Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and its characters and settings belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon belongs to Takeuchi Naoko, Koudansha, TV Asahi, and Toei Douga, and DIC.

Author's Notes: I wanted C&C, and damned if I didn't get it! I was really surprised by how much people liked this fic. Taking the requests into consideration, I typed up another chapter to sate everyone's appetite. Enjoy!

"We really screwed up," Ranma said glumly. He hadn't stopped pacing the room yet, and that was at least the tenth time that he had reminded himself of the 'screw up'.

Margaret couldn't quite hear Ranma's thoughts, but his emotions were another matter entirely. Ranma was scared, obviously, but he was also worried about her well-being, which was sweet; but most surprising was relief. It was only a ripple in the ocean compared to raging tidal wave of the other emotions, but it was there. Relief. He was, in some small part of his mind, relieved that he and Margaret had bonded. How come no one had told her about it? Well, in everyone else's defense, it wasn't all that common for people to go around tangling their life energies like she and Ranma had done, but still… It was awfully inconvenient.

"Ranma, snap out of it!" Margaret eventually demanded. "You're giving me a headache!"

Ranma halted and, with a sigh, allowed himself to fall back onto the bed, landing right beside Margaret. He jumped back up before the girl had a chance to respond and began apologizing, "Sorry, I'm really sorry. I'm not a hentai. I promise, it's just that I'm surprised and…"

Margaret heaved a sigh of her own and tried her best to tune Ranma out. His rambling apology eventually degraded into another session of 'pace and mutter'. Shaking her head in dismay, Margaret collapsed further into her feather-stuffed mattress. How could things have gone so impossibly awry that she was now 'sorta married' to Ranma Saotome? It just didn't make sense. She'd known him for less that the time it took her to fix her hair most mornings, so how was she supposed to know if she could spend the rest of her life with him? Sure, he was well on his way to becoming famous; his exploits in the outside world were nothing short of legendary, and Nabiki, his fiancée’s sister, already had planted the seed that would likely lead to idolhood among young girls the world over, but— there were lots of 'buts'— he was also the love interest of a squad of trained psycho-bitches. Why couldn't she have gotten stuck with a nice, boring guy, if she had to get stuck with anyone at all?

There was no use crying over spilt milk. "Ranma, if you don't stop that, I may accidentally electrocute you. We wouldn't want that to happen, would we?"

Apparently Ranma either sensed her irritation or just got bored with pacing, because his eyes brightened, burning away the glaze that had shrouded them. He found a chair in the corner and sat down.

His mom would probably approve, on basis of manliness alone. Akane probably wouldn't even make much of fuss about the whole deal. Theirs wasn't one of those happy relationships. It was the father's and the other girls that would be trouble. Maybe Cologne could handle Shampoo. Okay, best case scenario he would only have to deal with Ukyou and Kodachi. Of those two, Kodachi would probably be the most difficult to fend off, especially with all her resources. Hell, she could just hire some goon with a gun to take out Margaret. Ukyou would almost certainly go for a straight physical attack, which she would undoubtedly lose. Margaret was a mage, whether warrior or scholar, and they could all bring the big guns to bear when necessary.

"So what are we going to do?" Ranma finally asked when he noticed Margaret looking at him intently.

Margaret shrugged, "This isn't really something that they teach in school, you know? I can tell you this, though; daddy probably will try to kill you. He is really protective."

Ranma nodded. "I mean… about the other stuff."

"The bond?" Ranma nodded. "I guess we should try to find out all that we can about it. Make sure that there's no harmful side effects from it, that sort of thing."

"It's a start," Ranma said while standing up. "Let's go find Cologne and your mom, and see what they can tell us about it." He waited for Margaret to join him by the door before stepping into the hallway. From there it was a short trek to the living room.

They didn't have far to look, since Cologne and Cynthia were sitting on the sofa having an animated discussion on some topic that Ranma couldn't discern, since they were speaking in another language that sounded more like whistling than talking. Not to far to the left, sat a man who appeared to be in his late thirties. His hair was blond, and he had green eyes, traits picked up from the European side of his parentage, the only obvious explanation for his semi-oriental appearance. And he was scowling; scowling very intensely at Ranma.

Margaret 'eeped' and jumped behind Ranma. Oh, how could this day get any better? Cologne and Cynthia's conversation cut off as Kenji, Ranma remembered that to be Margaret's father's name, stood abruptly and walked calmly over to the pair of teenagers in a smooth measured pace. Kenji stopped a couple of feet in front of Ranma and looked him up and down, surveying him like a piece of meat. Suddenly, his grim face disappeared to be split by a broad grin. He reached out and grabbed Ranma's hand, squeezing it firmly, very firmly, and shaking it familiarly.

It didn't stop there. No, not at all. Kenji drew Ranma closer and threw an arm around his shoulders, leading Ranma towards the door. "Welcome to the family, son," he said to Ranma before walking through the door.

In the hallway, Ranma felt Kenji's friendly demeanor fall away. He returned to scowling, but only a little. "Okay, let's get one thing straight. Margaret is very special to me, and if you ever hurt her, I'll kill you. Simple as that. And I know of a dozen others who would help, so don't get your hopes up thinking that you might win if it ever comes down to a confrontation."

Gulp. "Um, heheheh… I really wouldn't do anything to hurt Margaret, I'm not like that. I didn't mean for this to happen, I really didn't," Ranma almost pleaded.

"Are you rejecting my daughter?" Kenji growled. "That may qualify as hurting her."

Ranma waved his hands around frantically. "No, no, no, not that. I just don't think you understand the whole situation, that's all."

"Maybe you should help me understand?"

"To begin with, I have three other fiancées, and—" Ranma was cut off by Kenji.

"Maybe you'd better elaborate on that one a bit," Kenji snapped.

So Ranma elaborated. By the time he finished, Kenji had actually laughed once and smiled a handful of times. Kenji shrugged the matter away. "They don't matter anymore. You have Margaret."

"But my honor demands—" Once again he was cut off.

"Your honor demands nothing. Prior arrangements, such as these arranged marriages that you manage to collect, all become void when someone becomes a citizen of Atlantis. It also applies to gambling debts, blood feuds, and a few other things."

Ranma stared at the slightly taller man in astonishment, his mouth gaping open comically. "Serious?"

"As a heart attack."

Ranma actually began bouncing off the walls, leaving Kenji to catch up behind him.

"Mom, something's wrong with Daddy!" Margaret exclaimed. All she was getting from Ranma was a general sense of shock.

Cynthia looked no less shocked than her daughter. She turned to Cologne. "Were you expecting that?"

Cologne shook her head and said, "I thought he was going to hit him at least a few times."

Cynthia threw her arms in the air and exasperatedly exclaimed, "Men! They make no sense at all!"

"What if he fell and hit his head? Mom, we have to get Daddy to a doctor."

Cologne smiled reassuringly at Margaret. "I wouldn't be to worried. I believe that we simply underestimated your father. They're probably doing a little bonding out there, the male variety."

Margaret decided to push the matter aside. She could always make her father go get a check-up, so she decided she shouldn't worry too much. "Ranma and I were coming out to ask what you knew about the bond," remembered Margaret.

"Not very much, I'm afraid," answered Cologne. "Of all the ancient texts I've read, only one mentioned any part of the procedure, and it only vaguely resembles what you and Ranma did, so there haven't been any recent cases from which information could be gained. What we do know is that the bond was once used to more closely bind soul mates during marriage ceremonies. It only works with soul mates, by the way. The only effect we know of is a general sharing of emotion between the pair."

Margaret was busy turning the word ‘soul mate’ over in her mind, and blushing at the implications, when she felt a wild surge of elation from Ranma. At least her father wasn't killing him. "Soul mates?"

Her mother agreed, "Isn't it great?! You found the man meant for you, and you didn't even have to try!" enthused Cynthia.

Margaret blushed crimson right to the roots of her hair.

Makoto, as Sailor Jupiter, was staring down at the middle-aged field commander of the JDF forces sent in to restore order to Nerima, and seriously considering whether or not she could get away with turning him into a bug-zapper. The man was infuriating! He actually had the nerve to tell her she should be at home playing with dolls instead interfering with responsible men. Instead, she simply infused her right hand with a glowing sphere of compressed lightning.

"Listen here, baldy, if it weren't for me and my friends, this whole ward would be up in flames by now, so you had better lay off and quit trying to tell me what to do before you have an accident of the electrical variety!"

The man, now white-faced, nodded shakily and slowly leaned back in his chair as Jupiter held her fist closer and closer to him. Then, extended too far, his considerable weight pulled him backward, tipping him over onto the canvas tent floor.

Jupiter exited the tent, laughing uproariously, and made her way through stacks of equipment and parked vehicles, idle soldiers and refugees, to the tent set up for her fellow Senshi and the amazingly gifted Neriman martial artists.

"This is really incredible," Mercury was saying as Jupiter entered the tent. Mars and Mercury were sitting at a foldout table, along with Shampoo, Ukyou, Konatsu, Akane, Ryoga, and Mousse. She still couldn't see how those last three could function in society, but it appeared that without Ranma around they were almost nice people.

"What is?" Jupiter asked, taking the only empty seat.

Mercury pointed to her left gauntlet and pressed a small silver button near her elbow. The top of it slid away to reveal her computer. Mercury then reached up to her topaz circlet/visor and pulled a long wire from it, which she jacked into a receptacle in the computer. Immediately the air above the table was filled with a holographic map of Nerima, complete with troop movements, scurrying looters, and burning buildings.

"Cool," was all Jupiter said.

A short command later, and the map became slightly reddish in tint, but with the change came visible waves of something rippling along the city's surface. "That is what's so incredible. It's some kind of chaotic energy matrix. I suspect that, using Cologne's theory of Ranma's life force interfering with everyone else’s, this has always been an unseen natural occurrence in this area, but when Ranma came to live here he inadvertently began to fuel it. Now with him gone, the matrix is in a state of flux and is beginning to return to its normal, non-agitated state. Unfortunately, the waves of chaos that the matrix created will continue to increase in strength for several more days before they begin to weaken."

"So we know that this really is all Ranma's fault, unintentional as it is, and we know that everything's going to get worse before it gets better; but what happens when Ranma comes back? Won't it just start all over when he leaves again?" asked Mars.

Mercury released the hologram and shrugged, "Barring further analysis, the chaos matrix is a permanent phenomena, and will return to an active state in Ranma's presence. So the only solution to prevent a reoccurrence is for Ranma to not return to Nerima. Actually, if he never returned to Tokyo, Nerima would be much safer."

Ukyou and Shampoo gasped, each for different reasons, but Ryoga growled, "It's always that bastard's fault! I swear that I'll end his life when he returns to Nerima. How dare he put Akane in danger!"

"Easy, big fella," Mars said, patting him on the back. The last thing they needed was for Ryoga to go berserk.

"Ooh, when he gets back I am going to give him a piece of my mind," Akane said, popping her knuckles at the same time.

Jupiter ignored the comment and tried to change the subject. "I 'convinced' the guy in charge to leave us alone, so we're still on general troubleshooting and rescue duties."

"How did you manage that?" Ukyou asked. She was alternating between glaring at Ryoga and Akane, unable to decide which to focus the entirety of her anger upon.

"Oh, I just told him that the next time he tried to boss around, I might accidentally light him up like a Christmas tree, or something along those lines."

Shampoo giggled. "Bald fat man look like he should be in circus."

Shouts from outside drew everyone's attention. They all piled through the opening in the tent to see a large silver ring floating a dozen feet above the ground in the center of the park. It had been cleared of trees in preparation to erect a temporary triage, but now…

The ring glowed for a couple seconds then deposited a half-dozen armed and armored men and women, then it disappeared. The sounds of automatic weapons being readied rang through out the park and soldiers formed a large ring around the small group.

"Wait," Shampoo called, "Great-grandmother have ring like that in her room, say it's magic. They must be sent by Great-grandmother!" She leapt over the soldiers in order to further confuse or at least slow them from firing.

The newcomers ranged in nationality from Japanese to Eskimo. One of them, a man with a katana strapped across his back, stepped forward and in a loud voice, announced, "We're here to help!"

"Let them through," Mars ordered the soldiers irritably.

The man nodded to her and with a gesture had his fellows follow him towards the gap formed in the ranks by Mars.

"Thank you," he said to her when they had crossed the distance.

"Don't thank me. We need all the help we can get."

Before some officer or another could get their hooks into the newcomers, Jupiter said, "Follow us. We can talk in the tent."

After more chairs and another table were brought in, the entire group managed to seat itself, in the now crowded tent.

"What was that thing that brought you here?" Mercury asked almost immediately, curiosity glinting in her aquamarine eyes.

"We just call them rings," a tall blond woman with a dagger sheathed to each forearm. The only armor she wore was a pair of gauntlets, matching grieves, and a breastplate that hinted at a large amount of… healthiness.

Mercury could ask questions about the rings things later; they needed to know who these people were and who had sent them. "Like Mars said, we could use all the help we can get, but we also need to know who you are and why you're helping us. Please understand that I'm just being cautious," Jupiter said.

"Ah, someone with her head on straight. I appreciate that in a fellow warrior. My name is Kenji, and we came here at the request of my son-in-law."

"Who would that be?" Ukyou asked curiously. Whoever it was obviously had connections.

Kenji smiled. It wasn't quite evil, but it was close. "I believe you all know him; his name's Ranma."

The top of the tent was suddenly melted away by three very large battle auras, courtesy of Ukyou, Shampoo, and Akane.

Ranma breathed a sigh of relief as he reentered Margaret and her parents' quarters. Kenji had actually agreed to go down to Nerima and help keep the place intact. It didn't hurt that he hadn't tried to kill him either. The threats didn't really count for much; he got threatened all the time. He could feel Margaret still, but it was as if the sensations were muted somehow. Maybe she was asleep.

"How did your little talk go?" Cologne asked mildly. She was eating from a plate of sliced carrots and celery.

"Oh, not to bad. Kenji'll kill me if I hurt Margaret, though. Not that I intended to in the first place. Speaking of Margaret, where is she?"

Cologne smiled, sort of… the carrot she was taking a bite out of could have just distorted one of those smirks people get when they think something; he couldn't tell. "She has school tomorrow and Cynthia has to go to work, so they went home. I stayed here so I could show you to my quarters."

That explained the dampened sensation. Good, now he would have some more time to contemplate how much further down the drain his life could manage to sink. "So, what did the High Council say about the weapons and stuff?" Ranma asked as they walked down the hall.

"They are taking the threat of a rogue Attendant very seriously. Right now, they've got the best psychics going over the weapons you took from Kuno, Mousse, and Ryoga, but psychometry is an inexact talent and it could take a while to get any answers. Until then, you are still confined to Atlantis."

"That's okay, I guess."

Cologne seemed surprised by Ranma's dismissal of his confinement, and she asked, "You don't mind being stuck down here while Nerima is in turmoil?"

"Nah, not too bad. I asked Kenji to go help them out. He got some of his friends together and they used one of those ring things to go to where the army is camped."

Cologne's eyes got really, really big. "You are joking, right, Ranma?" she asked him seriously.

"Why would I joke about that?" Ranma was starting to think that he might have made a mistake by asking for Kenji's help. The man had told him that they could make it where no one would recognize them, something he called a glamour, so Cologne didn't need to worry about anyone finding out about Atlantis. If that wasn't the problem, then what was it?

"Ranma, Kenji is what you would call a pyromaniac. He likes to set fires just for fun. We'll be lucky to find anything left in Nerima besides a lot of ashes."

Oops. Oh, well, there was no way to stop him, since he'd already left. "I guess we should just hope that he can control himself, heh?"

Cologne shook her head doubtfully. "And I was just starting to like my nice little restaurant."

"What?!" came a roar that made Jupiter check to see if her ears were bleeding.

Another of the men who had come with Kenji, a short black man with a shaved head and a huge mustache, slapped their leader in the man of the head. "Man, you weren't supposed to tell them that Ranma and Margaret had tied the knot! Cynthia is gonna skin ya alive, man."

The tall blond woman shook her head and said, "Poor guy."

Anything else that was said for the next minute was drowned out by the promises of bodily harm that were going to be done to Ranma by fiancées and enemies alike. The soldiers had wisely stayed away, not wanting to get involved in an argument with glowing people. It was when the threats started to shift towards Margaret that Kenji held up his hands and shouted, "That's enough!" The peal of thunder that his hands emitted as he clapped them also served to quite the tent's occupants.

"You all can try to kill Ranma later; but you'll have to leave my daughter out of it or I’ll have to take steps to neutralize you as threats. But for now, we have business to attend to."

To be continued.

dark_phoneix@hotmail.com

Webmaster: Larry F
Last revision: May 21, 2007