer still eluded him, there were so many possibilities and factors that he didn't know what to do. His father would tell him to forget about that crap and just train until the answer came to him, but that wasn't working, the last month had been enough to prove that. Being beaten down by Daishi on three different occasions hadn't helped his confidence either, he was completely stumped.

Upon reaching his bedroom Ranma headed in and found an older change of clothing and put them on, these were nothing like that clothing Gina had given him the first time he came out of that tank. Those weighted clothing had been a pain during his training sessions with Master Julia and she had slowly increased the weight of the things as the days went on. Building up his body strength had been fun though, he always liked to train because it made him stronger than before. He stopped and thought about his training over the last few weeks and suddenly knew the answer to his problem, it was so obvious that he almost didn't see it. Since he had a few hours before it was time to go to bed he ran out into the back yard, he had some hard training to do and the sooner he finished it the sooner he would be back in top form.

**********

In another part of the lab Brianna and Penny were examining Daishi's body with all manner of equipment, they had been doing so for some time now and the readings they were getting were familiar. They hadn't been sure, but they had finally managed to get some decent readings on Daishi to prove that he had a Jusenkyo curse. Now they could adapt their equipment to recongnize a curse when it scanned one. A simple cup of warm water had turned him back to normal and allowed them to sew his wounds up and take care of the other injuries he had sustained. Personally Brianna didn't like Daishi, but she didn't want him to die either and that meant they had to keep the big jerk alive.

Ranma had done quite a number on him with that last move, this kind of damage was pretty bad too, but she was thankful that all the cuts were as even and straight as they were. Anything else and Daishi would have been seriously laid up for some time, even Pee Wee wouldn't have been able to do much. Cheetah had once lost her temper and crippled Daishi when she thought the guy was responsible for the disappearance of her husband, fiancée at the time, and snapped his spine in several places before they could think to stop her. Peewee had managed to use his genetic manipulation talents to fix him, but he had always been a lot more causious of Britany. Ranma hadn't done as much damage as that, but this was almost as bad, luckily she had the technology to help out with this and make sure he stayed out of their hair for a while.

She motioned to Penny and the black girl nodded and typed something into the computer on the wall. It opened up into a chamber with a strangely shaped chair, it was set on a small circular piller and configured kind of like a dentists chair. She moved the operating table and wheeled the ninja over. Brianna carefully moved the guy into the little alcove and positioned him on the couch as Penny moved around him and placed several medical sensors on his chest, arms, legs, and head. This took several more minutes as they made sure each and every one of them was giving a correct reading and working, then they stepped out of the small chamber and used the computer to close the door. Once shut the machine started a thirty second countdown before sealing the door and filling the room with a gas that flowed around the room to be breathed in by Daishi as he slept.

"That should do it." Brianna said.

"I hope so, this set up is a bit unexpected for you guys though."

Brianna shrugged as something in the room rose up out of the floor behind the chair and activated, the air in the room seemed to waver like rippling water then everything seemed to freeze, including the gas. "Not really, me and Gina have been developing a number of things like this ever since that psychotic dog tried to kill us and with all the work we've been doing on the Ancient Artificers here on Earth and Jade we have been constantly upgrading our technology. This room is an area that isn't affected by time anymore, it will allow Daishi to heal at an increased rate as we monitor him and make sure his more dangerous tendencies don't bother us again. With a bit of study we might even be able to cure him of his curse and remove all the genetic tampering that Peewee has done to him over the years."

"What will you do if he wakes up and breaks out of there?" Penny asked as they set about picking up their tools and equipment.

"How in the world would he do that?"

"I don't know, but it's a possiblitly that might happen if we let our guar down.

"Well I've got a secret weapon to use on him if I need it."

"Oh?" Penny asked, whenever Brianna started talking about her weapons it was a good sign to be on one's guard. The girl had a strange idea of what constituted a weapon and half the time they were powered by one of her AI programs, the one she used in her Peebos.

Brianna reached into her pocket and held up a control, she tapped a button and Penny had to resist the urge to wince. A few seconds later, when nothing happened she opened her eyes and looked around to see Brianna looking at her with a weird grin on her face. Then she looked up and smiled, Penny sighed and turned to look as well and had to gasp at what was hovering behind her. They were flying Peebos, six of them, painted a bright green and pink and shaped like little TIE Fighters with extended wings and one of the super cute faces that Brianna liked her AI's to use.

"Peebo!!" The six Peebos said at once and started flying around the room in a tight wedge formation out on maneuvers as they kept their formation perfectly. Penny had no doubt that the things had weapons built into them, whether they were guns or explosives was a little hard to tell as she watched. She had heard enough stories about Brianna's love of weapons not to even think that differently. The wedge came low and Penny had to dodge to the side as they tried to buzz her head as Brianna started to laugh.

"What do you think?" Brianna asked in the pleased voice of a mother who was proud of her children.

"How in the world did you get them to fly?"

"I improved the hover technology we have on the cars and adapted it to the these Mark 3 Peebo TIE's.

"What do they do? Explode?"

"They do that as a last resort, I installed a set of mini laser guns on these and a targeting system that allows them to hit anything within twenty yards easily. Three of them have an extra laser while two of them are equipped with a powerful taser, the leader Peebo TIE has a tractor beam that can suspend a human in the air for over an hour."

"That's impressive." Penny said, more than a little impressed with Brianna's handy work.

"Thanks!" Brianna beamed. "Did you ever get those Casters of yours to work?"

"The wha..." Penny started, then remembered one of the projects she had been working on before this Amazon thing had come up. "They're coming along pretty well, but there are still a few bugs in the main systems that are causing me some problems with control and power output."

"Need some help?"

Penny was about to decline when she hit upon an idea. "Yeah, I would like to add this hover ability of your Peebo TIE's to the Casters, that way I could free up my hands for other things."

Brianna shrugged. "Sure, give me some blue prints of what you want and I'll design a device for you. Do you want a belt or wrist control set up?"

"Uh..."

**********

Even before Ranma was to start training to overcome his Neko-Ken induced fear of cats, Dr. Diggers had been worried about the boy. As an Aura Mage Dr. Diggers could read a person's aura and get a pretty good idea on the individual, but Ranma's aura was constantly confounding him, every time he looked the blasted thing was different and it was getting on his nerves. With it he could tell if a person was good or evil, sick or healthy, and if they could use magic or not. Every person had a distinctive aura that tended to stay the same over time, kind of like a unique fingerprint. Dr. Diggers had been taking daily looks at Ranma's aura for weeks, sometimes several times a day, and every time he did it something new would be present to confound him. Some days he was giving off a magical aura that would have made Ranma a very powerful aura mage, or a chaos mage, illusionist, or any number of things like an Element Master. About the only thing that was consistent was the high level range of all the readings, it was all very powerful hints of his power that could get him into any of the magical institutions on Jade if they would just stay the same for longer than one reading.

Now he was standing at the patio door to the back yard of the mansion watching Ranma as he moved through one of his easier Kata, the boy had look of intense concentration as a bright white aura surrounded him. Ranma's aura was currently like pure bright light that was used by healers on Jade, but Dr. Diggers could tell that he wasn't casting any magic with it, just focusing it throughout his body to enhance speed, power, and grace to give himself perfect form and readiness throughout his Kata. He would talk to the boy in the morning to get him ready for the first bit of magic training, but for now he needed to talk to an old friend.

"Julia?"

"What is it honey?" Julia asked as the entered the room and moved to stand by her husband, she watched Ranma with a critical eye and wondered what was bothering him. There was a hesitancy in his movements that wasn't normally there, she figured he must have been thinking of his last fight or something along those lines.

"It's about time I started training Ranma how to gain control of his power."

"He isn't looking forward to this Honey, magic is like cheating to him and even if he does learn from you he might not ever do much with it. He doesn't trust it."

"I know, he's been trying to avoid this ever since I told him."

"Hanza beat him with ease after she cast that haste spell, I think finding a way to defeat her in combat is the only reason he's even considering learning how to use magic."

"Whatever his reasoning, he has to learn this, it's far to dangerous to just let him wander off and accidentally hurt someone because he doesn't like how magic works."

"I know."

"I'm going to start him on the basics tomorrow, but I need to go and visit an old friend to find out the best way to do this."

"Who's that?" Julia asked as she watched Ranma's aura flare outward, he picked up speed and she recognized the Kata as one of the ones detailed in that book she had borrowed from Kahn a few weeks ago. It was one of the core techniques of the Anything Goes style. She almost grinned as she realized that this might be one of the first signs that the book, written by Ranma himself some time in the future, was actually correct. This might even be the first time the move was ever used by Ranma himself in this kind of way, the core techniques were designed to branch off into any number of moves in the style and what allowed him to be so dangerous.

"Master Bugee, he lives on the Eastern Continent and is the historian of the Mage Council."

"You're going to have him look into that legend?"

"Actually he's been looking into it for the last few weeks, Dee'em contacted him after a brief visit to Nali's clinic."

"Wasn't he supposed to have shown up to check out Ranma at some point?"

"He never got around to it."

"Oh?"

Dr. Diggers nodded. "It seems that crew of adventurers got into a big fight sometime after he talked to Nali and he had to go and take care of the problem, he never elaborated."

"When will you be back?"

"Sometime tomorrow."

"I'm going to go and run Ranma through another session before he has to go to bed."

"Well, have fun and don't go to far, he has to be able to think when I get my hands on him tomorrow."

Julia nodded and waved off the thought of esausting Ranma that bad as an impossibility as her husband opened a portal and stepped through to Jade. He tended to go back and forth between this dimension and Jade pretty regularly so she didn't think much of it, he was on the Mage Council after all. She stepped outside, the sun had been down for a couple of hours now, she recalled that Ranma had gotten out of Gina's regeneration tank just hours before and he was already outside practicing.

She frowned, the boy never stopped to relax even when she had told him to do so. He was always training, jumping, moving around and doing something, in all the time he had been staying here Ranma had never once relaxed and enjoyed himself. When he read a book he did it on his head, saying in that position for hours, or when he watched TV with them he did a sitting floor routine of pushups, sit-ups, and other things. Even master Leep hadn't made her do that kind of stuff when she was training, he had other ways of instilling strength and disapline. If she didn't know better she would have thought that he was in a constant state of stress, but he was like the ultimate form of stress relief. All his moving around and training kept him from being bored, she wondered if his father had ever shown Ranma how to have fun for real.

"Ranma?" She called out.

"What's up?" Ranma called out as he continued to practice.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't feel right so I'm trying to determine what the problem is." Ranma said as he slowed down a little and started the Kata over again.

"Can you describe it?" Julia asked as she walked over.

"Sorta, ever since I got out of Gina's lab I've been feeling really odd. Nothing really bad, just odd, like I'm out of balance or something and I've been trying to get my balance back, but the more I work out the more out of place I feel, it's kind of weird."

"I've been watching you for the last couple of minutes and I noticed that you seem to be hesitating a little, as if you weren't sure what to do." Julia pointed out her earlier observation.

Ranma stopped and looked at her, he had a bit of sweat beginning to form on his face. "Hesitation?"

"Yeah, just a tiny bit, but your movements looked like you were trying to force them and it was throwing your timing off."

"I was thinking the same thing a little earlier, but to fix it would mean a lot of work, several weeks of hard training."

"The problem isn't that bad, what exactly were you thinking?"

"You and my old man have totally different teaching styles and I've been trying to adapt to your style, but their so different that the two forms won't mesh like the one's I'm used to."

Julia thought about it for a second and recalled Master Leep mentioning that he had dealt with a similar problem when he was younger and had to get some of his students to 'think' along the right paths to learn from him, otherwise they had just been wasting his time. She'd never really thought about it before or even come across the problem when taking on other students like Sheila's brother Gar. Ranma's style was quite difficult to perform, a freestyle form that was easily adaptable to other styles to give him an advantage to counter any fighter he came across, her's was of a similar style, but it had some very regimented Kata built into the core style that had to be followed perfectly or they would cause grievous injury to the person performing it or even an innocent.

"I see, that is quite a problem Ranma, but it's easily fixed and won't take all that long to cure you."

"What are you talking about, to learn your style I have to adapt to it and that means learning all the little stuff."

"No you don't Ranma, our styles are actually kind of the same, but it's the regimented stuff that's throwing you off because you keep trying too adapt and change it into your core style and those moves just don't work right when you alter them."

"Hmmm...."

"Why don't you take the next few days and practice Ranma, practice those moves until you can do them in your sleep and then adapt them a little at a a time until you master them. This includes the Neko-Ken, by the time the week ends I expect you to have at least have most of them under control and ingrained into your style."

"Alright, that shouldn't be to hard."

Julia shook her head. "Ranma if you didn't have the learning curve of a straight line I'd give odds that a normal fighter wouldn't be able to do that in less than a year."

Ranma chuckled and scratched the back of his head.

"Now let's run through the Kata that you need to practicing with."

**********

"Bot #12?"

"Working."

"Run over to Ranma's room, I have a little mission for you."

"What is the nature of the assignment?"

"I want you to collect something for me." Gina said with a wicked grin.

Bot #12 was one of Gina's fully functioning AI's and he recognized the look on Gina's face, Brianna had reprogrammed him and some of the others to know what it meant and filed away it's reservations about its current assignment. He listened to her orders and realized that they weren't all that strange, so he nodded in agreement and went off to do Gina's bidding. He really hated doing the laundry though...

He made a mental note to his hard drive to have the washers updated, he was also in need of an upgrade on his AI systems.

**********

The observatory was at least a hundred foot tall and sat comfortably at the top of a tall cliff base. Over the generations workers had slowly chipped away at the cliff face create several levels where they had dug out homes and businesses for them to work a living. In this day and age the place had grown so large that the entire inside of the cliff face was hollowed out and turned into rooms with magic being used to brace up those areas that needed a little help while they were braced up properly. It was a city of strange beauty and style that boasted that it could make any weapon in existence so long as they had the materials and the time to do so. It was here that Dr. Diggers appeared, on the second level where there was a dimensional gate constructed so that a magic user could come her without worrying about the spell going arry.

It was actually a small stone dais that rose up above the ground by about a foot, the center of it was polished to a bright shine and had a number of symbols carved into the floor. Around the dais was a simple wooden railing with one entrance facing towards one of the nearby businesses, there were a couple of guards dressed in armor to either side of this entrance, they were here to make sure no unwanted guests showed up and tried to threaten them. It had been an addition that Bugee hadn't thought he would need when he set his tower up, but over time he had been forced to adapt to the mistrust and hatred of those people that thought they could walk over him and his people.

A chime sounded off and the guards perked up and turned to the dias, the early warning system had saved their lives more than once, it gave them a ten second warning before anyone could step through to the dais. The symbols on the floor flashed a bright green as a portal formed and Dr. Digger's stepped through and looked around to see if he was where he wanted to. Since he had left his home in the Earth Realm to come here, he wasn't dressed in his skin tight black mage suit like normally was. The guards held their spears at the ready and were giving him a weird look since he was wearing one of his 'loud' Hawaiian shirts, a pair of shorts, and sunglasses.

"Howdy." He said with a wave.

"Who are you?" One of the guards asked.

"Dr. Theodore Diggers, Arch mage of Aura Magic for the Council, I'm here to see Bugee."

"You don't look like any mage I've ever seen!" Snapped the second guard, Dr. Diggers glanced at him and noticed that he had to be thirty years younger than the other guard. He figured the kid was new to the job, most everyone in the city knew him on sight no matter how he was dressed.

"Idiot!" The older guard snapped and thumped the younger one over the head with his spear.

"Would it help if I put on my working clothes?" Dr. Diggers asked with some amusement.

"Head on up to the observatory Dr. Diggers, you don't have to change if you don't want too."

"Thanks, Seth." He said as his remembered the guards name, they had met a few times before this.

The old man smiled and waved him off while he chewed out the younger guard for not following his lead and saying something like that to an Arch Mage of his level. Bugee didn't like to be bothered unless it was important (or it was cute girl come to say 'hi'), but Dr. Diggers had told the old man that he was on his way so there wouldn't be any problems. He headed to the far side of the rock shelf and made his way up a series of stone steps expertly carved with magic. There were several landings and each of these had a small crystal set into the stone of the banister that ran the whole length, these crystals were in fact intruder suppression magic that any of the guards could activate with a word from anywhere on the cliff face.

They fired out three different levels of punishment, a shock, a stun, and a kill shot that could vaporize any intruder. To Dr. Diggers relief the only ones ever used were the shock and stun settings, they had never had to kill anyone that tried to invade when knocking them out, stealing their equipment, and tossing them naked at the base of the cliff was enough of a deterrent to keep most bandits from trying anything. It was also common knowledge that the Archivist of the Mage Council made his home here and a Mage good enough to be on the Council was to be avoided at all costs if you were a criminal.

Dr. Diggers finally reached the top of the cliff and stood before the front door to the Observatory, this was one of the few places on all of Jade where a person could look up at the stars through Bugee's homemade telescope, it was a mixture of science and magic. The observatory, being a structure of technology, tended to be distrusted by most of the inhabitants of Jade because they just couldn't comprehend how it worked. Dr. Diggers had always been amused at how completely opposite Earth and Jade were. One was devoted to science and the other to magic, Bugee's observatory was a mixture of the two and was seen by many as bridging the gap between magic and science. Bugee's interest in the stars was a bit of an oddity as well, there were very few people on Jade that actually knew what a star really was, to most they were just mysterious twinkling lights that could be seen at night.

To Bugee they were like the first obstacle that had to be crossed before people could begin to master their destiny. He had been watching them for close to three hundred years now, carefully monitoring their changes on a day to day basis and had discovered a number of things that even the Mage Council hadn't wanted to believe when they were told. The biggest one was that there were planets other than Jade floating around their sun, something that a lot of people knew to be possible, but had never been proven before. Bugee had done this with his remarkable use of magic and science, the old man had been studying and tinkering with things like this for a very long time now.

Dr. Diggers, being from Earth had helped a little by bringing the old man books on the observatories from Earth and these had been used to find out information that magic hadn't been able to. The old man was also quite the eccentric, he didn't attend many of the Council meetings unless he was specifically asked to and even then he only showed up and stayed for only as long as it would take to get his business done. He rarely left this observatory these days as he studied his stars and other things that caught his interest, one of these was one of the oldest legends on Jade. The story of Jade's tyrant or ruler, Shi Hanna and his god like power that would one day save the world.

He knocked as he stepped inside, the small room just past the front door was just like he remembered it. There were a couple dozen large book shelves that ran along each wall until the staircase became visible, in one corner was a table covered with even more books. There was a light covering of dust everywhere, so he figured the room hadn't been used in some time or Bugee was just a bad house keeper. Heading up the stairs took him to Bugee's bedroom, it was larger than the one below it and had a ladder attached to the top of the stairs that went directly to the Observatory above. He ignored the bedroom and took the ladder up about twenty feet, until he moved thorugh a small hole in the ceiling.

This emerged into Bugee's domain and one of his most spectacular creations, the giant telescope sat on a dias at the far side of the room, glowing with magic. Dr. Diggers' looked around and spotted Bugee up near the top of the telescope working on something. Bugee was a, to put it mildly, an odd creature even by the standards of Jade. No one quite knew what to think of the guy when they first saw him, he was just over three feet high, had an oval like body with long arms and a head. He didn't have any legs and floated around on a near permanent levitation spell that he had cast upon himself.

"Bugee!!"

The old man turned and smiled at him. "Theodore!! How are you, I wasn't expecting you for another few hours yet."

"I'm right on time Bugee, you just forgot what time it is." Dr. Diggers said and pointed at a nearby clock.

"So it is." Bugee called and floated down to the floor. "What was it you needed again?"

"That information on Shi Hanna."

"Oh yes, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to help you out much."

"Oh? What did you find?"

"Shi Hanna is a legend, a very, very old legend that even my special talents had trouble finding much on."

Dr. Diggers shrugged. "He was supposed to be some kind of Demigod wasn't he, the savior of the world and it's people as I understand it."

"Humph!" Bugee said and folded his arms as they made their way down the ladders and stairs. When they reached the first floor, they set up the table and sat down as Bugee conjured up some tea for them to drink.

"I take it you don't agree?"

"Shi Hanna is much more than that, the legends are all in the First Language you know, and that makes things even harder to figure out."

"The First Language? I thought Ribbon was the first language?"

"One would thinks so, but Ribbon is actually a written language that came about around that time, not the first one though."

"Oh yes, my daughter Gina mentioned something to me and Julia about the origins of Ribbon Language a few months ago. I'll have to ask her what it was..." Dr. Digger's looked a bit confused.

Bugee leaned forward curiously. "You don't remember what it was?"

"No, just that she told me something. It must not have been all that important if I can't remember what it was though."

"You, of all people should know better than that, Diggers." Bugee pointed out with a bit of a smirk.

Dr. Diggers frowns and casts a quick spell upon himself. "Fascinating, if you hadn't pointed it out I would never have noticed that someone had been playing with my memory and I'm trained to detect these things."

"Even today we are haven't reached the level of mastery over magic that the Shadows had available at the time, even their technology was several levels above what is possible on Earth today."

"You think the Shadows did this to me?" Dr. Diggers asked in some surprise. "This is a current development, I'll track this guy down and make sure he doesn't do it again. The Shadows are gone and will never be back and even if they did turn up again we have the Armsmaster and Weaponmasters to fight them, we also have the Shadow Elves and their incredible powers."

Bugee arched one of his large bushy eyebrows. "As you say Diggers, before the Shadows were here, we had the legend of the Shi Hanna and believe it or not, I found several references in the archives that suggested that he held many names during that dark time. There was a name that translated loosely as Slayer of Demons, another was Blossom of Death, then there was Justice in Fire, and a several others along that line of thought. Everyone of them seem to suggest that it was a form of justice that would destroy it's enemies."

"They all point to something dark and sinister don't they?"

"Quite, the legends say this guy was supposed to swoop down on anyone that pissed him off and annihilate them from existence, good or evil didn't seem to matter."

"Hmm...that doesn't seem like Ranma at all, he is innocent to some extreme levels and even though he is a good fighter he strikes me as someone that would only kill as a last resort."

"Then Ranma may not be this being, perhaps he's something else, perhaps a talented fighter with nearly limitless potential? Most of our Armsmaster's fit that description very easily, but this fluctuating aura you mentioned has me worried." Bugee said and sipped from his tea.

"How so?"

"Magic is at times very predictable, it's how you and the rest of us on the counsel are able to achieve as much skill as we have. Are you sure that he isn't doing this on purpose?"

Dr. Diggers frowned a little. "Ranma has no experience with magic and getting him to learn it will be a pain, he doesn't trust the stuff, thinks of it as cheating."

"That's normal for any young fighter, I believe you ran into that the day you met your wife and misjudged the warriors tournament."

Dr. Diggers looked away as he fought off a blush, he had stumbled across Julia fighting this guy in armor. For a second it looked like she was about to be killed and cast a spell to shield her from the blow, this ended up getting her thrown out of the tournament for cheating. She wasn't a happy camper and chased him down to punish him for interfering, using the woods for a quick distraction he'd jumped into a tree and created an illusion of himself. She attacked the illusion in an attempt to pin his mage suit to the tree by the shoulder and disrupted the illusion, then glared up at him hiding in the tree. This wouldn't have been so bad, but she jumped up there, wrapped her legs around his throat and used her weight to throw him to the ground with her landing sitting on his chest and neck. He'd gotten quite a view around her revealing costume, it had certainly been lust at first sight for both of them. Their relationship had developed from there and led to many years of adventuring around Jade.

"I don't think this is the same thing Bugee, there isn't a pattern to Ranma's aura, it just reads as something different every time I try to read it."

"Hmm...this does sound familiar, but the more I learn of this the less it sounds like this Shi Hanna character. Could this multi type aura thing be a byproduct of something instead of the end cause?"

"I considered that, but I couldn't figure out anything that might cause the change in his aura."

"You said Ranma was from the Earth Realm, right?"

Dr. Diggers nodded.

"Could it be the effect caused by him traveling between dimensions? It is a documented effect that we have noticed in the were animal cultures that travel between here and the Retreat. The effect is rare, but we have encountered it before and if you remember they had problems transforming until we learned to help them."

"You don't think this could be the same thing? The effects are totally different and Ranma doesn't have any inherent magic like the were creatures do."

"Of course he does Diggers, he was cursed by Jusenkyo before he even arrived in Jade."

"Oh, of course, and Jusenkyo magic is incredibly unstable and resistant to other kinds of magic now that I think of it."

"Exactly, but this only makes teaching him how to control his magical ability just as important as before."

"Indeed, thanks Bugee, I was looking at this from the wrong point of view."

"Keep an eye on Ranma, there still might be something to what you were saying about the Shi Hanna legend though. Only time will really tell and we won't know for some time."

"Alright."

**********

Getting out of bed the next morning was something new for Ranma, Master Julia had run him ragged the night before, forcing him to go over several different Kata again and again and again. He was stiff and sore, much more than he usually was after a long workout and he had to spend half an hour stretching just to get his body working properly again. Most of his clothing was being washed by Gina's robots so he had to settle for a pair of shorts and a tight t-shirt while working out. He hadn't worn anything like this in several years and it felt kind of strange on him, but he ignored it and got down to work just as the sun was coming up.

His life has always been filed with strange occurrences, so he should have suspected something when he got up and found that his clothes were all in the wash. An hour and a half into his workout Ranma had completely forgotten just what he was wearing, on the other hand, someone else sure hadn't. Set just under the over hang of the roof was a small cloaked Peebo transmitting pictures of Ranma's morning workout to a monitor in Brianna's room. Over the last few weeks she had developed quite a collection of Ranma working out in a normal Gi or his Tangs that the liked to wear.

You see, Brianna had this reputation among the single men in the house, Genn and Séance were quite familiar with her habits. Unfortunately she had been keeping her activities to a minimum with Ranma around the house, Julia had even asked her to keep things down while he was around. So her reaction to Ranma had been to try and ignore him, her current attempt to ignore him was to get used to him and find someone else to 'play' with, but Genn was running around Jade taking care of some mysterious goal. She had tried to turn to Séance, but he wasn't around all that much now that he was almost completed his training with her father.

So she watched Ranma workout in the mornings, tinkered with her Peebo's and drooled a little. Weeks of this had done it's job, she could look at Ranma without much trouble, he was a decoration that was on her monitor in the mornings. That was why she woke up just after sunrise for her morning run with Britanny, got dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt and turned on the monitor to check her e-mail messages and froze in shock. On the screen was a sweat covered Ranma with his shirt off and running through a Kata that showed off just how limber and developed this sixteen year old was, how powerful, and how manly he truly was. The fact that he was glowing with a soft white aura might have worsened the situation, but one will never be to sure what it was actually.

"Oh....My...God..." Brianna said as her eyes glazed over and she started to grin. If Genn had been in the room he would have ran from the house screaming and not returned for several days and gotten an all clear from witnesses. Gina would have turned a pale white and hid in her room until the her sister calmed down or gone on a sudden solo adventure to get out of the house as quickly as possible. Britanny would have locked her husband Stripe in his room and guarded the room with high caliber weapons to make sure Brianna couldn't get in. There was only one thing good about this situation that anyone could say and that was the fact that Ranma didn't have a clue about the storm that Gina had set off.

Brianna smiled and her eyes sparkled as plans cycled through her brain as her pupils
shrank and expanded, hormones raged, and her fingers traced the outlines of Ranma's muscles on the screen. In the background her Peebo-TIE squadron ducked out a convenient window while the ground based Peebo's on the floor ran for it, they had witnessed this to many times too ignore these signals. They may have been self intelligent bombs, but even they knew that something big was about to go down and that meant using what little self preservation instincts they had. She chucked the running outfit and started digging through her closet until she came across one of Britanny's skin tight one pieces. Stepping over to a mirror, she held it up against her nude body and smirked.

Out in front of the house, Britanny and Stripe gave up waiting for Brianna to show up and decided to go on without her. It had happened before so they didn't think much of it, they ran down the block slowly picking up speed and soon vanished. If they had known that Brianna was having one of her mood swings they would have planned a quick two week vacation and not regretted a minute of it. Instead they were out for a leisurely run that would take them away from Brianna and her plans, they had no clue just how lucky there were, or in this case, how lucky Strype was. In Gina's room she was laying on her bed relaxing as she watched Ranma workout in the tight shorts she'd left him to wear, having Bot #12 wash all of Ranma's clothes had been a great idea. It was a yummy sight and her resolve to stay away from Ranma started to weaken as she watched him 'play', he may have been young, but in the last few weeks he had developed into a major hunk of beef.

"What a package!" Gina squealed and giggled loudly. When she was done throwing a party for herself she looked up as a dozen Peebo's, both ground and air type, raced into her room and slammed the door shut, they all looked scared as they hid under her bed. Gina blinked as she rolled over and hung off the edge of the bed to look underneath it. "What's up with you guys?"

"Brianna's going code red!!" They all yelled and retreated to the far back corner.

"Code Red!!"

"Code Red!!"

"Red!! Oh shit! Who is it this time, she nearly killed the last one!" Gina yelled as her mind raced through the possibilities, then her eyes stopped on Ranma as he was doing a series of aerial kicks and she paled.

"I'M COMING FOR YOU MY STUD MUFFIN!!" Brianna's voice echoed all over the house.

"Brianna DON'T!!" Gina yelled as she ran out of the room.

Julia dragged herself out of bed as her daughters started running through the house, she had been looking forward to sleeping in a bit too, she was still tired from all that practicing with Ranma. Then she heard Gina yell something about a code red and gasped as she remembered what that meant. A couple years back Gina and Britanny had received a curse and attempted to get rid of it by transferring it to a bit of protoplasm or something like that. Instead this had created a clone, a melding of both Gina and Britanny that had all their memories and skills. This clone called herself Grave Digger and spent the rest of the day trying to kill the two.

Eventually her husband had come home and taken care of the situation by casting a Remove Curse spell on Grave Digger and allowing her to revert back to a clone of Gina and Britanny, she had taken the name Brianna Diggers and they had been sisters ever since. Brianna had certain flaws as a clone that were usually under tight control, one of them, the most dangerous of them was that she had twice the sexual appetite of a normal girl and if she didn't take care of that urge once or twice a week she tended to do things like this. Julia didn't even want to think of Brianna's obsession with high level ordinances. Guns just wouldn't do, no she had gone out and created intelligent bombs that helped around the house and transformable weapons that made a simple pistol look like a toy out of a box of cracker jax.

"BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!" Brianna cackled as she ran by Julia's bedroom door, this was followed by Gina's foot steps.

"You get back here Brianna!"

"Never, he's mine and you can't stop me!"

"Brianna!"

Experience had given Julia a certain outlook on things and even after two months she had a feeling that Ranma was Brianna's newest obsession. She stood up and glanced out the window to see if Ranma was working out in the back yard, a very surprising sight met her eye and she had to take a second look to make sure she wasn't hallucinating. Ranma was pushing himself harder than normal this morning and wearing a pair of shorts that were so tight that his man hood was undeniable. With a shake of her head she decided that Brianna's reaction was understandable, Ranma was very handsome. She figured that Gina had spotted him too and had come across Brianna as she snuck around the house.

Back on Jade Ranma would have been considered a bit weird to be a virgin at his age and with his good looks, so Julia decided that she wouldn't interfere in this. Anyway, if Ranma didn't want to go along with it he would be able to get out of it easily enough with his skills. Ranma needed a wake up call anyway, it would help him mature a bit and help him to achieve some of that man among men crap that he had mentioned at some point. She heard another laugh from down stairs and several explosions as Brianna fought her way out of a trap that Gina had set off to stop her from getting to Ranma. Grabbing up a robe she grinned, this was going to be an interesting day and she didn't want to miss any of it.

BOOM!

"Brianna!!" Gina yelled.

CRASH!

"BWHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!"

"AGHAAAAAAAA! !"

"BRIANNA STAY AWAY FROM THE NEIGHBORS!!"

"OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOH!!

"AGHAAAAAAAAAAA!!"

Julia chuckled as she headed for the bathroom, she missed the diving tackle Brianna performed as she jumped off the roof and captured Ranma in the middle of a Kata, dragged him to the ground and hog tied in an eye blink. Gina came running around the corner, but she was already to late. Her last sight was of Ranma tied to a pole by his hands and feet, gagged securely, while Brianna and couple of her Peebo-TIE's held the pole up and carried Ranma back into the house like a captured lion. Gina hoped Ranma survived her sister's attention, few had the stamina to meet her needs, it was one of the things her and Brianna had in common, not that she would admit it out loud. It was about here that Britanny and Strype were seen peaking around the corner of the house, they look scared, but now that Ranma had been taken they felt it was a little safer to come home.

**********

The alarm clock went off and Gina groaned as she tossed the sheets off and rolled out of bed to stand up. She walked across the room to her wall computer and turned off the alarm as she grabbed a short silk robe, some towels, and a change of clothes. There were some things she had to take care of today that she needed to get to, her research had pointed out the position of a potential treasure trove on an island in the south pacific that was once used by some pirates a few hundred years ago. The only problem with it was that some of the information was kind of sketchy, she wanted to check it out to see what she might find. It wasn't as old as some of her other finds, but the treasure would be a great way to pay a couple of their credit card bills, Brit's may shopping trips to the mall for clothing were famous among the specialty stores around town.

She also needed to go on this trip to get certain things off her mind, namely the odd sounds that had been coming out of Brianna's room for the past week. Gina wasn't sure what had happened in there, but when one heard power tools going at three in the morning, it had to be something weird. So as she stepped out of her room, Gina had to stop and gape as she saw a bare assed Ranma stumbling down the hall, he didn't look like he was in the best of shape, but she did get a little peeved when he didn't even seem to see her in the little short robe and all the skin she was showing off. He staggered into his own room and slammed the door, she heard the magnetic lock engage and decided to forgive him this once. Brianna must have ran him ragged for the last few days, but he looked better than Genn had on the few occasions he had escaped from her clutches.

Gina blinked and ran the last few seconds through her head again and grinned as a vision of a 'bare assed' well muscled man swam into her imagination again. Then she spent a few minutes banging her head against the wall for not taking the opportunity to get a look at him from the front, those shorts he'd been wearing a few days before were tight, but not enough to give her a decent look and now he was naked. She wandered back to her room as she lamented her sister's over active libido and wondered if there was any way to...Gina's thoughts screeched to a halt as she stepped back into her room to grab something. A quick dash down the hall, down some stairs, and down another hall and she was in front of her sister's room. The door was open so she stepped inside and looked around.

There were the shreds of clothes everywhere, but Brianna was splayed out on the bed with a sheet barely covering her as she slept. Brianna's room was quite large, it may have been on a level lower than Gina's room was, but the bedroom itself happened to be right under Gina's room. The rest of it a large living room, several large closets, a lab, garage, and several other rooms that were used for various experiments. The huge grin on Brianna's face was enough proof for Gina, like the smell wasn't, she needed to see if Brianna had done what she usually did when she went on one of these little mood changes.

Pulling a small device out of the pocket on her robe she knelt down below the computer desk and opened up a small access panel and installed it where Brianna wouldn't find it for a day or two. She giggled quietly and backed out of the little cubby and came face to face with one of Brianna's Peebo-TIE'S as it floated down from the ceiling and glared at her. She crawled to her feet and looked the thing over, Brianna's skill with these AI devices was growing daily and Gina didn't know what her sister was going to come up with next. "Um...heheh...I'm just here to check on my sister..." Gina said nervously, these things sometimes went off with very little prodding and she didn't have her force field generator on. She noticed a couple of small gun like nodes on the ends of each wing, they were starting to spark menacingly.

"INTRUDER!!" The Peebo-TIE said.

"Oh shit!" Gina hissed and made a run for it, but the TIE swooped down and fired a pair of beams at her, she dodged and dove out the door as the floor exploded behind her. The evil thing flew out the door as she hit the stairs and headed for her room where she had the equipment to stop the thing.

"FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!" The TIE chanted as it fired lasers at Gina.

"AGHAAAAAAAAA!!"

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOOOM!!!

Gina ran down the hall and dove into her room and grabbed one of her new guns off a nearby table and pointed it at the TIE as it flew into the room. With a loud 'POP' a burst of energy flew from the gun andhit the TIE in mid air only to surround it in a sphere of energy. It fired several laser shots that bounced off the inside of the sphere and quickly dissipated, then it's face turned into a frown and glared at Gina who was jumping up and down excitedly. "GOT YOU, I KNEW IT WOULD WORK!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!"

"INTURDER, LEVEL 2 RESTRAINT!!" The TIE said.

Stumbling to a halt Gina turned to look at the TIE as it swung around and emitted a flare of energy that popped the force field her gun had created. "Oh shit..." The lasers fired again, but this time they zeroed in on Gina's chest, she gasped at they hit and gaped as she lifted off the ground and hung there. It was like hovering in space, ever move had an equal and opposite reaction and within seconds Gina found herself hovering upside down and holding her short robe in place with her hands to keep her panties from showing.

"TRACTOR BEAM ACTIVATED, LEVEL ONE RESTRAINT UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS RECIEVED."

"Brianna I'm going to get you for this." Gina muttered.

The TIE was oblivious to her predicament now, it just hovered there making Peebo sounds and smiling to itself. Gina heard something and turned to see Ranma, now in a pair of his loose black pants and shirtless, walk into the room and glare at her and the Peebo-TIE. "Can you keep it down, I haven't slept in a week and I need a little rest."

"Um...sure, could you get Brianna to turn the TIE off."

Ranma turned his blood shot eyes to Gina and sighed as he moved over to the TIE and reached out to touch one of the panels on the left wing of the TIE, the panel glowed and the Tractor Beam shut down. Gina dropped to the floor with a grunt as Ranma staggered out of the room, down to his own, walked in, and slammed the door and locked it again. The TIE floated there for a second before flying out of the room with a confused look on it's face and making its way down to Brianna's room.

"Thanks." Gina snapped as she sat up. That was twice he hadn't taken notice of her state of dress. Was the guy that blind to her good looks or was he just that tired, seven days without sleep was quite a while, but she'd never heard of a guy that wouldn't notice a good looking girl no matter how tired they were. She stood up, adjusted her robe, and moved over to her computer and activated the little device she had installed in Brianna's computer. It would take it a few hours to get the information she wanted, but it would be worth it in the end and she could add it to her growing Ranma collection.

**********

Getting out of bed later that day was chore, but Ranma did it even though he was still incredibly tired and wore out. He didn't think about what Brianna had done to him over the last few days, he did not think about the perverted mind that had installed a zero gravity zone on one's own bed for the increased sexual adventure. No, he thought about how tired he was and how long it would take for him to recover from this little mess and the amount of practice he had missed out on in the last week of activity. Though his father would have patted him on the back and told him to enjoy it while it lasted, he just shuddered and groaned in pain and tried to block the last week out of his mind. There were certain things he didn't want to think about and one of those was his father's ideas on sex and how a man did 'it' whenever he could. The old man's idea of sex education was a night at the local brothel with a twenty dollar whore.

Nope, he wasn't going to think about that or Brianna, he had other things to take care of now that he was free of her clutches and that included a bit of training, a good workout, and lots of food. What he'd been eating for the last week hadn't been all that filling...he slammed his head into a nearby wall to drive the evil thoughts out of his head and headed for the shower. A hot shower was just what he needed and he spent about half an hour relaxing and loosening his muscles before he got out, dried off, and got dressed in his normal black pants and a long sleeved white shirt with leaves spaced here and there for a pattern. It wasn't exactly his normal attire, but he didn't feel like wearing the red and black today.

Checking the clock on the computer he saw that it was almost noon, that would give him a few hours to get caught up and work the rest of the kinks out of his body. He really hadn't expected Brianna to go that far, but he wasn't going to complain about it unless something odd happened because of it. He entered the living room and saw that Britanny was watching TV, she was dressed in what she called her adventuring outfit. A skin tight spandex body suit that showed off her every curve. He didn't say anything at first, just noted it, and started digging up one of Gina's quick meals.

The microwave that girl had designed was able to cook anything in less than thirty seconds, it was fast, hot, and edible enough to keep using it. Grabbing a box of frozen wings from the fridge he emptied it out onto one of the special plates and tossed it in the microwave and pressed the 'cook' button. A few seconds later he was sitting down at the table with a few napkins and began eating everything on his plate. He waved a hand at Britanny and he gave a few of the wings to Brit and made a show of looking her over and raising an eyebrow.

"Why am I dressed like this?"

Ranma nodded and tore into another wing.

"Gina set up another treasure hunting adventure, we were going to leave in a little while to see what we could find and get out of the house for a while."

"Can I come along?"

"After what Brianna did to you? Do you have the energy to go on an adventure this soon?" Britanny asked with a leer.

"Sure, I got a few hours sleep and I need to get out of this house for a while, this seems like a good way to do it."

"I don't know, Brianna did this to Genn a few times and it always took him a few days to recover from it..."

"I'm a bit tired, but this adventure of yours sounds like fun."

"Hmmm...I'll have to ask Gina, but I don't see why you can't go with us, though she might want to limit the number of people."

He shrugged. "If she says no I won't mind, I just need to get out of this house and do something to get my mind focused again. A treasure hunt would do that."

Britanny shrugged and finished off her wings in a couple of bites, bones and all, and stands up. "Let me go ask her."

"Okay." Ranma nods.

Breaking into a slow run Britanny vanishes from the room in the blink of an eye and Ranma feels the wind whipping his clothes and has to grab one of the wings as it tries to live up to it's name and take flight. Britanny is gone for about ten seconds before she returns, this time at a slower pace, appearing in front of the table with a grin. "Gina says you can come so long as you get a good meal and make us up something to eat that we can take along with us and eat for dinner."

"Oh? Well I can do that so long as you don't mind a rice dish."

"Not at all, just make enough for ten people, that way we have enough for our big appetites later and something for tomorrow on the way home. Gina's tired of having to cook all our food when we go on an adventure." Brit said with a wink.

Ranma resisted the urge to flinch and nodded slowly. "No problem, give me half hour, that microwave of Gina's will speed up things considerably."

"Go for it." Brit said with a grin and went back to watching TV, 500 channels and all of them were showing things she'd already seen, twice.

How does a microwave cook rice, medium grain, in less than thirty seconds and make it come out perfect? Ranma didn't have a clue, but it worked and twenty minutes later he had ten bowls of rice made up and a main dish of Lemon Chicken set aside in a larger bowl to take with them. Gina had certain kinds of foods preprogrammed into her kitchen computer to help with cooking and to save time, just hit a button and a few minutes later it popped out piping hot and in perfectly cooked fashion. He was just getting everything packed set out on the table when Gina came into the kitchen, nodded, and pulled out her Light Gate remote and transferred the whole meal into storage.

"Ready to go?"

"Yep, I just need to run to my room and grab my pack and change my shirt, this one is too nice to take on an adventure, we might get in a fight."

"Go ahead, I'll place it with our equipment."

**********

Among Gina's bag of tricks, when she wasn't using Ace to cart her around the world, was the family car. The car was a one of a kind device that Gina had designed from the ground up, every square inch of it. It could go faster than a race car, take more punishment than a tank due to the special materials it was made out of, and actually fly. She didn't use the ability very much, traveling with Ace was usually more fun and he was easy on the eyes, but when he wasn't available the car would do in a pinch. Even Ranma had to gape in awe as the car revved up like a Harley Davidson and a set of VTOL jets along the running boards lifted the car off the ground, the tires flipped sideways and the hub cap shaped fans built into the tires propelled them forward. At the same time the trunk lifted up and fired set of low power rockets that propelled them forward, a set of short stubby wings located just under the floor board swung out and balanced the car in the air.

Gina started humming the theme song to Inspector Gadget and giggling as they shot forward, quickly picking up speed as they left the city limits. Dashboard computers lit up to show an aerial map, radar screen, and the locations of all the high altitude traffic they had to avoid. She tapped a few buttons and started gaining altitude as the rockets propelled them to faster and faster speeds. Ranma had to clutch the armrest of his seat and hope they didn't hit anything at this insane speed. Gina cackled a little.

"Gina you are such a geek!" Brittany said from the passenger seat. "Don't you agree Ranma?"

"Geek? Yeah, but I don't understand why you would say that." Ranma muttered from the back seat.

"She's humming the theme song to Inspector Gadget!" Brit complained.

"What's that? A cop?" Asked a confused Ranma, totally lost and getting worse as both girls turn to give him a weird look.

"How can you not know what Inspector Gadget is?!" Gina yells at him and doesn't pay attention to the clouds in front of them.

Ranma pales as they suddenly fly by a flock of birds and miss them by only a few feet, he tries to point it out, but his voice won't work. "Um.."

"Inspector Gadget was a great cartoon! I grew up on it, I even know the guy the show was based off of, his daughter is a genius like me, lives just down the block and everything!" Gina yells. 'I'm smarter though.' She mumbles under her breath.

"Um...Okay." Ranma says and smiles like he doesn't mean it.

"She's even got that computer book and everything, it's got a slow Ram speed, but she built it herself, she has potential..." Gina mumbles to her self as she turns to see where they are flying and turns the wheel to avoid the mountain Ranma had just noticed, making the car do a ninety degree upward climb that plasters them all into their seats. He notices that Britanny doesn't even look concerned and Ranma begins to think coming along with these crazy girls might have been a bad idea after all. He starts to sweat and quietly buckles his seat belt and pretends to be enjoying himself. Would Brianna have been safer than these two?

"See Ranma, this will be a lot of fun when we get there." Brit says with a feral grin and a flick of her tail.

"O-okay, I'll take your word for it." Ranma mutters, silently wishing for a crash helmet and some armor. Looking out the window helps to pass the time, Gina was still muttering, but he ignored it and looked out the window and praying for time to go by a little faster.

About half an hour later Gina taps some buttons on the dash and the aerial view changes to show a small island on the forward scanner. Ranma had though Ace was a dangerous pilot, Gina made him look like a pilot that did everything by the book and could quote safety regulations. He had to resist the urge to scream as the car suddenly lost altitude and dropped down to sea level and started to skim the waves. Gina tapped a few more buttons as the island got closer and he could see that it was like large piece of rock rising up out of the ocean, it had no beaches that he could see, just rock walls that rose a hundred or so feat in the are. As they circled island Ranma noticed that it was a couple of miles long and about half a mile wide, covered in a thick carpet of trees, vegetation, and more rock hills that dotted the whole island.

"Where in the hell am I going to land? I don't see a clearing anywhere and landing in the water would be problematic." Gina muttered to herself.

"Does this thing still have those lasers built into it?" Brit asked.

"Sure, why?"

"Come up along the outer wall and prime the lasers, then when you cross the edge of the rock mow down some the trees and plants, several blasts from the lasers could turn the trees into kindling and splinters and give us a level place to land."

"I don't know Brit, I didn't want to cause that much damage just to land us, but that just may work."

"How about on top of one of those hills that are sticking out of the trees? Use the laser to level one of them off a little and land the same way you took off." Ranma pointed out.

"Hey, that'll work great and I wouldn't have to kill any trees. Thanks Ranma." Gina said as she zeroed in on one of the more level hills, found she didn't have to use the laser after all, and swung the car around to land. It would be a tight fit, but there would be enough space on either side of the car to move around for a few feet. As she got closer she used the small fans in the tires and a small camera below the car to land with a soft bump that didn't even use the cars shocks. "There we go, now all we have to do is find the treasure and were set for the next few months!" Gina crowed.

Britanny laughed nervously as she got out of the car to look around to see if there were any immediate threats they had to take care of. "So Gina what exactly are we looking for?"

"Let me get some equipment from the Light Gate and get things set up, this shouldn't take to long."

"Go for it." Brit said.

Stepping out of the car Ranma had to resist the urge to kiss the ground, he was sure if he had to ride in that death trap again he was going to die a six hundred mile per hour death as Gina rammed them into the side of a building. He shuddered and shook the fear off, he was man, he could survive a female driver even if she did scare the piss out of him. Looking around the area Ranma could see thick jungle trees, animals like birds, monkeys, and other things all around them. He wandered around the car as Gina pulled out her remote and used the Light Gate to bring out a box set up in three thin metal legs, several lights and a small screen lit up the instant it appeared. She started fiddling with it and humming to herself, Ranma didn't know what do so and wandered over to Brit as she looked over the Jungle around them.

"So now what?" He asked.

"We just wait, Gina fiddles with her gadgets for a while, finds what she wants, then we go wherever they point and fight a monster or three, get the treasure and go home to pay off a credit card."

"Credit card? Won't you have any money left?"

"Not really, we got a bit carried away a couple months back just before we met you and accidentally spent more money than we should have. Dad bailed us out, but insists we pay him back since were adults now, most of the treasure will go to him and mom while the rest is used to pay off the credit card."

"Ah..." Ranma said and looked around, these people were weird, really weird at times and he wondered if it had been a good idea to come along with them. All he had really wanted to do was get away from Brianna and her 'raging itch' as she called it. He shuddered again and decided that these two were a whole lot better than Brianna and those strange devices she had pulled out of her lab, he didn't want to suffer through that kind of thing again.

"This is pretty normal for us, don't worry about, with my speed and Gina's smarts we always come through in the end."

"Oh I'm not worried, I just don't know what you usually do on these things and I want to be prepared."

Britanny shrugged. "Just keep your eyes peeled for hidden traps, dead falls, strange looking walls, and slavering demonic hordes of green bug like creatures and you should be fine."

"Um..." Ranma said and ran out words.

She giggled. "Don't worry about it, the first trip is always a lot more stressful if you worry about it so much. Strype tried to help out once and ended up wrapped in bandages from head to toe and he's got all those magical items to use as well. Just keep your eyes open and follow my lead and everything will be fine."

"JINKIES!!" Gina said, jumped around a few times like a fool and cackled.

"Is that normal?" Ranma asked and pointed at Gina with his thumb.

"Oh yeah, we usually try to find one thing and end up finding something else that's a lot more dangerous. So it's pretty normal." Britanny said as she turned and yelled at her sister. "What did you find sis?"

"I just found out why this island is shaped the way it is and if I'm right we will find something really neat inside the island."

"So where do we go first?"

Picking up the Light Gage remote she put the little machine away and replaced it with some picks and shovels. "About twenty feet down this hill, right at the tree line, there should be a door buried just under the dirt. All we have to do is dig it out and since both of you are here it won't take all that long with your speed and Ranma's enhanced strength." She cackled a little more.

Leaning in close to Ranma's ear Britanny whispered to him. "She only gets like this when she finds something big and really interesting to her, I don't know what it is but things are always a little dangerous when she gets like this. Be really careful."

"Right." Ranma says and grabs a shovel. "Tell me where to start Gina and how far down you want."

"Sure, follow me." She leads them down the hill and points out a spot covered in small bushes. "Right there, it should be about four feet straight ahead. Once you two find the door we need to dig the whole thing out and see if there is a small pad off on the side of the door or a small panel of some kind."

He really didn't feel like digging all day so Ranma concentrated and charged the shovel with his Ki and slammed it into the hard dirt of the hill, the dirt shattered around his shovel as he made it vibrate at height speed to cut through the dirt like a hot knife through butter. Britanny just stood off to the side and shoved all the excess dirt down the hill behind them, she hadn't been looking forward to this either. He speed would have helped to do just about the same thing, but Ranma seemed to be enjoying himself so she didn't interrupt him as they worked. About ten minutes later Ranma's vibrating shovel slammed into something metal and he stopped to make sure he didn't break anything. There was no sign of the door, but now that he knew how deep he could go he speed up and soon had a large section of the metal visible.

"I found the metal, but there's no door and I've already cleared about ten feet of it away. Are you sure this is where the door is supposed to be Gina?"

She nodded. "Yes, I may be off a little bit, but everything pointed to this spot, clear the dirt out to sides a little more and see what you find."

"Alright." Working around the outside of the hill took some time, but about an hour later and covered in sweat, Ranma found a seam in the metal and Gina said he'd finally found the door. Twenty minutes after that Ranma and Brit had the whole door uncovered and a little palm plate on the right side of the door. "There you go Gina, anything else?"

"Nope, that should do it. All I have to do is examine it and figure out how to open the door without breaking anything."

"Well let me know if you need anything else."

Gina nodded and waved him away as she pulled some tools from her belt and started examining the door and lock.

"I suppose we wait again?" Ranma asked Britanny as they leaned against their shovels, she nodded and looked bored.

"Yeah, but keep an eye open, every now and then she opens one of these doors and there's a guardian or something on the other side of the door that attacks us. It usually livens things up, but they are out to kill us so we have to take them down as quickly as possible."

"Ah...okay."

"Well while we've got a few minutes will you answer a question?"

Ranma shrugged. "Sure."

"What exactly did Brianna do to you for a whole week? I can understand two or three days, but seven days?"

He shuddered again and blushed. "Um..."

"You don't have to say if you don't want to, I'm just curious, it's just that Genn could only last a two or three days before she wore him out."

"She...um...made me use my Ki control to increase my stamina like I would in a fight and...um, taught me how to do certain things." Ranma said as his whole face turned bright red.

"FOR SEVEN DAYS?!!" Brit screamed.

"Well it was...um, more like several hours at a time before I collapsed, then we had to start again..." Ranma said, looking like he might pass out from the super blush he had going. Britanny was sure it reached his feet as he rubbed his toe in the dirt.

"YUMMMY!!" Gina said as she appeared right beside him and rubbed Ranma's rock hard ass.

"Aghaa!!" Ranma yelled and jumped into a nearby tree to escape.

Britanny looked a bit surprised, but nothing out of the ordinary. "Geeze sis, control yourself, he's a hunk and all that, but don't you think he's a bit young for you?"

"Age doesn't mater when you look like he does." Gina said as she drooled, with the words 'several hours' echoing in her head like a mantra.

"Well control your hormones girl, he's skittish enough as it is."

"Brianna had her chance, I must have mine, but it can wait since I have this door to open." Gina mumbled, eyed Ranma as he peaked out at her from behind some leaves and shrugged her shoulders. No wonder Brianna had been forced to kidnap him and drag the poor boy back to her room, he was almost scared of them and with that curse it was a little hard to believe. She would have to make sure there was no cold water around when she had her chance, didn't need any female bodies around that room but hers and she would show Ranma what a real woman could do. She let off a perverted giggle as she worked and Ranma had to resist his urge to go running off into the forest to get away from her.

"Gina, focus on the door, you're scaring Ranma."

"HEY!!" Ranma yelled as he jumped out of the tree.

"Door? Oh that, I got it open a few seconds ago." Gina said and tapped the small plate just to the side of the door. There's a loud 'thunk' sound and the door moves backward and slides into the wall with a hiss of air.

They gag for several seconds on the old stale air before moving away from the door, Gina suggests eating lunch while they wait for the air to circulate through the whole structure. Half an hour later they finish off about half the food Ranma had cooked and moved back over to the door. Now that they weren't gagging on the bad air, they could see that there was a small walk way leading to a series of ropes. Gina moved forward carefully, flashing her flashlight along the walls to let them all see the runes that are carved right into metal of the wall. She reaches out to touch one and it starts to glow a light blue color, suddenly the door they had just opened slides back into position and closes with a loud thunk and his of air.

"Gina!" Brit yells.

"Don't worry about it, I think I can translate this language. These runes are kind of like a computer program, touching them sets off a certain reaction within in the walk way." A quick tap on another rune and door opens again to let in more fresh air. "See?"

"Fine, but where to now?"

"To those ropes, I want to see what those are." Gina says and points over her shoulder with her thumb.

The ropes turned out to be cables and they were hanging down a long empty shaft of some kind. Ranma took his flashlight and shined it down the hole, bit the beam didn't make it all that far down the shaft. "What in the world is this?" He muttered.

"I think it's an elevator." Gina said and tapped a couple more runes on the wall. Sure enough a few seconds later the cables start to move as an elevator is lifted from below. A few seconds later it reaches them, instead of a box like one would expect, it's a floor plate. Gina doesn't hesitate to step on the thing and motion for them to get on as well. "This is where things will get really interesting."

"Seems pretty boring so far." Ranma said.

"This is more than a pirate treasure Ranma, if it's what I think it is this could be the greatest discovery in years." Gina said excitedly and bounced around happily.

"Sis you are such a geek!" Brit muttered as the floor plate started to take them down into the lower levels of whatever this is.

"Do you know where we are going?" Ranma asked.

"Not really, just a general idea, this should take us to a long hallway or an open room of some kind." Gina said and looked around as the plate passed through some kind of hole and entered a large room. "See?"

"Be on guard Ranma, this is where we usually run into trouble of some kind." Britanny said.

"It's to dark to see anything down here aren't there any lights or torches?" Ranma asked just as the plate settled into a small depression in the floor and came to a stop.

They all stepped off the plate and used their flashlights to peer into the darkness around them. Ranma was starting to get a nervous feeling as the hairs on the back of his neck rose up to warn him of something in the darkness, but his other senses weren't picking up anything. Was his imagination playing tricks on him? He took a breath and concentrated on increasing his Ki to see through the darkness around him, but it was so murky that he couldn't pick up anymore details. Gina pulled another device out of the Light Gate and for a second during the flash of energy they could see for some distance in all directions and a gun like device appeared in her hands. Ranma had been looking away from the flash when it happened and he noticed something off in the distance, more than a hundred feet away from them, at the extreme edge of the flash of light, but he couldn't be sure what it was so he kept quiet and continued to look around.

"Let's get some light here." Gina said as she fiddled with an odd gun, pointed it into the air and pulled the trigger. Instead of a long beam of light like Ranma had expected it formed a sphere of glowing energy at the end of the 'gun' that floated up into the air above them. It came to a stop about forty feet up and hovered there like a miniature sun and lit up the area for thousands of feet around them.

"We still can't see the ends of the room!" Ranma said.

"True, but we know where the walls are now." Gina said as she pointed in front of them with a grin. About five hundred feet from their current location was a door, it stood out on the wall because the runes running around the edges of the door were reflecting the light and sparkling brightly. "That door should be our next stop, beyond that is the unknown!"

"This is to easy Gina, I really think something is wrong here." Britanny said suddenly.

"Why?"

"I don't know, it's just that something is bothering me and I can't place my finger on it."

"I've got the same feeling Gina, though I thought it was my imagination playing tricks on me." Ranma said, he was still looking off in the direction of the thing he'd seen earlier, even with all the light around them he still couldn't make it out.

"What's wrong Ranma?" Brit asked.

"I thought I saw something over there a little while ago, but whatever it was seems to have vanished when Gina fired that gun of hers."

"Did you see any details?"

"Not really, I could have sworn I saw a foot, but it was only a quick look from that flash and then it was gone."

"What kind of foot?" Gina asked.

"A big one."

Britanny turned to Gina. "What was it about this island that said there was a pirate treasure hidden here?"

"Just some old maps and legends that my AI got off the internet and brought to my attention, everything I had said this was just an old pirate hideout."

"Where would they park the boat?" Ranma asked.

"Huh?"

"The boat, where would they put it? We had to fly over this place a few times before we even found that landing spot up above and you said there was no place to land us in the water."

Now Gina looked confused. "I don't know, I never thought about it."

"There is something different about this place Gina, I can feel it, so can Ranma."

"Alright, I trust your instincts Brit, let's be careful and move on over to that door. This place may be dangerous, but I still want to explore and see if there is any treasure to take with us, monsters or whatever not withstanding." Gina said as she started for the door.

"Come on Ranma, keep your eyes peeled things should start getting interesting from here on out."

"Right."

They made it to the door with no problems, Gina's giant light bulb up above was keeping the huge area illuminated enough for them to get there with no problems. The runes were still sparkling as Gina examined them carefully, she would have considered them familiar, but she couldn't remember ever seeing anything like these before. They were different than the one's in the elevator and entrance way, but familiar all the same. Touching them was out of the question, they were touch sensitive and she figured they had to be touched in a certain order open the door.

"Gina, how long will that ball of light last?" Britanny asked.

"Hmm...about an hour, the gun should have recharged itself by then and we can make another one if we need to." Gina said absently, those runes were just at the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn't place them.

Then she blinked as it came to her. "Jinkies! These are magical runes, I saw some in a book Dad showed me years ago when he was trying to see if I had any magical aptitude."

"Magic Runes?"

"Yeah, now how did that book go?" Gina muttered and started reciting some thing from her memory. "...runes are a very potent magic and probably the strongest of them all, but also the most time consuming and hard to master because each and every rune has to be stroke perfect or it will not work right. Most magics are cast with energy drawn from one's body or the magical field of the planet, runes are literally carved into things and empowered with this magic. Buildings that are build with rune magic cast on the walls are nearly impregnable, bricks can not be broken, and magical items are hard to destroy. Runes can also be created in patters that build upon one another to create incredibly powerful spell structures, they are usually used to create prisons, castles, and other kinds of structures that can not be harmed by other forms of magic...

"Gina is this place a prison?" Britanny asked, remembering that tower they had discovered a couple years back.

"No I don't think so, if it was we would never have found the front door, let along gotten as far as we have, this place is something else."

"Do you know what these symbols mean?"

"No, I flunked my magic classes. They just didn't make much sense, it's the reason I took up science and engineering, Daddy said that some people just weren't meant to use magic."

Britanny snorted and started to laugh. "I remember that outfit you started to wear when he tried to get you to learn magic, that hat, and that pink and yellow robe...HAHAHAHAHAH!"

"I was twelve, give me a break!" Gina yelled and turned bright red.

"HAHAHAH...snort...HAHAHAHA!!"

"Um...girls? What are we going to do about this door? Or those things out there in the darkness?" Ranma asked, just a little put off with the girl's attitude about the danger they were in here.

"Oh don't worry about it Ranma, we'll take care of it when we have to and not a second sooner." Gina said and turned back to the runes and the door.

By this time Britanny was rolling on the floor beating her fists against the ground and laughing like a hyena. "...and then there was that time you...and then....HAHAHAH!"

"Britanny, don't make me POOF you to get you to shut up." Gina threatened as she turned around pointed something in Brit's face, she was holding a strange looking pen that Ranma had never seen before.

Britanny froze in place. "You wouldn't dare?!" She hissed.

"Try me, Miss fur coat."

"That's dirty pool that is." Brit shot back.

"So is what you were talking about." Gina said as she leaned forward.

Both sisters were now nose to nose and looked like they were about to get into a fight, Ranma had no clue what was going on, and his danger sense was starting to warn him of something dangerous in th area. He sighed and looked out into the edge of the light and the darkness beyond, something was out there, he could feel it now. Glancing back at the two girls, he wondered once again if coming along on this trip was such a good idea, did all sisters argue like these two did? He shrugged and went to look at the door and figured it would be a good idea to let the girls fight things out among themselves, they obviously had some issues to take care of.

He didn't recognize any of the runes, but his experience with magic was somewhat limited and he still hadn't had a chance to take those lessons from Dr. Diggers. They might have come in handy in this situation, but he'd always found using brute force was better in some situation, so he took a couple of steps back and started concentrating on a move he hadn't performed in some time. Ranma kicked the door with a thunderous bang that shattered it into dozens of smaller sections. Several of the runes flared and he suddenly felt something attack him, but his Ki warded it off enough to save him. Of course this didn't prevent him from being thrown back a good fifty feet with a scream of shock, he even saw the wide eyed look on both girl's faces as he flew by. Luckily his flight was long enough for him to flip around and land on his feet and slide back several more feet before he stopped, then he ran back to the girls.

"Ranma! Are you alright?" Gina asked as she eyed the shattered door and the smoking runes that had sent Ranma flying.

"You idiot, that could have gotten you killed!" Britanny yelled and considered decking the guy for good measure.

"Yeah I'm fine, that wasn't near as bad as some things I've encountered." Ranma said with a smirk.

"That was incredibly dangerous Ranma, those runes could very well have fired out beams of light to cut you into tiny little pieces, exploded to kill us all, or even set off an alarm or something. There are hundreds of different possibilities!" Gina exclaimed.

"Well we had to get through the door some way and standing around arguing sure wasn't doing it."

Gina and Britanny blushed and looked away from each other just as they decided it was time to get back to the mission at hand, they would have words with each other later though. Twirling her pen, Gina put it back in one of her belt pockets and stepped over to the door to looke inside. It was hallway of some kind that went either left or right into the distance, there weren't any lights in here either, but at least in the small hallway they could use the flashlights to help out. Ranma followed after them and wondered if there was some direction they had to go in, or if they would have to explore all these tunnels one at a time before they could find anything of interest.

"So which way do we go now?" Ranma asked.

"I will use my scientific genius to chose the most opportune choice available through a minimum of stress of course." Gina said with authority and an air of command.

"How is that, sister?" Britanny asked.

Gina flipped a quarter and pointed down the left hand tunnel. "We go left!"

Ranma face faulted.

"GINA!!" Britanny yelled.

"HEHEHHE!"

They spend the next ten minutes walking, but the hall seems to go on an on with no end in sight and eventually Britanny lets off a long sigh of boredom. She whispers something to Ranma and uses her werecheetah speed to run ahead of them, quickly vanishing into the distance with one of the flashlights. Ranma looked a bit surprised, but didn't really say anything as they walked, there were still things about these werecats that he was trying to get a handle on. Their ability to heal he could understand, but their magical abilities were hard to grasp at times. Britanny's ability to run like that was one of them, even with all his Ki training there was no way he could match that ability and she did it with such ease.

Werewolves were known for their strength, the werecheetah for their speed, even wererats were known for their stealth abilities. Sheila had explained them to him while they were at Brod's lookout, but he'd forgotten most of what she said to him. He'd been preoccupied with other matters at the time, like Sheila herself and the rest of the Edge Guard. "Gina, is there anyway we can catch up with her?"

"Not really, she does this all the time. She'll be back in a few minutes, normally she would have been back by now, but it must be quite a distance to the end of this hall."

"Well is there any way we can move faster?"

"Well I have been working on something, but..."

"But?"

"Well they are kind of a cheesy idea I started working with a while back, but I later decided against using them, normally Brit can get me where I want to go in the blink of an eye so they weren't really needed."

Gina pulls out the Light Gate remote again, greatest space saving device she'd ever come across, and tapped in a long code. A quick point ahead of them and a flash of light lit up the hall, when it cleared Ranma saw a couple of snowboards covered with electronic devices sitting on the floor. They were about four foot long and a foot and a half wide with what looked like a small engine at the back end, Gina seemed to have a thing for chrome. Ranma wasn't sure what to make of them, but they looked like they wouldn't do much of anything except sit on the foor and sparkle.

"What in the world are these things?"

Gina blushed. "Um...Anti Gravity Boards, I developed them to give me a bit more speed and maneuverability on our missions, but as I got closer to finishing them I started to thing about how...ridiculous they might look if we were saw by any of the other Explorer Groups and shelved the project just after I finished working on them."

"What does Anti Gravity mean?" Ranma asks, a voice in the back of his mind tries to remind him of something he'd experianced a few days earlier, but he ignores it, that is something he doesn't want to think about.

"How can you...oh never mind, Anti Gravity means that they will float a couple feet above the floor, they are kind of an advanced form of skateboard."

Grinning, Ranma walked forward to get a closer look at the boards. "Let's use them, they sound like a lot of fun and want to try one of these out."

"They're just like a skateboard Ranma, do you know how to use one of those?"

"A little, it's just like balancing on a swinging log while dodging bricks as the old man throws them at me, this should be a lot easier and no dodging." Ranma says with a smirk.

"Is there anything your father hasn't done to you?"

"Got me, his idea of training has always been a bit warped. Have you ever heard that the first thing a martial artist is taught is how to fall?"

"Sure."

"Pops kicked me off of the roof of the house until I could land right, he did it several times, even when I was unconscious. I was five at the time."

Gina paled. "That monster!"

"Agreed, but the weird thing is that it actually worked. I can fall from three and four story buildings and land on my feet with no damage, all his training is like that, it's inhuman, but for some reason it works. Now, how do I activate this thing?"

"Just step on and wait for the green light at the head of the board light up, it should lift into the air on it's own, then all you have to do is lean in the direction you want."

"Alright, this should be easy." Ranma said with confidence and stepped onto the board, as soon as the green light started to glow the board lifted off the floor. He wobbled a bit, but with years of walking on shaky fences, it was incredibly simple to stay in place on the board and after a few seconds even that wasn't moving.

"Hey Ranma, where'd you get those things?" Britanny asked as she appeared out of nowhere and tapped Ranma on the back.

"AGHAAAAAAAAA!!" Ranma yelled and lost his balance. The board went flying forward and careened off a the walls before settling down on the floor even as he fell off and landed on the floor with a grunt. "Owww..."

"Are you alright Ranma!" Britanny asks and rushes forward to check on him.

With a groan Ranma opens his eyes, it wasn't intentional, but Ranma had the good or bad luck to look up at Britanny. She is known for the skimpy clothing she likes to wear, a pair of tight shorts that show off her perfectly toned ass, her tight shirts that show off tons of cleavage. It's her trademark really, just like Gina likes to wear a revealing outfit, though not as blatantly sexy. So he had the perfect opportunity to see things he had been ignoring for most of the trip, he was a guy after all and staring at a half naked werecheetah who was married was a bad idea. Blood dribbled out of his nose and he fainted.

"Ranma!! What happened?" Britanny asked in a confused tone.

"Sis, he's a guy."

"Well duh, so what?"

"Look what you're wearing and think about it, from his point of view."

Brit blinked. "Ah man, I thought spending the week with Brianna would cure him of that little problem."

"Apparently he has a ways to go yet." Gina said with a glassy eyed grin.

"Well don't do it here, this place is really weird, can you believe this hallway is one big circle?"

"Your kidding, you ran around the whole place and ended up behind us?"

"Yeah, I was surprised when I reached that broken door a ways back."

"How many doors did you see?"

"Other than that broken door there were about three others, I also passed a stairwell about a mile or so ahead of us."

Fiddling with the Light Gate remote again Gina brought some safety pads and started putting them on. "Let's get Ranma woken up and we can go take a look at it, I want to see where that stairwell goes, did it go up or down?"

"It was a metal spiral staircase that went up and down." Britanny said as she toed one of Ranma's shoulders and shook him. "Yo, hormone boy, wake up and get a move on before you bleed to death."

He didn't even budge.

"Here try this." Gina said and handed Brit her canteen.

"Huh?"

"Pour it on him."

"That'll activate his curse."

"So what, he needs to get used to it anyway."

Britanny shrugged and upended the canteen on Ranma's head, the change happened and Ranma rolled out of the water and glared up at her. "What did you do that for?!"

"You fainted and wouldn't wake back up."

"Blast it, I don't like transforming into a girl!"

"Then you shouldn't have fainted." Britanny said with a huff and handed the canteen back to Gina.

"Where am I going to find any hot water down here?"

"You won't Ranma, just deal with it, you need to get used that form anyway. Mom said so." Gina said, ignoring the little voice in her head that suggest at least ten ways for them to get some hot water.

"AGHAAAAAAA!!" Ranma yelled and banged her head against the wall a few times.

Gina pointed to the left over safety pads. "Put those on Ranma, that way you won't be knocked silly the next time you fall off the board."

"I can just carry you two, it's no problem for me, I'm strong enough." Britanny said.

"Naw, I've been wanting to test these things anyway and this is as good a chance as I'll probably get."

"Phooey." Ranma muttered as she put on the pads.

"Oh don't complain Ranma, this whole adventure is for fun and riding these boards will be more entertaining than you realize. They are a lot more maneuverable than a normal skateboard, I installed an centrifugal force gyro scope into them, this will give us a lot of control. Even the ability to race along the walls and ceiling if we have to, who knows what we will run into up ahead, I even installed a couple of lasers incase of trouble."

"Alright, alright." Ranma muttered as she ran down the hall to retrieve the board, it was sitting on the floor as innocent as could be. She stepped on it and had to adjust her stance to reflect the new center of balance of her female body, but seconds later she was had it moving down the hall.

"That's it Ranma, you'll get the hang of it yet." Gina yelled as she stepped on hers, it lifted up and hovered, waiting for her to give it the command to go forward. "Where was this stairwell of yours sis, can you lead us there?"

"Sure, follow me." Britanny yelled and shot forward in a blur of motion.

Seconds later, with Britanny going slow enough for them to keep up, Gina and Ranma were accelerating down the hallway at about forty miles an hour. Ranma was already experimenting with the board, doing some rollovers and racing down the wall like it was the floor, instinctively adjusting her balance to pull of moves that would have been impossible with a real skateboard. He hadn't had this much fun in months, hell years, and he wanted to enjoy it as much as he could before it ended. Gina just crouched on her board and let it speed forward as she watched her sister, she still wasn't as confident as Ranma with these boards and wondered how long it would take her to learn how to do those kinds of stunts.

"Here it is!" Britanny said as she slowed to a stop by an open part of the wall.

Gina and Ranma slowed to a stop as well and landed the boards, Ranma wasn't quite sure how she did it, but once the thought was there she just automatically did it some how. Stepping off the board they made their way to the stair well and looked down, surprisingly it was just a deep hole with a stair case that led up and down, but it was so deep that they couldn't tell just how far. It was apparent that the stairs weren't connected to the floor, instead they would have to step out over the deep drop off to get on the stairs themselves. Luckily it was only a few inches between the two, though Ranma wasn't sure how far down it went, but the flash light wouldn't reach very far. Britanny looked down as well and considered using her speed to head down just to see if it was save enough for them at the bottom. Even stranger was the fact that there was a three foot difference from the back of the stairs to the far wall, Gina said it served no purpose and wondered what it was for.

"Want me to run down and see if I can find anything?"

"No, so far this has been way to easy. I have a feeling that this is the true beginning of this little adventure." Gina said as she dug around in her pack and pulled out a palm sized computer and a pair of glasses that she slipped over her current ones. There was a long wire connecting the glasses to the palm top computer.

"What's that?" Ranma asked.

"Visual enhancement device, Brianna developed it for her armor, it has lots of uses, right now I'm going to scan the stairs and see if we can find out what's below us."

"Didn't Brianna use that thing when we found the Dragon Pharaoh's invisible tower?"

"Yeah, though she has improved on it since then. She mentioned something about wanting a more personal feel to her targeting system, I've tinkered with this older version of that system and added some improvements to it myself." Gina said as she started typing on the little palm computer. "Hmm?"

"What do you got?" Britanny asked.

"The stairs only go down about a hundred feet."

"That will put us below sea level."

"I know, this island must have quite a bit below the waterline."

Beep! Beep!

"What's this?" Gina mutters as she looks at the walls.

"What's going on?" Ranma asked.

"I don't know, but keep on your toes, who knows what's going on." Britanny said and looked at the walls too. "Gina?"

"Some kind of electromagnetic power source of some kind just activated several hundred feet below us."

"Is it dangerous?"

"I don't know, but it's sending a lot of power through the lines just inside these walls."

"What is it doing?"

"I'm not..." Gina started, but then stopped as something happened.

Panels in the ceiling, barely noticeable with the flashlights flickered and lit up the hallway all around them, even the stairwell, then started moving along the ceiling until the whole hallway was filled with light. A low level hum started to thrum through metal plates of the floor, giving the whole area an eerie kind of feel to it as they stood there. Ranma looked around as the lights formed some kind of chain and flowed down some panels set into the walls, the panels were about six inches wide and twelve long, they would light up and die as the one below it turned on and turned dark. It was kind of like train Christmas lights moving from the ceiling to the floor, bathing everything in light as they moved.

"Whao!" Ranma said and backed up a few steps.

"What did you do Gina?!" Britanny asked.

"Nothing, we must have tripped some kind of proximity device and something below started providing power to the whole place."

"Well at least we can see what were doing now." Ranma said.

"Maybe, but with the power on does that mean that there will be some kind of defense grid as well?" Britanny asked, she had been in this position to many times too count.

"Probably."

That was when they heard a sound and looked up at the ceiling, a panel beside the light panel had opened up and a something was lowering down. To Ranma it looked like a hinged bar of some kind with something on the end of it, a silver ball with little red pieces of glass spaced all around it. Then they heard a voice, but it was talking in a language that even Gina didn't understand.

[IDENTIFY YOURSELVES OR BE EXTERIMINATED.]

"Huh?" Gina asked.

[IDENTIFY YOURSELVES OR BE EXTERIMINATED.]

"I can't understand what you're saying." Gina said.

"Ranma watch that ball thing, it probably a weapon of some kind." Britanny said and motioned to the bar that had come out of the ceiling.

"I figured it was dangerous."

[FINAL CHANCE, IDENTIFY YOURSELVES OR BE EXTERIMINATED. ARGHH!]

"I have no clue what it's saying." Gina muttered and turned back to the stairs.

[EXTERIMINATE! EXTERIMINATE! EXTERIMINATE!]

"I was right, run!" Britanny yelled.

The ball lit up and sent beams of energy firing in all directions at once, several of them slammed into Ranma and sent him flying backwards before he could make it very far, over the stairway, and plummeting into the depths behind the stairs. Britanny saw it all happen, but wasn't able to dodge fast enough to catch Ranma and protect herself at the same time, she hoped he was alright, but had other things to worry about at the moment. The only one that wasnt affected was Gina and that was because her emergency force field bubble had activated to protect her. The lasers bounced off the sphere of energy and slammed into the walls to dig out several long holes.

"Whoa!" Gina yelled and ducked down inside the force field.

Britanny reached out to grab the bar and snapped it in two, tossing the broken piece down the hall in a shower of sparks. "Gina, Ranma just got blasted, he was knocked down the this hole before I could even move to grab him. We have to see if he survived." She said and used her speed to run down the stairs before Gina could even say anything.

"Jinkies."

**********

Pain flared through Ranma's body as she realized she was airborne, his instincts took a few precious seconds to react, but she knew what she had to do. Gritting his teeth to block the pain she did a mid air flip and kicked the wall lightly, this bounced her to the stairs where she did the same thing and bounced back to the wall. In this way she was able to slow his rate of decent and chance to get his bearings back, a quick look down showed that she was nearing the bottom of the shaft and she focused on landing without an injury. Luckily by this time she was controlling his fall with simple back and forth jumps that his old man had drilled into her for months on end, with a simple hop she landed and took a second to look around.

Right in front of her was a large bay of some kind, with the lights on she was able to see that this one wasn't as long as the one above, but still quite big. What in the world did these people need with all this pace, there didn't seem to be anything in these giant rooms, they seemed to be useless. She walked forward and looked around to the sides of the doorway, she gasped and jumped back as the wall was ripped to shreds by a metal claw!

"Crap!"

[EXTERIMINATE INTURDER!!] The thing's metallic like voice said.

"I may not be able to understand you, but I think I get the drift you slow poke piece of junk!" Ranma yelled.

[ARGHHH!!]

She was trapped in this small cubbyhole, getting out of it meant going through this strange monster. A white aura of power formed around Ranma as she tried to max out all his abilities, his speed, strength, reflexes, his senses, everything. It didn't hesitate to attack, but Ranma dodged the swipe, jumped on it's head and leaped out of the hole before the thing had time to even turn around. She groaned as she spotted several more of the things running in his direction, they were shaped like giant silver dogs, running on all fours, a long rat like tail, and glowing eyes. Gasping she flipped into the air as one of them fired more of those lasers at her, then the others started firing and Ranma had to dodge with every bit of skill she possessed. They were getting closer and closer to hitting her with every dodge she did.

Then she realized that they weren't like real animals, they were adapting to his speed and reflexes at an alarming rate. She pushed herself to even greater heights and launched herself forward, these things had to be defeated if was going to survive. Dodging wasn't working, but hopefully she would be able to take them out with a couple of Ki charged attacks. She evaded more laser shots and decided to try a plan that popped into his head, running right at the robotic thing she timed the laser fire heading in his direction as best she could and dodged at the last possible moment. She went airborne, flipping over the thing below her as the laser fire from the one behind her slammed into it and blew its head off.

"YEAHAAAAAAA!"

Ranma landed right beside the one she had first encountered and punched it in the head with everything she had, the head didn't break, but she dented it and the recoil lifted it off the floor so that it crashed down to the floor nearby. Then there were lasers firing at her from the ceiling and she had to scramble to keep from being hit, but the robots, who didn't seem to be affected by the lasers anymore, just kept trying to kill her. So now she was being fired on from above and from below, luckily that was when Britanny showed up at the bottom of the stairs. Ranma didn't see sheer, she was to busy dodging and pulling off techniques that few humans could ever do. In mid air, while flipping she used his Ki to form a temporary shield the blocked some of the laser fire.

Dodging lasers at high speed, Britanny ran forward and grabbed one of the robots by the tail and yanked. Lifting it off the ground she twirled it above her head and used it like a shield for a few seconds before throwing it into the other robot, they exploded in a giant fireball. Ranma, still using his Ki shield landed on Britanny's back, grabbed hold and launched them back to the stairs. Ranma wasn't sure if it was safe here, but they hadn't been attacked here so she had to take the chance. "Are you alright Britanny?"

"Yeah, this place is insane, where are they all coming from?" Britanny asked as she gasped for air, Ranma did her best to ignore the were cheetah's heaving chest, even in girl form Ranma couldn't help but take notice of anything like that. With her aura still flaring around her, Ranma was putting off some strange light patterns that Britanny had never seen before, she could even feel the heat radiating from him. Ranma seemed oblivious to the fact that her feet were scorching foot steps into the deck plating, she was preoccupied with all the laser fire still filling the bay in front of them.

"Hey, are you two alright?" They looked up to see Gina on her hover board as it slowly drifted down from above, she gave Ranma a critical eye as she noticed the amount of energy she was putting out.

"We're fine, bit I don't know if we can go back out there. Those lasers are adapting to my moves and learning how to anticipate me."

"It's a miracle you survived at all Ranma, there is a giant computer on this island and it doesn't want us to get any further."

"What are we going to do now?" Ranma asked.

"Well the first thing you are going to do is power down, I'm starting to sweat standing this close to you, now normally that would be a good thing, but in this instance we have other things to worry about." Gina said with a wink.

Ranma blushed and let his aura disappear, but kept his current level of Ki, he had a feeling he was going to need it. "Okay."

"Gina how are we going to get past that mess out there, more of those robots will be showing up any minute now." Britanny asked.

"I have to find a computer access terminal, there has to be one down here somewhere."

"Where in the world are we going to find that?"

"The most logical answer would be on the other side of this bay, those lasers still haven't stopped firing, I think it wants us to stay on this side."

"What about those robot dogs?" Ranma asked.

"This is one of those times where some of Bri's peebo's would come in mighty handy."

"No kidding, send out a dozen or so and let them blow up anything that gets in our way." Britanny said.

"Well, I was hoping to avoid this, but we have two choices here. We can go home and forget about this place, or we can forge on and blow everything to hell and back, we do have access to a good bit of Brianna's weapons." Gina pointed out.

"You have her codes?"

Gina grinned and adjusted her fedora. "Yup."

"You ever train with a gun Ranma?" Britanny turned and asked Ranma.

"Sort of, pops took me by one of the old Japanese Armed forces bunkers and showed me around, pointing out cannons and other things that have been sitting around for years. One of the things we came across was a stripped down rifle that had been left in one of the bunkers, it didn't work, but he did explain it to me. It sounded pretty simple."

"Hmm...I'll give you a crash course anyway, we tend to use energy weapons and they work a little differently than projectile types."

"Pro...what?"

"We use lasers, what you handled was a weapon that fired bullets. Projectile is a word that describes any kind of solid object fired from a gun."

"Oh, well why didn't you just say so?" Ranma asks innocently.

"Ranma!" Gina mutters kneels down to try and figure out what they might need to get them passed the lasers.

"Gina, Gina, the lasers just shut off!" Britanny yelled.

She looks up in shock. "Why?!"

"Maybe this computer can't 'see' us while where here in this stairwell?" Ranma suggested.

"No way, who would build a security system like this that couldn't detect people?"

"I don't know, but why else would it turn off it's lasers?"

"Bait." Gina said as she consulted her palm top and glasses again.

"Bait? You mean to draw us out?"

"Yeah, it's a tactic I would use."

Ranma nodded.

"I've had the palm top on passive scan since I came down here and there is a workable pattern to the lasers, we can get through them."

"How?"

"We have to be very, very fast. Luckily we have a werecheetah on our side that can break the sound barrier."

"Sure, for short periods of time, but these are lasers and they travel at the speed of light Gina. I can't outrun that." Britanny said and looked confused.

"True, but like I said, there is a pattern to the lasers. I'm almost surprised you two didn't see it, but you were dodging a lot."

"What do you mean, sis?"

"These are amplified lasers, that means they take a second to charge before fireing. What makes them dangerous is that the computer is aiming them at you or a pattern you are using, what you need to do is run through them in a completely random pattern that it can't track. Once we reach the other side I can get into the computer and turn everything off."

"I think your forgetting something." Ranma said to Gina.

"What would that be?"

"I don't know, it's at the tip of my tongue, but I just can't say what it is."

"So you don't think we can get past the lasers?" Brit asked.

"The lasers are simple to dodge and a random pattern will make that easier to do, I was thinking of something else that was missing."

"Well we don't have much choice here Ranma." Brit snapped.

"Yeah, yeah, I know, I just thought one of you might know what I was missing."

"Not a clue." Gina said. "Alright sis, I want you to pick us up and race us accross that room, do that dodge pattern you developed while training under Mom. Ranma you will have to stay here and wait for the lasers to shut off or Britanny can come back for you, it's up to you."

"I'll wait about ten minutes, but after that I will come after you, I can dodge just about anything with my Ki super charging my reflexes."

"Alright sis, let's go."

Britanny nodded, picked Gina up in her arms and looked out across the room. She couldn't see the other side, but if she was able to hit her full speed getting to the other side would be easy. "NOW!" She yelled and surged forward.

They crossed over thirty meters before the lasers charged up and hit seventy meters by the time they started firing down on them. Ranma could see Gina's force field activate to cover both of them, she also noted that the farther into the room they went the lasers followed them while shutting off the lasers they had passed already. Britanny started dodging, crisscrossing the room from wall to wall, then half a room then she back tracked a bit, then surged forwards for quite a ways before he lost sight of her. Once they vanished Ranma could still see the lasers firing in the distance, she countered to fifty before he decided to move.

She noted that Gina had left her board sitting on the floor and he dragged it into position as a plan occurred to him, the computer wouldn't expect it. Grinning she tossed her pig tail over back over her shoulder and stepped onto the board, the lights flickered on and it rose her into the air. Then she channeled a bit of Ki into the board to connect it to her senses, she would need to feel it to do this right. Then with a grin she leaned forward and the little engine on the board flared to life rocketing her forward, she didn't know what the maximum speed was, but she was already going faster than a car. Seconds later the lasers started and she started skirting the wall and flipping over the lasers, never doing the same technique twice and knew she could keep it up for hours.

"ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!"

Spinning the board in a circle Ranma saw that several more of the dog robots had been released. She poured on the speed and side flipped the board to the wall for about twenty feet or so before dodging past more lasers. Looking ahead Ranma could see that Gina and Britanny had made it to another cubby hole, but this one was a bit larger than the one they had just abandoned. Then the worst thing happened, one of the lasers fired at random and caught the back of the board, the tiny engine exploded and sent Ranma flying. She rolled with the force of the explosion so that she could continue to go forward, but she still wasn't fast enough keep one of the robotic dogs away.

Eye lasers caught her in the shoulder and blew her off her feet, she slid the rest of the way to the sisters and slammed into the wall beside a couple of doors. "Oww..."

"Ranma, you do know that what you just did was really stupid, right?" Gina asked as she crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

"Eh." Ranma shrugged as she rolled to her feet and checked her shoulder. Her Ki had absorbed most of the energy, but it was still burned enough to hurt like hell. "What about the dog things?"

"They're just wandering around now, I'm not sure what they're up to actually."

"Yeah, they look like their just standing their waiting for something to happen to us." Britanny said.

"Where's that computer we were supposed to find?" Ranma asked.

"Probably behind one of those doors or further in." Gina said and pointed a couple of doors behind them. Unlike the one they had used up above, these were just plain doors with no markings on them, just simple metal with a handle.

"Do we need to stop those robots before we move on?"

"No, I don't think they will come into this room." Gina said.

"They had no problem trying to get into the stair well, came right through the wall just to get me."

"I noticed the damage to the wall, well lets pick a door and move on then, once we find a computer I can get this place shut down."

Ranma nodded and chose the door that was closest to here and grabbed the handle, she twisted the handle and the floor below them suddenly fell inward. "Oh shit!" They all yelled and fell into the depths, they hit the bottom and found themselves sliding down a metal slide. It was a steep incline with no lights and no clue where they were going. Seconds later they were all moving at high speed down the slide, Gina grabbed her gun, adjusted the setting on the side and fired it above her head.

"Grab onto me!" She yelled.

One of her first inventions was a gadget gun that could fire suction cup like projectiles with a line attached, over time she had improved on the design, but it was still a major part of her equipment pack.. The sucker dart struck the ceiling of the enclosed slide and she was able to slow her decent to a slow, but one of the things she noticed was that there was no sign of Britanny or Ranma. She could hear them as they descended down the slide below her though, cursing she set the dial on her gun and pulled the trigger and it started to reel out more line to control her downward decent.

**********

Ranma did what he could to slow her downward decent into the unknown sections of the ship, but her hands just couldn't find enough purchase to grab onto anything. Then she heard a hissing sound and she only had second to realize that the slide wasn't under her anymore, she was falling through pitch black darkness. She hit something that wrapped around her and she struggled to get out and figure out what was going on, then she heard some machinery activating and felt herself being lifted into the air and moved around until she was in an upright position.

"Hello?" She asked.

[SPECIMEN CAPTURED]

"Oh great, now what's going to happen?" Ranma muttered, but breathed a sigh of relief as the lights slowly came on and let her see again. It wasn't a very good sight, but it did confuse the hell out of her.

She was wrapped up in an old net and all her struggling had only made things worse, but what she saw below her was even worse. It was the deck of an old wooden ship kind of like the ones she remembered seeing in old books when she'd been going to school a few months back. What she didn't like the look of was that there was a big computer set up on the deck, it was painted like a pirate costume, black base, red body with black detail lines to give it the appearance of clothing. Someone had even placed some metal plates around where the neck should have been to be a collar of some kind, it was a very disturbing sight.

"How in the hell do I keep finding these insane situations?" Ranma muttered, he really tried to ignore the misshapen parrot perched on the edge of the computer's shoulder.

[ARGGG!!]

"Uh huh, this can't possibly get any worse than this."

[INITIATE FULL LEVEL SCAN AND PREPARE FOR REPLICATION]

"Yeah, you do that, whatever that is and let me find a way to escape this mess."

The net lowered to the wooden deck and Ranma was able to see that the rest of the ship didn't exist, it was only the deck itself, she wasn't able to see what was below this though. The deck seemed to be the only thing giving off light, kind of like she was inside a larger room that was cloaked in shadows. As soon as she reached the deck and could stand on her own several machines rose up around Ranma as she struggled against the ropes, but they wouldn't snap like they should have. Rope was usually pretty simple to snap, especially a net like this, but it was a lot stronger than it looked. The machines lit up and bathed her body in light and Ranma got the impression that she was being scanned, just like Gina had done to her on a couple of occasions. Raising her Ki levels a bit more she strained against the ropes of the net they started to give just slightly, creaking as they protested the pressure.

With a final heave Ranma snapped the rope, she wasn't surprised to find that there had been metal cables running through the inside of the rope. There were little strands of metal sticking out of the twine covering, unfortunately it was only one rope several that she would have to break before she could get free. The machines kept her bathed in light, highlighting certain sections of her body in a brighter light as she worked. Snapping more of the rope took her several minutes and by this time the machines had finished their scan and descended back into the floor before she could get free and break them.

[SCAN COMPLETE, STAGE TWO, AGHRRRR!!]

"Well I understand that last part, this thing must think it's a pirate of some kind, but this is just plain silly."

[REPLICATION COMPLETE, DOWNLOADING SCAN INFORMATION]

"Uh huh."

[SUBJECT EXCAPING, RECAPTURING NOW]

"Kiss off you stupid machine." Ranma growled.

As the final note snapped Ranma didn't waste any time tossing it off and stepping out onto the deck, nearby another portion of the deck dropped down and a tube like metal box rose up from below. Surrounding the tube was a series of equipment that totally baffled Ranma, but she needed to be ready for anything. Then it split around it's seams and opened up, smoke and mist wafted out of the tube's interior, then something stepped out of it and into the light. Ranma gasped and decided that destroying this insane computer would be a very good idea, she watched in horror as an exact naked copy of her stepped out of the smoke. The only difference was that her eyes were without the light that all humans had, they were cold and dead as her head turned to look over at Ranma.

[KILL THE INTRUDER]

"Yes master." The copy said.

"Well I can understand you now, how about we just talk this out and forget the fight?" Ranma suggested, she didn't feel like fighting a copy of herself.

"Prepare to die, Ranma Saotome." The copy said and launched her naked self forward in an advanced attack that only a practitioner of the Anything Goes would recognize. Ranma blocked, dropped and rolled out of the way as her mind tried to figure out how this computer had learned hot to copy her attacks and skills. The copy just smirked and attacked again, using lethal moves that could rip through the wood painted steel decking around them like butter. Retaliating as quickly as she could Ranma returned the attack in kind and attempted to break the copy's arm, it shattered like an egg.

Flipping away with a kick to it's face she landed with a smirk. "Take that you useless waste of metal."

"Impressive, your resistance is more than expected." The copy said and tilted it's head to look at her, the shattered pieces of the arm dragged themselves back together. It picked up the arm and reattached it with little trouble and no sign that it would fall any time soon. "Increasing power and skill level to match."

"Oh shit."

The copy moved forward a lot faster than Ranma expected and she was barely able to block dodge the attack, rolling to her feet and jumping into the air, Ranma grit her teeth and tried to come up with a way to defeat this thing. If it had been human she might have done so easy, she had defeated lots of fighters that were better than she was, but it was a robot and wouldn't be affected by the usual tactics. The copy jumped up after her and they were soon trading blows, but it was a lot faster and an elbow smash to her head send Ranma flying into the deck.

She twisted in mid air and bounced off the deck to attack the girl one more time, but it was only then that she noticed that the copy was just hovering above her with no problem. Ranma put it out of her mind for the moment as she ascended into the air and let her aura flare out once more, she knew this fight would take everything she had available and it wouldn't be very pretty. The copy just drifted down to meet her and within moments they were tearing into each other again, this time Ranma didn't hold back and used the copy's own body to stay in the air as they fought. This was the technique that made the Saotome Ryu one of the most feared of all the Anything Goes styles, once they got an opponent in the air they would always have the upper hand.

Unfortunately for Ranma she was beginning to understand that this copy cat knew all of her moves, every little trick and dodge that she knew. She was forced again and again to make up moves on the fly just to stay in the fight, they weren't very good moves either, cheap shots and sneak attacks that allowed her to get around it's defenses for even a quick attack. She briefly considered using the Neko-Ken, but discarded it almost instantly, the thing learned things way to fast and if it did indeed know the technique it would have a ready dodge and would more than likely retaliate in kind.

"You are nothing compared to my power Ranma, you can not win this fight, I'm not even running at full strength yet and you're already starting to sweat. Let me give you a quick death."

"You rusty pile of scrap, there is now way I'll just give up and let you win this fight!" Ranma yelled back.

"Fine, I gave you a chance to do this the hard way. Now you can just die." The copy said as it formed it's own aura of power and struck out at blinding speeds. "I have been given all your memories, your skills, your powers, they all belong to me and I have the ability to surpass them with ease little girl."

Hundreds of blows hit Ranma and she found it impossible to keep track of them and within a blink of an eye she was slamming into the metal floor of the deck, it crumpled around her. This was the curse's fault, if she had been in her male body, the one she had trained in all her life HE would be able to defeat this thing. She wasn't used to fighting at this level in her female body, her timing was off and it was showing. It even claimed to know how to use all her skills and abilities, did that mean it knew about the curse as well? Struggling with all she had left she crawled out of the metal hole and coughed up a bit of blood, her whole body hurt worse than one of Master Julia's workouts.

The copy was there to meet her, but Ranma's head was spinning so much she could barely tell where she was so fighting was out of the question. "I won't give up." She mumbled.

A hand reached down and pulled Ranma to her feet by her hair. "Of course not, killing you would be to easy then."

A back hand to the jaw sent Ranma flying off the deck and into the darkness beyond, she blacked out for several seconds, but when her eyes opened up she found herself cradled in Britanny's arms. "So sport, how goes the battle?"

Ranma groaned. "Not good, that thing knows how to use and counter all my moves and it's able to make it's self a lot stronger than me."

"Sorry I didn't get here in time to help you out sooner, but that stupid slide sent me down into some kind of holding cell, it took me whole minute to rip the door off it's hinges. Then another twenty minutes or so to find my way here and your in a fight." Britanny glared at Ranma. "At least you saved some for me and here's the good part, it doesn't know all my moves yet."

"It's modeled after me, it's my problem." Ranma mumbled as Britanny sat her down carefully.

"We all need a little help upon occasion Ranma, no one is all powerful, not even you and that arrogance of yours that tends to crop up every now and then."

"Heh, so says Miss. Snuti-Boutique."

"Yep, the mall is my second home and my husband loves the outfits I get from that particular store."

"So one of the other intruders has arrived, now I get to kill the both of you." The copy said and tossed it's unbound red hair back.

"Well at least I can tell you two apart." Brit said. "She knows how to make a fashion statement though, running around in the nude went out with the Romans." Britanny uses her speed to grab the copy's arm, picks her up and spins her around at high speed.

I'll-g-get-you-f-for-this-s!" The copy yells.

"Oh yeah, look at the effect centrifugal force has on your chest cute stuff, and now for my final attack, the SUPER AIR SLAM!! HAHAHAHAH!!" Britanny yells and body slams the thing right through the metal decking and into the space below with a loud screech of metal.

Ranma's impressed and a little jealous, she grumbles under her breath about the advantages of being super strong.

"Hah, Britanny Diggers does it again! Oh Yeah, I am the best!!" Britanny yells as she pumps her fist in the air. "OHH OHH OHH!"

"Hey Britanny, have you seen Gina since we ended up down here?" Ranma asked, mainly to get her to stop dancing like an idiot.

"No, but she's around here some place. Probably in a cell like I was in, she should be showing up eventually."

"IDIOTS, I'm right here, now get me down!!" They look up to see Gina hanging upside down from a hole in the ceiling, there is a line wrapped around her foot holding her in place. She starts waving her arms to get their attention, but this sets of one of Einstein's rules and making her spin in a circle. "Help Me!"

"How?!" Britanny yells up to her.

"What?!"

"How do I get up there to help you?"

"I can get up there if you give me a hand." Ranma said, the room wasn't spinning anymore and she had her balance back.

"How?"

"Your strength, just toss me up to that hole and I'll free her from the rope and lower her down, it's only forty feet or so, I can survive a drop from that high easily."

"Good." Britanny says, grabs Ranma by her shirt, lifts her off the ground with a smirk.

"Hey, not this way..." Ranma yells.

And Britanny throws the red headed girl at the ceiling, Ranma angles her body as best she can and counts the seconds as the rises towards the roof. She passed by a shocked Gina and reaches out a hand to grab on to the edge of the hole and pulls herself in with a little roll. Once in place Ranma takes a second to catch her breath and tried not to think about what would have happened if the werecat had missed the hole and splattered her all over the ceiling like a bug on a windshield. Ranma looks the situation over and decides that even if he gets Gina back up here and unstuck there isn't enough rope to climb down with.

"Gina, I'm going to have to pull you back up here, okay?"

"Fine, fine, just get me out of this mess."

Reaching down, Ranma grabs her by the foot and pulls her up with little trouble. He foot was very entangled in the rope though, there was no way it was going to come off there any time soon, it looked like it had knotted itself almost solid. "We need more of this rope before you can get down there, I'll have to crawl up this shaft until I find the other end..."

"No need, this is part of my cable gun, I can just reel it back in now that I've got some leverage again." Gina says as she taps a button on her gun and within seconds it starts to quickly reel in the rope.

"What about the rope on your foot?"

The gun jerks down and slams into Gina's ankle, she glares at Ranma. "You could have told me sooner."

"I just noticed." Ranma says and starts trying to unravel the mess around Gina's ankle, it takes a little while to get it off.

"What are you two doing up there, making out?!" Britanny yells from below.

Gina blushes and smirks at the same time. "If you were a guy right now I would have no problems kissing you." She says and shakes her shoulders to emphasize her chest.

Ranma blushes. "U-um n-n-not right n-now, G-Gina."

"When we get you home I'm going to design you something to carry hot water around in, some kind of thermos."

"Rope's free."

"Well if you want to tie me up I'm all for it."

"Cut it out Gina, let's get out of here, anyway that computer you wanted is down there on the deck of that thing."

"Oh sure, spoil the mood and all." Gina says with pout.

"What mood?" Ranma asks with a blank look of innocence.

With a sigh Gina reels in the rest of her line, set's the suction dart to the metal and tosses the rope out of the hole, it reaches the floor easily and they climb down with no problems. Gina disengages the dart and reels in the line one last time and puts her gun away, she almost wished she'd just rode the slide to it's end, that little trip had taken her forever and from the looks of things, missed out on yet another fight. "So what happened while I was away?"

"Ranma suddenly developed a naked sister that was trying to kill her."

"Huh?"

"How much of our fight did you see?" Ranma asked.

"Not much, I heard some of it, but by the time I was ready to come down here, I slipped and ended up hanging over you two as you talked."

"Let's head on home Gina, I'm really tired now, I thought this would be a relaxing trip after being forced to spend a whole week with Brianna. Now I'm more tired than I was when we left." Ranma said with a sigh.

Considering what Gina and Britanny know of Brianna, and the fact that Ranma was in his female form got them all to giggling. "Just a little while longer Ranma, let me take care of this place and we can eat that food you made, then get on home."

"No problem."

"Oh how cute, the computer thinks its Captain Hook." Gina said as she produced a lap top and started searching for a way to access the odd terminal. "Boy they sure made a mess out of this place didn't they? Well, I've got something here that will make you feel a lot better, yes I do."

[ARGHHH?] The large computer sweat dropped.

Ranma sweat drops. 'Man these girls are weird.'

"Hey Britanny, grab that android and bring it over here, this computer is really odd, I want to look into it's memory tapes." Gina called out from behind the strange computer.

"Um...sure thing Gina, one second." Britanny said.

The copy of Ranma was dug out of the steel decking and dropped in front of the computer just as Gina finished hooking her palm top computer up to it. Nothing happened at first, but then the lights flickered a little and a major portion of the place seemed to power down. She nodded and stepped over to the copy, looked it over for several seconds before opening an access port on the thing's head, and connected it to the palm top as well with a cord. "Thanks Brit, something about this whole place just doesn't seem right to me and I'm not sure why. I hope this computer will be able to supply some of the answers.

Now that it was taken down, Ranma was able to get a better look at it and see that it had been very damaged by Britanny's attack. She was still mad that this was yet another loss to add to her current record, every fiber of her being was seething with resentment over this. Ranma wasn't sure why, but she was tired of losing or barely winning these fights and she had to figure out why she was giving such a poor showing lately. It hadn't taken her long to figure out that her inexperience in her female for had been the reason she lost this fight, it moved so differently and didn't have the power that her male body did. She already understood that girls weren't as weak as she had always thought them to be and with Gina and Britanny along they had proven more than once that they could take care of themselves.

That wasn't the answer, there had to be some reason why she was losing and she couldn't think of one reason why. She toed the thing's foot as Gina worked on it and examined it's memory with her own computer, the foot flopped back and forth in a normal way. Gina looked up at her and grinned. "Pretty different isn't it?"

"I've never seen anything like it." Ranma said with a frown.

"You're mad that it was able to defeat you?"

She nodded. "Yes, I'm getting tired of losing these fights."

"Ranma you've only been training for a few weeks now, we always have to take on threats like this. I think I know what your problem is though."

"What would that be?"

"It's the way you fight Ranma, you always play with your opponents and try to judge their skills. Then you try to avoid hurting them and go for a knock out, the only time you have won any of your fights so far was when you went for the take down. With Daishi you beat him to a stand still, but he still took you down when you left him on the ground and turned your back on him. You overpowered Ryan when you had to fight him too. They are beating you because you keep holding back against them, I think you would have taken out this android just as easilly if you had used your more powerful maneuvers instead of the ones you always depend on to knock them out "

"What are you talking about, I always fight at the highest level I can..."

"Do you Ranma? I think you like to play with your opponents before you get serious, you do it without thinking about it and without your father here controlling your every move you don't quite know what to do."

"She does have a point Ranma." Britanny said. "I've watched you and mom workout in the mornings and you seem to use just enough skill to hold your own, but not enough to make a decisive battle that you can win."

"How can you say that?!" Ranma yelled.

"Ranma if you had used the Neko-ken against this robot at your feet it wouldn't have survived then seconds." Britanny pointed out.

The thought struck Ranma like a bolt of lightning, she didn't know how to reply to that and it was such a simple truth that she was overwhelmed by it. "I-I..."

"Ranma you spent so much time trying to learn the technique, how come you haven't incorporated it into your style? I've watched you over the last few weeks and you spend hours trying to adapt mom's techniques into your own style, but you haven't spent one minute of that trying to fully master the Neko-ken. You may have only mastered it a few days ago, but you've had years to try and gain control of it, why haven't you?"

"I don't know." Ranma whispered and looked away.

"When you can answser that and change the way you look at a battle Ranma, I think you will be able to fight at the level you used to." Gina said as her palm top computer beeped at her. "Now that were finished here we can head on home, I've set up a link to my main computer at home that will allow me to examine this island in more detail and find out just what this place is."

"You don't already know?"

"This little computer isn't powerful enough to break through 'Captain Hook's' security blocks, I need the main computer at home to do that." Gina said and looked a little embarrassed about it.

"Then let's head on home." Ranma said, she had a lot to think about.

**********

To Be Continued...

End Notes - This ending leaves a little bit of the story hanging, but more will be explained in the next chapter so don't worry about it. Another question one might have to ask is why did Brianna act the way she did? Well it's kind of complicated, but it comes down to the fact that she has twice the sex drive a normal person has, she has Gina's hyper active libido and Britanny's over active one. Combined into one body and you get Brianna, she usually uses Genn to relieve the stress, but he's been gone for over a month now and she has been going without because there aren't really any willing men among the Amazons. This and the fact that Ranma was in a pair of shorts that barely covered him caused her hormones to go wild and the rest is history.

I also did this because I needed Ranma to have a bit of experience and maturity, if he's going to have a chance with Sheila he has to grow up a little and seven days in bed with Brianna would make anyone more mature and knowledgeable. Brianna has Gina's smarts so she has created certain devices and techniques that aren't really known to the general public, Ranma got to experience all of them. BWHAHAHAHAH!! O_O

Starting with the next chapter things will be changing for Ranma again as I bring in some familiar friends of his, so be on the looke out for it. ^_^


* It has been established in the comic that Gina has a hyper active imagination that is completely perverted and loves to chase after men. Her first meeting of Séance is a good example, she spent two minutes staring at him while envisioning them doing the 'wild thing' in all sorts of ways. She really likes men with tight butts, Ace, Séance, and Ryan all meet this little requirement, as does Ranma. Brianna has the same weakness, but it takes different forms. ^_^;;