Wow, are you serious? I haven't updated in a year? Yikes. I'm going to seriously hope I've improved as a writer since then… though I haven't written anything like this in a while, so maybe it'd be better to mimic my old, slightly unpolished style. FYI, this is the last chapter, so sorry it was so long in coming! I also found out the Azerbaijani age limit for marriage, so I have to throw in a twist or so… Meh. Well, sorry to keep you all waiting for so ridiculously long, but here's the final chapter to Attack of the Fiance. (And then I can go back and edit some word choice issues I had upon re-reading this! XD) I don't own Tokyo Mew Mew, or I'd be publishing this on Fictionpress, not Fanfiction.

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"So. How do you go about eloping?" Tart asked, swallowing hard and looking around the busy street. The two had teleported to a city in the middle of the country, though Tart didn't know the name.

"Well, you need to sign a marriage certificate. The thing is…" Pudding chewed her lip, apparently thinking hard. "Well, I think you have to be older to get married. Fourteen, I think in this country. So we'd have to have fake birth certificates."

"Fake—" Tart groaned. "You've got to be kidding me! How long would that take? We'd need connections and everything… I really thought Kish had a good idea on this one."

"He did," Pudding assured Tart, grasping his hand tightly. "This is a good idea. We don't speak the language here, right? We can just mime that we want to get married, get the certificate, and sign it saying that we're fourteen!"

"But… if we lie on a marriage certificate, wouldn't it be invalid?" Tart asked worriedly. The blast of a car horn behind them made him jump; he pulled Pudding to the safety of the sidewalk. "Sheesh."

"No more than if I signed one with… Yuebin…" Pudding's voice teetered off. "I couldn't have married him anyways! Even if they'd made me sign the contract! So even if this doesn't work, we're okay!" She hugged Tart, then glanced up into his eyes. "I think… I still want to get married though."

Tart smiled. "Yeah. Me too," he told her, his stomach quivering. Was it even possible to be so in love so young? Evidently so. "But with my people, there's no age limit on marriage. I think they expect us to just use our common sense and marry who we fall in love with when we know it'll last. I can ask Pai to get us a certificate, just in case an Earth marriage doesn't work."

He only had to look into Pudding's eyes to know that he had said the right thing, made the right choice. Even if Pai killed him for disturbing him again, it was all worth it, if it made Pudding smile like that.

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"I thought I'd already suggested eloping. Or Kish had. Or someone. "But we're too young," you said." Pai scowled and thrust the certificate at Tart and Pudding. "Just… sign it. Somewhere. Anywhere. I'll be your witness."

Pudding and Tart exchanged glances. "But… wouldn't it be best to have some sort of ceremony? I thought—"

Pai's smoldering glare effectively shut Tart's mouth. "Ceremony? The whole point of eloping is to get married and get it done with before those inevitable circumstances get in your way and separate you forever! Ceremonies take planning! They take thought, they take money, they take time—"

"Okay, we get it!" Pudding interrupted the alien's speech, sighing. "I'm at least going to wear a dress though."

"Do you have the money to buy one?" Pai asked scornfully, folding his arms. "And let me guess, Tart, you want me to pull a tux out of nowhere. And conjure up a cake—"

"Ooh, we need a wedding cake! Thanks, Pai! Can you make one for us while we go clothes shopping? Thanks!" Pudding seized Tart's hand and enthusiastically dragged him out the door.

"You wanted a marriage certificate, not a high class wedding ceremony! I didn't sign on for this!" Pai shouted after the young couple. "God, crazy kids," he muttered, sighing and glancing around the rented room of the Azerbaijani hotel where Pudding and Tart had arranged lodging. He sighed and folded his arms. "I guess it couldn't hurt to buy them a cake," he decided, his rarely shown emotional side getting the better of him. "And I guess they have time. Her father and that Yuebin guy probably went back to Japan looking for her; we should have at least a few days." He teleported out of the room, aiming to end up in the nearest grocery store.

Humans were really oblivious, so caught up in their own worlds of electronics and conversation that they didn't even notice the strangely dressed man who appeared out of nowhere amidst a knot of shoppers in the store. Pai extricated himself from the crowd and made his way to the bakery part of the store. Was this the only grocery store in the province, or had everyone's refrigerators died on the same day? Pai dismissed both those theories as useless and improbable; his people were nearly gone, so almost any gathering of more than twenty people seemed like an impossibly huge crowd to him. He paid for the cheapest cake available—if Pudding and Tart expected a full-out wedding cake from his wallet, they had another think coming—and teleported back to the hotel room. The room was still empty, but Pudding and Tart couldn't have gone far, right?

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An eleven-year-old girl in an inexpensive, white-polyester dress that shed glitter all over the floor. An eleven-year-old boy with an air not quite human, clad in a cheap second-hand suit, his hair springing from pigtails at the top of his head, his ears ridiculously, inhumanly long. A cheap chocolate cake with yellow icing and some sort of lurid blue trimming spread about the edges. Pudding grinned at the snapshot that Pai had taken with the disposable camera she had picked up from a dollar store on her way home from the department store. "Thanks for being our witness, Pai!" she squealed, her eyes torn between staring at Tart, who had seemed to take on almost a new radiance, and between staring at the document that proved their legal—albeit alien—marriage. No one—no father, no fiancé, no force in the world—could take her from Tart now. They belonged together. This certificate, this paper, it proved that they belonged with each other. Grinning, trying and failing to suppress an excited giggle, she leaned forwards and planted a kiss on Tart's cheek.

Tart grinned and pulled his wife in for a hug. "I guess we'd better get back to Japan," he said, staring lovingly at her and taking hold of her hand.

"And saddle me with the bill for this hotel room? No. Absolutely not. You pay your bill, then go home," Pai ordered, his arms folded as he leaned awkwardly against the wall. "I might come home with you. I can't wait to hear Kish's idiotic remarks over this whole affair."

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"So… you know what a wedding night is, right you two?" Kish asked, looking up from his sketchbook with an evil grin.

"Shut it!" Tart growled, flushing angrily. "That's uncalled for. Really uncalled for."

"Eh, well, you're too young anyways. Now, if it were me and Ichigo…" Kish paused, evidently lost in blissful thought. "Well, more power to you two. You going to tell your dad and pedo stalker, Pudding?"

"Yep!" Pudding replied cheerfully. "Taru-taru and I were actually heading over to my house to kick him out and tell my dad to go back to China. Right?"

"Huh-what?" Tart asked incredulously. It was news to him. "So soon? I mean…"

"We have to do it sooner or later. Why not go ahead and tell them now?" Pudding smiled up at Tart. "Besides, what exactly are they supposed to do to separate us now?"

Tart's mind was coming up with a whole range of things, from murder to torture to forced divorce to telling them that an alien marriage wasn't valid to… he shook his head, attempting to turn his thoughts to the positive. He could tell that it was important to Pudding to clear the air. "All right. Hold my hand," he said, stretching his palm out towards his wife. He closed his eyes and teleported to the doorstep of Pudding's house.

"Nee-chan! ONEE-CHAN!" One of the brats—Tart was pretty sure it was Chincha—ran at Pudding, nearly bowling her over. "Nee-chan and Tart-kun are home!"

Something shattered in the house. Pudding and Tart winced simultaneously; footsteps sounded, and Mr. Fong threw open the door, a peeved Yuebin standing directly behind him. "So, you finally saw sense and came back," Mr. Fong stated, gazing at his daughter with something akin to disappointment on his face.

"We saw sense!" Pudding replied brightly. "We realized that a marriage between me and Yuebin in Azerbaijan would be illegal, since you have to be older, but that also meant Tart and I couldn't get married there. And then we realized that if we married like Tart's people, we'd be fine! So, meet Tart, my husband!"

Tart awkwardly put an arm around Pudding's shoulders. "Face it, you can't get married to Pudding. Besides, you taught her to be strong, right? Or does that only count when you want her to be independent? Looks like she beat you out on this one!" He wasn't sure who he was talking to, Mr. Fong or Yuebin. Maybe he was speaking to both of them?

Yuebin made a funny noise in his throat; Mr. Fong just stared. "It seems that Ron was right about your tenacity," he said finally, sighing. "Maybe you learned to be too independent in my absence. Or maybe just independent enough?" He glanced over his shoulder at Yuebin. "It seems as though we will have top bring about a new era in martial arts the old-fashioned way, Ron."

"What, hard work and actual skill?" Tart muttered unashamedly under his breath. He ignored Yuebin's poisonous stare and clasped Pudding's hand even more firmly. "Come on, Pudding," he addressed his wife. "Let's go let your friends know about this… change in our lives."He grinned wickedly. "I'm looking forward to seeing Ichigo pass out from confusion."

Pudding laughed out loud and lightly smacked Tart. The two turned, fingers still linked, and walked off in the direction of the café.

At least they walked for a split second or two. Mr. Fong wasn't sure if it was just his eyes playing tricks on him, but he could have sworn that he saw the boy pick his daughter off the ground and begin to fly.

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"It's still something to get used to," Pudding laughed a week later, snuggling closer to Tart—closer to her husband, a term she couldn't believe she was lucky enough to use—on the couch. Neither of them was paying any attention to the movie; romantic dramas seemed to have nothing on the events of the past few weeks! "I still can't believe that any of this happened!"

"Well, would you change it?" Tart asked, his eyes never straying from her face. He too felt as though he was living in a dream, as though he would wake up any second.

"Hm… No. No, I wouldn't. Now even having creepy and annoying Yuebin around. I mean, he led to this," Pudding said, smiling at the alien.

Tart couldn't help but smile back. "Mm. Me neither," he agreed, leaning down and gently kissing her lips.

Even through the comments of "Ew, gross!" and "Pudding and Tartar-kun, sitting in a tree…" from the kids, even through the loud and oddly appropriate background music of the movie, somehow nothing could break through and even touch the contentment and joy of the young couple. After all, when all was said and done, somehow the attack of the fiancé had done nothing but make their lives better and their love stronger. Now they knew that no matter what came their way, they could handle it. Life and the future had never looked so promising.

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And it's DONE. Thoughts on the ending? I probably could have written it better, but that's not up for me to decide. I'm hoping that at least some of you enjoyed my crappy, clichéd writing. This chapter was harder for me to write than I expected, probably because I've developed a slightly more jaded view of love than I had before, but as far as I'm concerned, we can have a miracle story every now and again, right? The love of Pudding and Tart will last forever!

Again, thoughts are appreciated. For those of you who stuck with me this whole time… man, I don't deserve you. Thank you so much!

--Phantom and Potter Obsession.