Prices paid 8. Divide and Rue.

Evening came swiftly to the Saotome residence. As had become their custom the quartet gathered in the dojo for a last meeting before they turned in. This evening the fine meal had conspired with a close night and the confusions of the day to leave the 'meeting' slightly quieter than the average tomb.

Ami was of course thoroughly absorbed in her own digital world, running though the various details she had downloaded in the bastion and the readouts she had got from the gear they had appropriated.

Setsuna was just as absorbed in her own crisis, unable to find answers for the questions her soul asked. No small part of this was due to the guardian feeling physically and emotionally drained after her own heavy shock.

Neptune too was still feeling the side effects of the healing treatment from earlier, and was struggling to keep her eyelids up. Admittedly Neptune's own liking for fine food was also playing a part.

Ranma was absorbed once more in his own darkness. Struggling with the reality of his own darkness. In his hand was a letter written by a goddess containing information that would help him prepare for an assault on hell. He had come a long way from the child who used to practice here with his father. One look at his clawed hand gave a small glimpse of the cost, but to get the real measure you would have to go a lot deeper. The fortress had been designed to stop evil beings from getting their hands on tools the guardians had considered too dangerous for even their own troops. He had used dark power and subverted agents to break that guard.

How could he be sure they weren't right. He knew that he contained a darkness deeper than most of the minions of hell, could feel the hate, and anger, the power demanding to be used. Could he really be sure that some part of him wasn't playing them all. For that matter could he really be sure that he had ever escaped the torture rooms in first place.

And then there were the goddesses. How did they fit into all this. Why were they so eager to help him, even though they could see his darkness, and watch as it consumed him. The letter in his hand read more like a love letter than a list of locations. Clearly Urd had ulterior motives but could they really be as transparent as they appeared.

What of Hild? Of Mara? What did Nifleheim want of him, or were they also getting what they wanted.

Unlike Setsuna he did have an answer, and the answer was rage. Whether or not he was a pawn, whether or not he was being used, whether or not others were achieving their ends through him. It didn't matter, because at the end of the day he was one step closer to making them pay. Behind his eyelids and every time he tried to sleep he could still see them, as if he needed a reminder, and his hate burned as fresh today as it ever had.

"Tomorrow we are going for a trip," he said, breaking the silence with his gravely voice. The girls looked around, startled from their own reverie. "First we'll have to look up one of Balthazzar's projects."

"For?" Neptune prompted.

"We are going to need some serious wherewithal to pull this off and it just so happens that the late Marquis knew a man," Ranma explained with a slight grin that was far from angelic.

The other girls nodded in agreement and understanding then broke up to go to bed. Soon only Ranma remained, still thinking on the morrow, his eyes on the family shrine.

"Ranma" Setsuna called from the doorway she was leaning against, "it seems I am not sure about a lot of things these days, but one thing I am sure of is that I at least owe you a debt. If you ever need to talk…."

Ranma replied with a grateful nod, his face still turned away, but in his face he carried more tender emotion than she had ever heard from him.

"Good night Ranma" she breathed, as she turned and left. It was only then that he looked up

"Thank you Suna-chan" he whispered at the doorway. Then he returned to his meditations, staving off sleep and the terrors it brought for another night.

O

O

O

"We are here to see Mr. Phawst" Setsuna claimed. She was wearing a very snappy blue business skirt-suit and leading a flying phalanx of the others who were similarly attired. The one exception was Ranma who was dressed less like a corporate exec and more like an expensive bodyguard. His suit was unremitting black, jacket, shades and gloves included. The effect on the poor secretary might have been funny if it wasn't quite so extreme, the poor girl took one look at the posse and paled whiter than arctic ice. Setsuna could almost see the girl's gut drop.

"I'll. Get. Right. On. It." she stammered, stabbing at the button for the intercom to the CEO's PA.

"Thank you Beverley" Setsuna said, reading the girl's name off her tag, "You may tell Mr Phawst that Associates of Herr Balthazzar are here to see him."

"Balthazzar?" the girl repeated.

"Indeed," Setsuna replied, "Herr Balthazzar" she repeated, emphasising the title before moving off to stand with the others a few feet from the desk.

"Her heart rate is reaching dangerous levels" Ami chided in a low whisper, her back turned to the desk. Setsuna nodded acknowledgement, and quietly decided to ease up a bit.

Mere minutes later a confused looking exec appeared from the lifts and wandered to the desk. A brief conversation and some sideways glances later he was on his way over.

"Ladies?" he queried, automatically ignoring the hired help, "I have been asked to show you up to the top office" he finished. The girls wheeled to look at him, fixing him with a trio of hard stares. Unbeknownst to even them Ranma also backed up the image with a flex of his dark aura. The man paled in a way none too dissimilar to the secretary.

"Er" he managed "if you will come this way"

They were led to executive lift, mirrored and carpeted with more wealth than the average Nerima resident would see in their entire life. There were no buttons, nothing so crass. The man stepped in first and favoured the visitors with what he hoped was an encouraging smile, briefly flirting with the idea of properly introducing himself. Clients like these he just had to know.

"This will take us to the top floor where you may meet Herr Balthazzar" he offered, only to meet the withering gaze from the eldest of the women. He could feel his self importance contract. That face not-only killed all ideas of introductions but made him formally wish he had found any reason to be out today. It wasn't so much that they didn't need the information, more that they seemed to be having a little trouble working out why a creature such as him dared to even exist in the same world as them.

By the time the party had loaded into the lift and was hurtling skyward he was just about ready to curl up into a ball and die, a feeling that got no better when the lift's acceleration settled into his gut.

At the top the garishly expensive lift halted it's skyrocketing and opened with a demure 'ping'. Beyond the opening doors a small line of senior execs had formed up, all respectfully bowing to the skirt-suit clad posse that emerged predatorily from the elevator. Their bows were low enough that they left little doubt somebody had impressed a certain importance on preceding and yet high enough that they had been clearly not told as much as they desired.

When the German born Ceo emerged from his private office to meet the visitors, for the first time in living memory, and dipped a bow significantly lower they were all left playing catch up. The deliberate shaming of his subordinates was not lost on the quartet.

"My name is Yuki-oni" Setsuna said, coming up from a comparatively tiny bow, "And I am here to speak with Herr Phawst alone." With that she strode past the officials and into the man's office, her 'attendants' following.

By the time the Ceo recovered he found her already very much ensconced in his desk, and behind her flanked her team, still scowling. This was definitely not how things were meant to go. He shut the door with precision, pointedly looking his expectant subordinates in the eyes in an obvious warning to stay clear. When he turned back the others still had not apparently moved, nor did they seem inclined to talk.

"Mr. Balthazzar normally-" he began, in an attempt to steal back some of the conversation's momentum. He was cut off by the black suited thug effortlessly lifting him a full foot off the floor by his throat. That wasn't the worst part though, it wasn't as if people didn't threaten him in his line of work anyway. No what frightened him were the burning pits of darkness that replaced the man's eyes and the skulls he could see reflected there. He also had the vague impression of claws. The fact that the man had come more than ten feet in less than a blink of the eye didn't register on him till much later, he was too busy being scared by the eyes.

"oops" Observed the woman from his seat behind his desk, "You said a bad word."

"What?" he choked out, finally dragging his gaze from the apparition holing him in the air.

"Balthazzar!" the apparent 'bodyguard' growled, in a low, quiet voice that could have crumpled cement. Herr Phawst swallowed hard and was about to continue when the woman in charge interrupted.

"Mr Balthazzar has been….bought out," she said in a way that implied anything but. "The man with his 'hand' around your neck was our chief agent in this," she informed him, "a most persuasive man" she finished. He was suddenly dropped, and fell completely to the floor.

"We are…liquidating some of his assets" she informed him, standing now. "The only question is how liquidated they get."

"What do you want?" he gasped, abandoning face in favour of the golden straw of continued life.

"My associate has some papers here," the woman answered, taking the sheaf from the smallest girl with the odd silver eyes and laying them on the table. "You will sign them and then you will not contest the 're-locations' of capital that follow," she informed him, and her voice left no room for doubt.

Phawst signed in a shaky hand. In his mind Herr Phawst could hear a roaring, crashing noise as the company he had built up literally at the cost of his soul was handed over without so much as an associate of the bar in sight.

"We had a contract…" he hazarded, hoping for some loophole, anything that would avert this fate.

"Your…'asset' will be returned" the woman informed him, surprised that the man had not already noticed its reappearance. "But only because we find it more amusing this way…" He gulped again. "We will be back," she informed him, and then she left. Nobody so much as looked them in the face as they went and soon they were out of the main door and away.

"That was the easiest thirty million dollars I'll ever make" mused Setsuna, only now allowing her rebellious body to start the shaking it had been dying to do all the way through the ghastly meeting. Ranma in an uncharacteristic show of emotion, pulled her in close.

Suddenly wrapped in his arms and blanketed in his aura the final dams broke and she broke down. Even as the confused and scornful fellow passengers looked on the human alter-ego of the senshi of Pluto wept out a tide of emotions onto the young man's shoulder and chest.

"Those poor men" she muttered, "trapped in that…" she broke off, trying to push them and all their evils from her mind.

"Hushhhh" Ranma whispered, stroking her hair gently. He motioned for Michuru to take over who nodded but reluctantly. Her own experience had been only a little less nerve wracking, and knowing that some of the evils that man committed had resulted in such a direct effect on her friends… But she did as she was told, and soon she was holding the sobbing form of her friend and letting her own silent tears fall.

"Everything on its way?" Ranma asked Ami, who only raised a scornful eyebrow in response. As if to ask the question was somehow to doubt her abilities in the area of computing.

"Excellent" Ranma agreed, and in his mind a little part of him gloated. The company would fall, its partners and execs with it. They had seen to that, the evil that was Phawst's masterpiece would be dead in the water by midnight and by dawn the sharks would already be feasting. In the meantime they had a very padded offshore account to play with.

Soon the train arrived at their stop and the posse disembarked onto the platform. What the girls didn't see was who was waiting for them.

"You go on back" Ranma advised, "I have something to clear-up." The girls nodded and went on their way, each cut off from the world in their own ways. Ranma appeared to follow but soon doubled back.

"You must be out of favour" Ranma growled from behind the demoness. Mara was once more wearing a tight fitting leather 'biker-chick' ensemble, with "Hell's Ass-Kicker" on the back of its jacket. A back that was currently turned towards someone who had promised to kill her the next time he saw her. Turning around seemed like both a really good idea and a really fatal one. Fortunately for her sense won out, she didn't turn.

"Er" she began lamely, sweating more than she was used to, "a few moments of your time?" she asked as hopefully as she could. All the while she could just feel those shredding claws about to go through her spine.

"What could be so important as to lose a ranked demon for?" Ranma mused and this time she heard the claws as they scraped across the concrete wall.

"Hild-dono wants to talk" Mara Blurted, rationale rapidly abandoning her, "to you I mean…" The answering laugh was neither nice nor friendly.

"What makes you think I care" came his rasp, all to close, she could swear that she could feel his breath on her sweating-bullets neck.

"Its about the princess" Mara blurted, eyes tightly shut and waiting for the pain.

"Go on" the voice rasped, a little louder but no more friendly.

"Hild-dono wants to give you safe passage" Mara blurted, forgetting that she wasn't meant to say that where they might be overheard, "so you can kill the-"

"And what" Ranma interrupted, "makes you think I won't just push through anyway?"
"Because you know what they are doing to her and hate them for it?" she hazarded. Mara could only guess what sort of things they did to captured moon-princesses but one thing she did know is that she preferred it that way.

"More than I hate the rest of you?" he rasped, dangerously.

"Er, yes?" she guessed, hopefully. There was a long silence.

"Midnight in the cemetery" his voice came and Mara finally relaxed. It was only then that she realised that he might just as well carve the message into her body as let her go. She tensed up so hard she almost fell down, and she stayed that way for five more eternal minutes. Finally she looked round, no Marquis-murdering psycho, the best news she had had all day.

"I gotta get a less sticky outfit" she mused, before heading back into the small newsagents and from there direct to Nifleheim.