Ranma: Endless Complications All characters are the copyrighted products of people who aren't me - in this case, those of the ranmaverse are copyright Rumiko Takahashi, and those of the world of the dreaming are copyright Neil Gaiman. ********** What has come before - Ranma has died. Far from ending the poor martial artists troubles, his, or at the time, HER, demise has actually doubled the chaos of his life, and added a new wrinkle. He's (technically) engaged to a beatiful young-looking female goth... who just happens to be the embodyment of death. His mom is mad, his 'uncute' fiancee has just had a nervous breakdown, and Ryoga has actually decided to bury the hatchet in something other than Ranma's back. You can just tell the other shoe is about to drop right? Thought so. ********************************************************** Effexor entertainment presents A Prozac production Ranma: Endless Complications Written and directed by Someone who has a water content of zip, but a tea content of 85% Episode Four: A new hope (gomen - I could *nae* resist! and, well... ...it does seem to be a riff these days) ********************************************************** Ranma looked over at his mother carefully, not wanting to break the fragile peace that prevailed in the Tendo Cha-no-ma(1), ever since the earlier confrontation, everyone had been very... polite. It was starting to strain at him, this fragile peace was almost completely unknown to him - he far preferred a straight out fight to this walking on eggshells. In the corner, sipping a cup of tea, Death watched biding her time. Akane had slipped into a numb calm that reminded her of the time Dream had gone into his depressive stage, after his imprisonment. Soun had slipped his moors some time ago, and was currently doing a very good impression of someone who'd hit the valium and bounced. Genma had retreated to Dr. Tofu's to have the more distressing of the splinters removed before they festered, Kasumi offering to go with him, until Nabiki had taken pity on the poor man, and offered to go instead. Currently the Tendo haus-frau was providing refreshments, since it allowed her to spend most of her time in the kitchen. Kasumi might have been sweet, but she wasn't stupid, reflected Ranma. Looking around the room again his eyes stopped at Akane. Since the katana had been sheathed, her spirit semed to have been broken. Gradually over the last thirty minutes or so, they had ... moved apart. Ranma looked at the distance between them, and thought of the little bombshell Telute had dropped. Akane had killed him. 'Macho-tomboy... always getting bent out of shape over the littlest of things...' he thought sadly. 'Still she really don't look too good right now...' he weighed sympathy, survival, and the past in his mind, and gloomily reflected that perhaps he shouldn't try to confort her right now. If he tried, ether Akane would thump him, and his mom would kill her, or old man Tendo would rush out for a preacher to marry them... or worse, she'd retreat further inside herself. Swallowing bile, and for once feeling totally helpless, he returned his attention to his mother. Nodoka was not having a good evening. Her temper was on edge, her son had been almost killed! She had left him for ten years, but she was determined to spend the rest of her life near her only child, her pride, a man among men, and periodically her daughter amongst women. And he had nearly been killed! Watching him closely she watched him look at the girl she had once thought of as being almost a daughter to her, and saw his jaw tense, his whole demeanour show a distress at her... then his eyes met hers. Variables were weigned, balances counted, and a decision made. "I have an announcement to make," began Nodoka. "Since Tendo Akane has killed her iinzuke, I can only conclude that they are not a suitable match. As the matriarch of the Saotome clan, I therefore declare the engagement at an end." She paused her eyes sweeping slowly over the room, resting disdainfully on all present. "Do any here dispute my judement in this matter?" She concluded, her hand moving to rest lightly on her katana emphasising the seriousness of her point. So to speak. 'And without my husband here to complicate matters, we may actually resolve matters!' She crowed silently to herself. Kasumi returning with fresh tea, stopped in the doorway, a look of profound shock on her face. Soun snapped into life, the words acting as a bucket of water to his bruised soul. "You cannot break this engagement - it is for family honor! They are to bring our two -" "Schools together, unite our two houses, provide infinate rice pudding, I know... " Finished Nodoka, pursing her lips thinly. "Do you really think your honor is worth more than the life of my son? Akane has repeatedly assaulted him, regularly insults him, and appears incapable of getting along with him... do you really think they should be together? It is only by luck that I don't have your daughter arrested on charges of murder and grevious bodily harm, so I say again, is your honor worth this? *Is it?!*" she hissed quietly, yet the words somehow carried more force than a shriek. Souns face paled, his mouth working soundlesly. Akane had retreated beyond with the accusations each striking home with sickening force, each word a further laceration to her fragile heart. She fled the room sobbing, Kasumi following quickly after. Ranma watched with disbelief at the events that he had sometimes wished for, but never really wanted. "I'd say that no-one objects then," interjected Death wryly. She felt for the poor child, but she had to agree with the words of the mother in front of her. The match really wasn't the best. "In that case I am leaving," announced Nodoka, picking up her blade, and turning to leave. "When my husband returns tell him I shall be waiting for him at our house." With a measured tread she began to leave, only to stop as Soun at last regained the power of speach. "Then Nabki shall marry Ranma!" "Why am I not surprised," murmered Death. *Why me?* thought Ranma with a certain sense of doom. Nodoka paused, inclined her head noncommittally, then left. Ranma performed a textbook facefault, even as Soun began to cheer, his dreams saved. **** Far out in planes not accessable by normal mortals, beyond even those realms where the mages travelled and tested themselves, beyond even the ken of the Endless, something was shifting. The end of an era had come, somehow avoiding notice by any. Dream had pased beyond, a new aspect rising to face the changes of a new age, but others were affected. Far beyond the senses of the child-avatar Delirium, in the heart of her realm, where she would never think to look, the smeared colors and deranged imagry of the realm was beginning to coalesce into a small chair. The wood was higly polished, and the arms elaborately carved. It oozed a sense of permanence and reality that was quite at odds with the area around... until slowly the feild of normality spread outwards towards the furthest reaches. It progressed in fits and starts, and frequently passed thought dimensions that made three-dimensional topography go away and have a quiet cry at its favourite bar. In short, by the time Nodoka left the Tendo household, a small parlour room had reformed from the chaotic ether of Delirum's realm. Far away in other realms, Destiny was using words that would have turned the air blue and struck a mortal dead with their sheer power. He couldn't find his clean socks, and it was begining to REALLY get to him. Despair walked the grey halls of her domain, feeling nothing, seeing all, doing her job as she had for countless millenia. Looking up she regarded one mirror with dull incuriosity. Walking around it, she paused to consider it, idly scratching at her face, tearing her cheek with her sigil ring, a band of plain sliver with a vicious barb where another ring would place a precious stone. The mirror was in some way wrong. It had been a grey framed oblong when last she had observed the young banker face redundancy in a company re-organisation. It was now a grey framed oval, reflecting more than it had previously. Despair watched it carefully. It was her task. Blood that dripped softly down her face and torso fed the rats that followed her through her home. Watching the tragedy as it played out for an audience of one, the mists hid all as the viewpoint receaded beyond the silent somberness that was the customary mein of Despair's desmene. Retracting further, the viewpoint became a human. or at least a human shape. It was the temple of Desire, always near to its twin. Desire noted nothing. It was doing its best Columbia impression, down to the micky mouse ears and striped pyjamas as it watched the events occuring in the small ward of Nerima, laughing softly. This was going far better than it had hoped. And elsewhere, in a realm whose ruler had abandoned it, a centuaries old spell began to activate for no reason. In all the time the spell had been active, it had only functioned once, but it had functioned recently... This might have been the warning for the events about to take place, be they tragedy or farce. At this point not even Destiny knew. A small light began to flash on a high tech 'high chair'. Unattended, and unseen, without a cancel order, the spell triggered a defensive function. Then the blinking light ceased, the shadows in the main chamber of the Realm of Destruction, rusheing back. Dust settled. Nothing changed, and nothing would change here till one who was its master returned. If ever he did. ******* Death was having a fablous time. She had been bored, feling stuck in a rut of a hundred thousand million years... Yet this Ranma had managed to escape his fate, break her depression, AND make her laugh. She admitted to herself she liked him, even if there was no way in hades she cou-would marry him... Even if she had wanted to, she couldn't, but even if she had she wasn't entirely sure that the revelation she had to make to him would really endear her to him. Still she hoped they could be friends - Death actually *liked* people, an odd side effect of the job, one couldn't take them, without experiencing a measure of empathy, even liking for them. In all ways that counted, Death was the only member of the endless who *knew* what made mortals tick. That empathy was telling her to take this slowly right now. Picking up Ranma, she placed him right side up on the futon that Genma had laid his sore seat on, patting him on the shoulder in a companionable fasion... And levering his jaw from the floor. Evidently the poor boy was worried about Nabiki... Sighing she left quietly, and moved upstairs. Right now there was someone in FAR more need of a sympathetic ear. *** Akane Tendo was in Hell. Had she truly entered that realm, the demons and imps would have left her, deaming more torment to be an unjust cruelty. Of course that appealed to some... and even they would have left Akane to her private torment. Lying on her bed, weaping bitter tears, sobs barely muffled by her pillow and residual self control, Akane sightlessly stared in horror at the picture of herself, painted in technicolor by Nodoka's bitter diatribe. She viewed herself in the harsh light of the accusations, and recoiled. She was a cruel person, vicious and mean-spirited, caring only of herself and her possesions. She was jealous, bigoted and deserved all the scorn that people heaped on her - after all, wasn't she violent? Ugly? Unable to cook? Prone to blind over-reaction? She was everything that her mother would have hated! Look at Ranma - he was always condescending to her, and she'd always resented it, but now she knew differently... She was a burden to him, and if she could have been something more... well she'd blown that, with her determination that she should be his equal, nay - his superior, and that he should treat her in the manner in which she felt she should have been treated... Yet he was RIGHT! She COULDN'T cook - she'd hurt him and everyone else so badly with her food over the years... and a bland almost curry was no sort of dish to live on. As for the art - he had every right to be arrogant and cocky - he was *Ranma*, and he really was several classes out of her and everyone else's league.... But there was one thing that kept running through her head that she couldn't deal with. Killing him. The other thoughts had been there for years, and in part her mindless, reflexive, violence towards Ranma was a way of making those thoughts shut up. But this time she'd killed the unkillable. She'd murdered the one person who would do anything for her (except, perhaps, eat her cooking) to make her happy... Akane spiralled deeper and deeper down a spiral of self-loathing and Despair, barely hearing when the diffident knock at the door progressed to a more forceful rap, scarcely even noticing when her eldest sister sat beside her on the bed, patting her on the back, telling her to let it all out. "L -let it all out?" snuffled Akane throught the tears, "I alwa... - always l-let it out on Ranma! And now he hates me! And what's worse, he's right to hate me! I HATE ME Kasumi-oneechan!" Kasumi was, needless to say, startled. Holding the bitterly crying form of her sister against her, she began to whisper to her, praying that she could help. "Akane, Ranma doesn't hate you, we don't hate you - we love you imoutochan, please believe me..." Kasumi held on for dear life - sensing the hurt Akane would take if she wasn't convinced that SOMEBODY still loved her, even (especially?) now. Akane, however receptive to Kasumi's words was however becoming even more hurt by the thought that she'd upset her sister, and resentful of her - she'd be okay, she didn't need anyone! She could deal with her own problems thankyou very much. All she wanted to do was get away and continue her self abuse session - in a bitter, masochistic, fashion it made her feel better. Of course none of this showed on her face, tears merely contined to roll down her cheeks to be absorbed by the sodden material of Kasumi's blouse. Death poked a concerned head around the open door. Looking at Kasumi in preference to the back of Akane's head, she gestured a wish to help comfort the crying girl... to which Kasumi replied with a slight gesture conveying that now was not a good time, the gesture was appreciated, and maybe later would be good. Death left, feeling very defeated. Still she DID have another task. She still had to tell Ranma that was possible that he was, strictly speaking, no longer entirely human. Of course, in that family it might not be as hard as she had imagined. Perking up, Death turned and walked back to the living room in a slightly better humor than she had left it. *** Nabiki was in a foul temper. Having had the humiliation of leading a sore panda to the doctor's was bad enough - and just for once she actually agreed with Ranma about old Mrs. Tezuka - she really was a demon with that wash ladle. She also believed in Quantity over Accuracy, hence Nabiki herself was also wet, and highly steamed. Having left Genma at Doctor Tofu's practise, with the message that the doctor himself would drop Genma home, she had left. Left to her own company, her mind had started to construct bizarre mental scenarios in which either Ranma or her sister said something wrong and her home became a bloodbath. Her pace, which never really dropped below brisk, gradually accelerated to a graceful walking charge, urged on by her worry and her irritation at not being there to help control any of the million and two potential faux-paus that her family was capable of making. Had she known about the clanger awaiting her, Nabiki would have chosen a bloodbath in a heartbeat. Sadly she didn't. Nor did she notice the small black pig building a campfire, nor did she notice it change into a handsome young martial artist. A handsome young NAKED martial artist. Palms itching, nose twitching, wallet throbbing, heart pounding, Nabiki hurried home praying it would still be there when she arived... *** Ranma sat and watched the walls with the fatalistic certainty that he'd only be seeing them for a short while longer. As much as he knew Nabiki had slipped him a subtle helping hand, and even used his curse to their joint advantage, he couldn't see them being happily married. They were too dissimilar ever to survive together. More accurately, what he actually thought was; "Nabs is okay, but there is no way in hell I'm gonna marry her - she'd kill me!" He was so worried he didn't even catch the irony of this statement... Not that he usually would. The door to the living room opened and Death walked into the room. Ranma turned to flee, he had to get away! He just couldn't cope with the insanity anymore!. He also couldn't pass Soun's Demon Head Attack. Sitting down grumpily he poured a fresh cup of tea for Death. After all, it was the polite thing to do, and at heart, Ranma really did try to do his best for people. Not always what other people thought was best, but then, he was trying. Very trying. People would forgive a lot if he tried, Ukyo, Shampoo, Kodachi... Death accepted the cup with delighted gratitude (few people, even those poor souls commiting suicide, were kind enough to give her tea), a smile, and a small bow. Returning the bow clumsily, Ranma asked the first thing that came to mind. "So how's Akane?" He looked at the slightly deflated look on her face and for once actually came to the right conclusion. "Oh," he said intelligently. "I'm sure she'll be fine," Death replied at last, "but right now, I'm probably not the person she wants to see..." She frowned, then brightened slightly. "Still that's all to the good - I STILL need to talk to you about what happened." Ranma winced. She'd reassured him that she wasn't going to take him unless he was dead, but somehow, sitting opposite her, about to have a serious talk, well, he started to worry a little. A very little. "So .... What did you want to say, huh?" "Well, it's about your situation - it's kind of unique." she looked at him, then clarified. "It's never happened before in the entire history of the universe, and that's a long time, so I'm not entirely certain what's going to happen next... "There have been odd circumstances before. For instance, my nephew Orpheus gave up my care so he could rescue his wife from the underworld... It didn't go so well, and after he failed he was torn to pieces shortly afterwards. I couldn't go to him... He spent over two thousand years as a disembodied head...." Ranma swallowed hard. Not atthe image of the head... At the look of pain and remorse on Telute's face. "He did die eventually - but I couldn't take him, he had to ask my brother Dream to take him... Which lead to my brothers death," she aded in a pained undertone, looking at the floor. It had not been one of the highlights of her career. "If I'd been thinking I would NEVER have agreed to letting him go to the underworld. It hurt the whole family" Ranma reached over and hesistantly touched her hand, as if he was afraid she'd bite him. "I don't think it was your fault," he haltingly began, "I mean, could ya have known what woulda happened?" Death shook her head mutely. "Well, don't blame yourself for it... it was a mistake right? everyone makes mistakes... heh, look at me! I make em all a' the time!" he finished with a self-depreciating smile. Death looked up at him and smiled gratefully. "Thank you... Anyway, that's not important right now." She gathered her thoughts briefly before continuing. "There was another person who I interfered with a few hundred years ago - his name is Hob - he decided that you didn't have to die if you didn't want to... So Dream and I decided to let him live for as long as he wanted to - I will come for him one day, but he has to ask me, rather than just me turning up when he dies... and he's experienced things that should have killed him a great many times. I think he lives in Great Britain these days... "But you - now you're different again. Orpheus I couldn't come for, Hob, I'll come when he's ready, but you? I came for you and didn't collect you, I even saved your life... so I'm not too certain what happens next. I might find myself collecting you next time you get yourself killed... but you will probably find yourself undying unless you want to, it really is confusing...." Ranma latched on to the part of this he understood. "So I probably won't die unless I want to?" Death nodded. "But I don't want to be just a head for the rest of my life!" he started to panic. "No! That won't happen," laughed Death, "That was an accident - Orpheus managed to have his body eaten when he stopped caring about life... it isn't part of the deal..." She smiled then cocked her head. "There is another option of course - every other jusenkyoite I've ever taken has been in their uncursed body... so it may be that you can only die when you're male..." She pondered this. Somehow it didn't feel right. "If it's all the same lady, I'd rather not test that out..." interrupted Ranma wincing, his only answer peals of silvery laughter from his companion. *** The realm of Destruction is chaotic, and dangerous to travel, and many of its inhabitants have, without guidence, become less than savoury. There was one who scared even they. Deep in the bowels of the realm lived an avatar feared and despised by all. Genocide. Destruction himself had seen the need for him, but had not been willing to grant him ny form of free rein while he wasn't there to keep him in check. Instead he sealed him into the bedrock of the realm, only able to touch the mortal world briefly and for short periods of time. However, recently the seals that bound him, the last remnant's of Destruction's full power had been failing. He'd been fre to touch the world far more regularly than he had even when under destructions direction. A surge of power exploded from the six outermost of the seven cylindrical seals. The Seventh cracked sharply along one edge, the burst of power disapating harmlessly away from the others. The six seals flashed, a path of power lancing between them. The central seal remained dark, failing to ward the others. The lines of fire stabilised into a six pointed star, and attempted to contain the power flailing madly against them, but couldn't restrain the power as the had before. A hand clawed up from the ground, pushing the central seal aside. The hand itself was startlingly clean, pure white, covered in pewter rings with jewel eyed skulls beloning to various species. In some places flesh still clung to the bone of the shrunken heads. Pulling itself further up the arms revealed well muscled arms, a white shirt, and male form. Genocide stood up. In his form there were the images - flickering remnants of evils gone by, evils yet to be, evils that even now swept the world. He flickered for a moment, the robes of a Klansman morphing briefly into the militaristic boy scout cut of the nazi youth, switching to the darkly chilling leathers of a gestapo officer. No, far too cliché he decided. He eventually settled on a form that had semed to work most recently. His face briefly shimmered, until he was almost everyman, the very picture of the human who had finally been bred out of race. His skin became a pale coffee colour, his nose broad and well defined, his eyes slightly almond shaped... In short, if you looked for a racial marker it was there, somewhere. He gestured, and his clothes setled down to a clean urban fighters fatigues, deeply pocketed combat trousers, camouflage mottled t-shirt, a dark green bodywarmer lined with kevlar, and a leather beret. He'd probably change it later... But there was something missing... With a snap of his fingers a swastika appeared in miniature over his heart and in bass relief over his back. Looking over himself he nodded calmly. "Hmmmph. Seems that the boss has finally gone. 'Bout damn time... " his voie was good-natured, pleasant to listen to, it sounded like the best friend you'd ever had, a voice that could do no wrong. His eyes swept the desolate and forbidding realm around him. He smiled nastily. "Tough for him. I think I'll take it." With a cheerful laugh that sent chills up the backs of the few denizens close enough to hear he vanished towards the centre of the realm. It was about time that someone showed the worlds what true destruction was... Behind him the displaced seventh seal burst back into brilliant life, the crack sealing as if it had never been. Sadly, Genocide was long gone. However, something still pulsed in the glowing hexagram.... *** Far away, unseen by it's owner, who was busy playing a set, in a tied 'kerchief, what appeared to be a small letter opener corroded, then disintegrated. This wouldn't be noticed by the owner for a while. When he did it would be far too late. *** Nabiki was really starting to regret inheriting the familial braincell. Apparently there was literally just the one to go around - at least that was the only reason she could think of for her fathers latest brain fart. "NO! I am not gonna marry him dad!" she grated out, ignoring the flood of tears that sprang from her father. "He's cute, he's a good friend when the chips are down, and he's got more fruitloops after him than a horse has flies!" She paused and thought, "Besides, I don't date dead men." "But you must do this for the family honour!" Soun wailed back, his spine being slightly firmer than a marshmallow, he'd decided to use the crutches that had worked so well on Akane to prop himself against the coming onslaught. Sadly for Soun, Nabiki knew that the best way to get rid of a crutch was to kick it out from underneath the weilder. "You don't get me like that. If family honour was involved like that, then you'd be taking the family sword out and serving as second to my sister the gorilla, you can't have it both ways. And just what the hell do you expect me to do next time Shampoo comes calling? I have as much chance of surving that as you do to standing up to Happosai!" Soun paled and made shushing motions, looking frantically around till he was sure that his perverted master was nowhere near. "But Saotome and I made this deal to secure the legacy of our schools! we -" "- Should have thought about that before you drove Akane round the twist. If you hadn't crammed this damn engagement down her throat, she'd probably have gone for it. Really it isn't like he's THAT bad a catch, but noooo Daddy, you *had* to force it, and push it, and thrust it at her until she lashed out at someone..." Nabiki crossed her fingers and hoped that her father would forget that she had helped force the arrangement on her sister in the first place. For once luck was with her. Soun had fainted. "Oh grow a backbone dad..." murmered Nabiki in disgust and went looking for Ranma. **** We now interupt this Fanfic for tales of the tamperer! Desire was bored. Not ennui 'let something fatal happen to break this boredom and misery' bored, but merely 'it's friday night and there's nothing on telly' bored. Being the mid 19th centuary, the concept of home delivered pizza hadn't been developed yet, so if you wanted to eat without cooking you needed servants (it was Cupids day off and Eros was on a job), or you needed to go out. By some not terribly bizare twist of fate, one exquisitely manicured finger had stopped the spinning globe on Japan, so Desire was here, cruising for munchies. And entertainent. Such as the robbery gone wrong at a nearby yattai[2]. A young husband and wife team had been menaced by a group of local youngbloods, who in accordance with local assuptions on the value of women had decided that the threat was the husband. Shortly after being beaten around the head with a bakers peel, and chased off by thrown crockery the group revised it's long held opinions, and decided that menacing single males would be better for their health. Then they ran into a Hibiki. But that's another story. In this one Desire decided that this looked like a good place to get some food - the okonomiyaki that had hurtled past her ear in pursuit of the would be gang had been cooked just right, the toppings were appropriate, and the entertainment was free! Desire looked at a internal mental construct dealing with the supply of energy its siblings had given it. This had nothing to do with its plan to get its Sister a date... it merely promised to be diverting. Plus Desire culd feel the... well desire that burned in the woman cooking the food. The desire to whomp thugs again, the desire to jump her husband's bones, the desire to be so big and tough that she wouldn't have to worry about little groups of thieves like the one fleeing... Desire smirked, it was ostentatious, pointless and going to be a *lot* of fun. It left with a small satchel of food under one arm, a dented spatula recovered from a wall, and something to watch for the next forty or so years. All in all, Desire would miss these days when the telephone pizza came into it's own. As Desire faded from this plane of reality, behind it a rather suprised young man was pinned to the floor underneath his wife. Desire had been very helpful to her - in addition to to fragments of the Destruction power it had left chaotic fragments of Delirum's power... plus a smattering of it's own spirit, along with a couple of hints it had given to the authors of the Kama Sutra, who had been too embarrassed to actually write them down. Somehow, Ranma would have felt right at home in the life Kuonji Shigeru would have. *we now restore you to your regularly scheduled tale of wackiness and insanity - coverage of parliament in session! **** Ranma was scared. He'd survived the NekoKen, he'd failed to go insane when faced by demi-divinities, superpowered perverts, and ancient practioners of Grandma-fu (a secret technique devised by the Amazons, perfected by Cologne, and not revealed to ANYONE not female and at least 100 years old). But he never could stop the desire to chew his own legs off when faced by an angry young fiancee. "So... what are you going to do this time Saotome?!" Demanded an infuriated Nabiki to the puddle at her feet. "I absolutely refuse to be forced to marry an undead person just because Daddy wants to honour that silly pledge!" Konatsu, pasing outside the fence of the dojo paused in shock. He'd been on his way to use the local laundromat and had to pass this way. However this was marginally more important than making sure he had a clean skirt for work tomorrow. Hastily stashing his clothes in a handy tree, he vanished into the cover. Mistress Ukyo was NOT going to like this. Still, it was good for him... Nabiki looked down at the panic stricken Ranma and sighed. Taking things out on him was hardly likely to help, and had been one of the many, *many* things she'd always believed Akane had been doing wrong. Blowing out a breath of pure exasperation she focused herself back towards the problem. "Oh, don't panic Saotome. You're quite a nice guy, but I will go live in a nunnery before I let Daddy push me around like that." She sat down, her back against the wall of the perimeter fencing, patting the space next to her in a friendly manner. "I don't bite, come on, sit," she invited him. Ranma, still frazzled by the realisation he WASN'T going to find himself beaten to a bloody pulp or sued into poverty, took the proffered place. "I'm not undead you know," he put in hesitantly. "Telute explained it a bit... I'm posibly immortal, at least in my Cursed body. But I'll probably die when i get old, just like anyone else. It was just lucky that Telute didn't recognise 'Ranko' that saved me. And I never actually died. I was just, y'know, suposed to." Nabiki considered this. "Yeah, I guess you're right...." She chuckled. "I'm still not going to marry you just because our parents want us too." Ranma nodded vigorously, causing Nabiki to break out in peals of laughter. "I'd get stomped by Shampoo for a start!" She kept chuckling, even as Ranma started to think. "Um, if she did, I'd stop her... anyway it ain't like she's got no claim no more - 'till death us do part' an all that stuff"" he finished firmly. Nabiki paused her eyes widening appreciatively. "Uh, what did I say?" he continued in a worried voice as Nabiki's eyes glazed before sharpening with a nearly audible 'plink!' "Till death us do part... Saotome, you're a genius!" she laughed. "Oh who would have thought it!" Ranma looked baffled and slightly worried. "Don't you get it - you're supposed to be dead! That means that all the arrangements are OFF! No more Shampoo, no more having to eat my sisters cooking! no more having to wory about Ukyo and that bakers peel of hers! AND I DON'T HAVE TO MARRY YOU!" She lept to her feet, and drawing forth victory fans, began dancing on the spot. "Um, Nabiki?" Asked Ranma. "Don't you get it Saotome? You aren't enganged anymore! no more messes with fiancees left right and center!" This time Ranma understood, and swiftly joined in the victory dance. Nabiki paused for a moment, and pulled Ranma close to her so she could whisper in his ear. "By the way, lets not mention the 'didn't really die' part okay?" Ranma nodded. Nabiki grinned internally - she didn't have to marry him, he was clear of all his other fiancee entaglments, and Akane would probably get along with him a lot better without the presure of the engagement. All in all a very good days work. She chuckled to herself 'And to think it was Ranma who thought up the way out!' Privately she reassessed him. She wouldn't marry him, and she wouldn't date him, but perhaps it was time to *really* be friends with him. Death, watching out of the window,smiled to herself. It was nice to see happy people, she didn't do enough of it. Maybe she could even be one of them. Akane, temporarily over her crying jag looked out of the window and saw her EX-fiancee happily playing with her mercenary sister, both of them obviously happy, a look of pure happiness that she had rarely seen on him lighting up his face. He was so much happier without her, and if he could smile like that with a mercenary like his sister, but couldn't around her... She returned to her bed, sore eyes beginning a new crying spell. ****** notes (1) Cha-no-ma - the tea room, the Japanese equivalent of a living room or lounge, so called because this is where tea is most often drunk. To my critics all I can say is - when I found this little snippet in the anime guide I found it interesting... perhaps you may too [2] Yattai - think small mobile caravan. think of those little mobile burger caravans you see at Sunday markets, public spectacles, and highway pulling in places. Now add seats to the main structure (usually 4), a small privacy screen between the customers back and the rest of the world, GOOD food, and an attention to aesthetics as well as practicality. A well run yatai is equivalent to a small mobile restaurant. With a clientelle who'll travel to get to it if it moves. They also come in major city and local neighbourhood versions, but both share the same design principle. Now try to imagine just what poor Ucchan felt when Genma stole her fathers... End part 4 Teaser for part 5 Cologne and Ranma rounded the corner and began the approach to the Tendo home. Suddenly for reasons neither of them could adequately explain, they leapt to the side and went flat against the ground. Then, with a noise like the death of worlds, the Tendo's house became an expanding fireball in front of them. Debris scythed through nearby houses with smoke shooting over a hundred feet into the air, as the initial fireburst rolled into the air and died back to a fierce firepit, greedily consuming all that was left. Ranma and Cologne looked at the burning ruins in horror. "No...." whispered Ranma, unable to comprehend. "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!"