Chapter 14

Beginnings of Unity

"So," Nabiki summarized, "After two hundred thirty one fights across the entire ward, it's almost dawn and we still have no idea where this girl is. Also, Ryoga's lost again, but on the bright side he seems to have taken Shampoo with him this time."

"So what now?" Sayuri asked.

"Well, Ryoga and Shampoo were supposed to be covering the warehouse district, I guess we search there next." Ranma said.

Madison and Kodachi were in trouble. Kodachi had just put an arm out to stop the younger girl. "Hold still."

"What is it?" The whisper was returned.

"Remember that I mentioned dangerous magic?"

"Yes."

"Well sometimes they move."

The thin fog around them had been thickening slowly already, but now it pooled, gathering rapidly to a point in front of them. A shadowy figure came into view, silhouetted at the edge of their sight in a way that had to be deliberate, glowing red eyes cutting through the night.

Dark laughter echoed around the street.

Madison took a step back, watching as Kodachi pulled out some kind of a whip and cracked it. "Come villain; find the venom in the Black Rose's thorns."

"So tell me," Shampoo asked Ryoga in Mandarin, "How exactly did we wind up in Chinatown, New York?"

Luna's ears tried to twitch as she heard something in the distance. She began running, the rest of the crew instinctively following her. "Follow the sound of explosions!" She hollered back at them.

The shadowy figure – literally, that's all it turned out to be, a moving silhouette with glowing red eyes – had thrown Kodachi into Madison. Both girls looked up from their position on the ground as the figure reached for them…

And then arched its back as someone dropped from somewhere above and behind it, steel glinting in their hands.

The figure turned. Behind it was a girl who looked to be only slightly older than Madison, black hair reaching down to her waist, metal claws glinting on her hands, and a silver crescent moon glowing on her forehead.

Several more people filtered in behind her, taking combat stances as they spread out. After a moment of watching them, the shadow melted into the ground, vanishing as the fog cleared.

"Sister," one of the new arrivals asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Why brother," Kodachi rolled her eyes, "I was waiting for the cavalry, what does it look like?"

The girl with the claws stepped forward and reached a hand out to help Madison up. "You wouldn't happen to be Madison, would you? Sakura sent us to find you?"

The group was back at the Tendo home. Brief introductions had been made and everyone was getting ready to grab a few hours of sleep before they needed to be up for various reasons, mats and blankets rolled out on the floor. The door opened abruptly and Shampoo walked in, dragging Ryoga behind her by the collar. She handed Nabiki a stack of post cards before collapsing on a pile of blankets that hadn't been handed out yet.

Nabiki flipped through the postcards, eyebrow climbing steadily as she did. "You guys literally hit every continent in a single night."

Ryoga scratched his head. "That's funny; I wonder why she only started collecting those about halfway through."

Nabiki and Kasumi walked into the living room from the hall, both carrying trays with lunch on them. While Kasumi began setting plates out in front of the half-dozen people around the table, Nabiki began speaking.

"Alright, Sakura, Madison, the official story is that you lost track of time on your outing into town. You got to your bus stop five minutes late and accidentally took the 609 instead of the 906, which used the last of your on-hand cash. Kasumi found you wandering while she was on her way home from shopping, but the busses had already stopped running. You were obviously lost by this point, so she was concerned and brought you home. Phones in our neighborhood were down, so you had to wait until repairs were finished to call home. At this point you were late enough that you were afraid to call home yourself, so Kasumi called instead and explained the situation. We're going to put you on the train home this evening. Your families wanted me to tell you that they're relieved you're both okay, so you shouldn't have to worry about being in too much trouble."

There was an eruption of raised voices from the yard.

"At least not from your parents," Nabiki amended.

"Oh my."

Mew Ichigo and two more girls had come over the wall and landed in the yard.

Naturally, everyone who hadn't met each other yet was instantly at odds. It had taken a bit (and more than one cyclical conversation), but everything had finally calmed down… for a given value of calm.

"So Mew Mews," Kasumi asked, "What brings you here? Is there another kimera in town?"

"No," The bird girl sitting on Mew Ichigo's left shook her head. "Genius here just overreacted."

"Well what was I supposed to think? A planeload of high schoolers gets taken hostage by terrorists, who else would it be? Even Ryou thought it was them!"

"Wait, what was that about terrorists?" Nabiki asked.

"It's been all over the news since last night," the other new girl said, "A high school trip was hijacked and taken hostage."

Nabiki bolted into the house for the television. The others arrived just in time to see the remote fall from her numb fingers. Most of the others turned their attention to the news broadcast, but Ranma and Akane only needed to see one thing.

There was a small blue shield rotating in and out with the Japan News Network logo. The shield had recently become familiar, though in this case the name of the organization it represented had been replaced by the numeral zero.

The pair arrived in Nabiki's room to find her furiously tapping away at a laptop. "Nabiki," Akane asked, "What's going on?"

"I've just been activated. Every MITHRIL agent in Asia has just been activated. There's a battle going on in North Korea right now that could start World War III and decide who wins. This isn't about a group of high schoolers. Apparently one of the girls they've got is special. Think Ranma if you converted all his fighting potential to thinking potential. She's scary smart, beat Einstein smart. If these guys get her designing weapons for them… or worse, figure out how to replicate her abilities? Say goodbye to the planet."

"Oh my," the trio turned to see Kasumi standing in the doorway. "It seems these terrorists are awfully well organized. Ranma, Akane, do you think a little chaos might help?"

The couple traded feral grins.

Everyone was gathered in the dojo waiting when Spectre walked in. "Okay kids, no point sugarcoating it, this is bad. End of the world bad. That terrorist attack on the news is a cover for the kidnapping of one Kaname Chidori. According to the information I was given, she's a special kind of person called a 'Whisper.' What this means is that she's as good at thinking as anyone in this room is at fighting. Terrorists get her making weapons for them and every fight from here on in will be reruns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Spectre forced herself not to wince with her audience. It was a shot below the belt and hurt her just as bad as it did them, but they needed to know how bad things could get.

"So we're asking for volunteers. This won't be like your other fights. These people will be using guns and trying to kill you. Not all of you are up to something like this, and frankly there's only so much room on a Pave Mare anyway.

"Tatewaki and Kodachi Kuno, Hikaru Gosunkugi, Kogane Nakamura, Yuka Toshima, Sayuri Kamei, Naru Osaka, Hiroshi Tsujitani, Daisuke Koyasu, and Madison Taylor; you have been designated the home guard. You're sitting this one out. Don't be offended please, you were just the ones it was determined still had to play by the same rules the rest of us mortals do.

"Everyone whose name I did not call take a few minutes to decide if you're coming or not. You've got until my bird gets here."

Tatewaki grabbed Ranma's shoulder as he entered the yard. "Saotome, why am I not joining this battle?"

Ranma sighed. "We considered bringing you. But someone has to stay. C'mon Kuno, this is us. You know something's gonna happen while we're gone. With you and Kogane here we've at least got a few ki sensitives keeping an eye on things. Besides, you're the most flamboyant out of all of us. If there's anyone I can see leading these guys into a fight before we get back and having everyone make it out, it's you. For all your faults Kuno, you're bold, and brave to the point of recklessness. There needs to be some kind of natural leader here when everything goes wrong."

For a moment, warrior and samurai locked eyes, then with a nod they gave each other the same charge.

"Take care of them."

Spectre came around the side of the house to find Ranma, Akane, Luna, Ryoga, Shampoo, and the Mew Mews were gathered in the yard. "Bad news, helicopter's not coming to get us. We'll need another way to get to this fight."

"Don't worry." Sakura was just slipping out of the dojo, staff in hand. "I've got this." I hope. She drew a card.

"More than one to fly we need

So let the mighty bird be freed.

So that you can carry more,

Fly Card please take your one true form!

Release!"

The spinning card halted in midair as she struck it. The magic spiraled out and solidified as a roc sized bird in the middle of the lawn.

Spectre was blasé. "Well, that's solved then; can't get a helicopter so we'll arrive to save the day on a giant magical bird. Guess we'd betted get moving then, I need to get this anti-terrorism team back by bedtime. Anybody know when our friend Sailor Moon is getting here?"

"Sorry I'm late." The girl in question bounced off the roof. "Usagi's gonna be a while, she wore herself out getting across town and she can't roof hop yet."

Spectre seemed to think things over for a minute. "Alright, we can't wait then. She'll just have to help the home guard keep an eye on things. All aboard, Air Cardcaptor flight 101, nonstop to North Korea."

Sailor Moon's path to the bird was cut off by an awestruck Amazon. "Senshi?" Shampoo asked reverently.

Moon nodded hesitantly.

The Chinese girl dropped to one knee and began rattling off a series of words she had obviously memorized verbatim.

Luna drew in a gasp. "That's Lunarian."

The Senshi nodded. "I recognize it." She bent down, placing one hand on Shampoo's shoulder and the first two fingers of the other over her mouth. "Do you know what you're saying?"

Shampoo happily shook her head in the negative.

"Then don't say it." At Shampoo's confused look Moon sighed. "Apparently we need to have a long talk much later."

"Then we'd better focus for now on making sure there is a later." Spectre cut in. "Last call, all aboard for North Korea."

The last two warriors rose and boarded the bird. Within a few minutes, Kasumi was watching the distant dot moving towards the horizon. "I know you wouldn't have forgiven yourselves if you'd ignored this and it went badly, but please, be safe." She withdrew a small medallion that had a seven pointed star with "竜" in center on one side and the curved teardrop shaped yin emblem on the other. "I wonder if this is what he meant…"

A/N: Alright. That's done. I've actually been able to transfer a lot of my drafts to the computer this weekend, so I'm pretty pleased.

On an aside, Daisuke's last name: I almost went with Niwa. Unfortunately I figured that'd be too confusing just at the moment, because that would have been the only reference (Sorry, D. isn't one of the seven), so I eventually decided to do the same thing I did with Yuka, Sayuri, and Hiroshi, and went with their seiyu's surnames.

Also, because it was asked for, the series that have linked up so far are Ranma ½, Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, and Cardcaptor Sakura. Full Metal Panic has been revealed, but not fully integrated yet, though this chapter marks the beginning of that. There's one more that will be hooking up in the near future, and then that'll be it almost up until the assault on the Dark Kingdom (Although the events of the seventh series will be going on behind the scenes).

Our heroes thus far in order of appearance are:

Ranma Saotome

Usagi Tsukino

Kasumi Tendo

Nabiki Tendo

Akane Tendo

Tatewaki Kuno

Luna

Hikaru Gosunkugi

Naru Osaka

Sayuri Kamei

Yuka Toshima

Hiroshi Tsujitani

Daisuke Koyasu

Ichigo Momomiya

Kogane Nakamura

Ryoga Hibiki

Sakura Avalon (I did see the questions about that. There is a reason I went with this particular name. Several in fact, including one plot-relevant one, so I'm not giving anything away yet.)

Keroberos

Shampoo

Madison Taylor (Going with the Avalon surname left me committed to her dub name as well. That said, only the character names are changing.)

Kodachi Kuno

Minto Aizawa

Retasu Midorikawa

Hopefully this helps answer the questions about that. Alternatively, I could keep a running chart on my profile about who is or isn't currently running with the group. Let me know.

As always, thanks for reading,

~NPP-VI