Disclaimer: Ummmm… The absence was not part of a long plot to get control of the Ranma ½ franchise. Much as I might regret it, I don't own much more then a few characters that show up in here. Heck, I might not own them as well. Oh well.

Ranma-Papa, Shampoo Mama

Chapter 21

Ranma cursed. Thanks to a train delay, he'd been forced to clean up as best he could in a station bathroom, and then had had to roof hop straight to the restaurant. He'd gotten a busy signal when he'd tried to call the Tendo home, and hadn't had time to wait and try to call again.

He reached the Restaurant, and burst through the door. The building was empty, except for one nervous looking waiter, ten men dressed in black pajamas, and one man in a white suit, sipping a glass of wine. "Mr… Mr. Saotome?" The waiter asked.

"That's me."

"Mr. Shimaka was… waiting for your… arrival…" The frightened man stuttered out. "Right this…"

"I see him." Ranma said, walking by the waiter, and to the table. The man in the white suit stood up, smiling.

"Mr. Ranma Saotome, you're reputation does proceed you."

"Cut the crap. What the hell are you up to?"

The man smiled, and gestured at the chair across from his own. "Now now, no reason to be uncivilized. I took the opportunity to order you the largest steak on the menu. I understand you are well known for your appetite."

Ranma glared, but when he realized the man wasn't going to answer any question, and the problem of nearly a dozen ninja's surrounding him, forced the pig tailed young man to sit down. Shimaka joined him. "So, I'm sure you have questions…"

"What are you up to, having little girls trained and beat down at the same time. What kind of sick freak are you."

"I'm not a sick freak, as you put it, at all." The other man replied, not the least bit bothered by the accusation. "As a matter of fact, my reasons are the most noble possible."

"Yeah, sure. Ya know a guy named Genma?"

The other man just chuckled. "Not a high opinion of your father, I take it. Oh don't look surprised. I did some research on you."

"And I'm not trying to marry the girls off. I only, actually, need one of them. Tell me, boy, do you believe in magic?"

Ranma scoffed. "If you had done reseach…"

"Then I'd know about your curse. A silly question, but you must forgive me for it. After all, this is the sort of conversation you only see in a drama! Still, magic is the answer."

"I am the current head of a cabal of wizards. We have no name, no flashy titles, and we aren't spending our years trying to take over the world. We DID, however make one mistake, centuries ago."

"OH, just one? Do tell." Ranma snarked, ignoring the plate of food set in front of him by the terrified waiter. Saotome stomach or not, he wasn't hungry.

"Immortality. We decided we wanted to live forever, and committed the cardinal sin of negotiating with one of the Fae to do it." He shrugged. "All we had to do was find her a husband."

"Huh, her?"

"Listening? Good." The self proclaimed wizard chuckled. "Now this fae was from what they call the Unselie or 'dark' court, and they aren't generally very nice to humans who want immortality. We figured out, before we'd given her what she wanted, that she'd worked a small hitch into her spell. Something to the effect of 'I'll not come to take this gift back, until my marriage ends.'"

He took a bite of steak. "Now, an immortal being of Fae, and her soon to be husbands status as a normal, mortal human, made us think the phrase 'till death do us part' might just cause us some problems. Especially when one of my compatriots dug up her title of 'unweeping widow'. So, we tricked her."

"On her marriage night, as she was 'consummating' her marriage, we cast a spell that pulled them body and soul into a vessel of cold iron, so she couldn't willingly escape. We thought ourselves very clever."

"Then, ten years later, she broke free. It seems the cold iron destroyed her body, which led to her soul being released. She possessed my wife."

"This fae's power was so great, however, that she burnt out my wife's body in moments, and had to hop to another, and then another. It took us months to catch her, and when we did she'd found a human body that could survive the changes her fae power wrought."

"Unfortunately for us the power, and skill, of that body came with it. A Chinese Amazon, as luck would have it!"

"Of the original thirteen of us, all but seven were killed trapping her again, the bare minimum to do the job. Realizing the changes she caused to her host, we prepared for her, and met her again a decade later. This time we kidnapped a female martial artist to be the bait."

"Only the preparations allowed the three of us who survived to recast the spell, with the help of apprentices. Again, their strength was nearly too much. That's when I had an idea."

He sipped his wine, smiling as he realized the younger man was listening, raptly. "She showed the strengths, and weaknesses, of her hosts. You see, we only beat her the first time due to her poor tactics… she went after the female's of our cabal first, not realizing that they weren't the most powerful of us. The second woman suffered from a fear of heights, and she froze when she pursued me onto a cliff face."

"Right. The chick needs a strong body, but if you beat the girl she takes over so bad she's terrified of challenging whoever trained her she can't really threaten you."

"Exactly!"

"Right, I'm not seeing the nobility here. You're just covering your own butts."

"Actually…. You are right." He chuckled at the forceful face fault the boy suffered at that. "Of course, we now have over a thousand years of unique knowledge, and that would be lost if she was allowed to escape and kill us, so there is that…"

The sound of a cellular phone cheeping distracted him. He pulled it from his coat. "Yes? Ahh, good. I was just finishing, actually." He hung up. "Well, dinner has been pleasant. Now, I must be off."

"Oh, you aren't going anywhere….hey, what!" Ranma struggled, unable to move.

Shimaka chuckled, standing. "Sorry, but I can't have you delaying me. You see, midnight is when she'll escape. I am not a total bastard, however. If your Himeko isn't the one chosen, I'll make sure she is returned to your parents. You, of course, will have to die." He looked up, seeing the ninjas standing from their tables, one with a knife to the waiter's throat. "Dinner was excellent. The chief, sadly, already dead. Have a good evening."

He drifted out the door. The ten ninjas, Troika's best agents, moved towards Ranma, smiling darkly as he jerked free of the wizards spell.

Ranma just considered them, then lazily picked up a fork, and cut his steak. Taking a bite he sighed. "This is good!"

"You fool. Their going to kill us!" The terrified waiter yelled. He yelled again when knife and fork appeared, buried deeply into his captor's two arms. He staggered away as the man screamed and released him.

"No." Ranma said, kicking the table away, and standing up. "They are going to try."

Ranma landed in the back yard of the Tendo Dojo only fifteen minutes later. It was already too late. His mother, Doctor Tofu, and even Genma and Soun lay unconscious on the ground. Cologne and Happosai were looking over their wounds, the old man cursing.

"What the heck happened, old ghoul!"

"They baited a trap, and we fell for it." Cologne snarled. "They waved another girl in front of us like a flag, and I followed them. Another pack grabbed Kasumi and had Happi busy around the house when the main body came over the wall." She gestured at over two dozen unconscious ninjas. "The girls, and the fathers, did well, but they were grossly outnumbered. They took all of them."

Ranma nodded, and turned. "I'll get Mousse to come over here and help you out. Then I'll go after the girls, and bring them all back."

"Do you know where they went?"

Ranma smirked. "Of course. A little ninja told me."

Then he was gone.

AN: Okay, I'm trying to get back into the flow of things here. I'm hoping this was fairly well done. I'm also hoping to post something for this at least once a week now. I have tried before, and failed before, however. So we'll see.