Of course a few moments later the Nerimans managed to work out that was no big trick, that the cleric in question was probably merely using a simple spell to be understood in the language that her listeners were most familiar with, but that hadn't stopped some very wild theories starting.
If there was a grand conspiracy though there was no evidence of it, and instead of some dark suit wearing agents springing out on them the clerics didn't so much as falter in their smiles.
Nabiki, her 'game' face now firmly set in place, was the first to step forward, aware for the first time in many hours of just how shabbily she and her friends were dressed, the stains of soot, dirt and blood still discolouring the clothes they had worn for the trip through the dragon's lair, that had themselves seen better days. There was even a hint of a sulphurous air about them, a leftover of the same place that she was only no noticing again, and only because it contrasted so much with their hosts.
Nabiki quickly recognised the tactic for what her cynical mind said it was, a simple method of asserting superiority over the petitioners, most of who would at the very least have had to travel across a section of the waste to get here, and a good number of which would be in even worse state, or else they wouldn't be coming here.
So the clerics drew a line between them and their petitioners, their clean clothes marking them as something purer, better than the raggedy garments that they were faced with. Probably the only truly white cloth within leagues was the material from which the clerics had drawn their robes.
Nabiki was not however about to get wrong footed here, she had many years more history of negotiations to draw on, and not a small amount of formal learning. She wasn't about to let a small thing like appearances slow her down.
"Thank you" she said instead, nodding confidently to the greeter and smiling deliberately as she straightened up and, proud backed, accepted the invitation, stepping as if what she was wearing was royal raiment rather than battered travel cloth.
"You will see to our burdens?" she cued, her hand sweeping out to illustrate the forms of her sister and brave Ryoga, deliberately adding an assumptive, almost unconcerned tone to her words even as if she did this sort of thing every day.
But while the hand swept out she was also firing a 'look' at the rest of her group, warning them to follow her lead and not to object. One she knew would be ignored by at least one of them, but that was part of things too.
"I'll carry-" Ranma began to assert, having absolutely no intention of giving up Ryoga's form to anyone, not now or in the future.
"You'll do as you're told!" she snapped in reply, her tone deliberately harsh, her eyes deliberately flashing with more anger than she felt. The act clearly demonstrated to all who might be watching, and she was assuming they were, just who was in charge, and just who made the decisions.
Which is why she had prompted it in the first place.
She just hadn't counted on how much the hurt look that Ranma fired back would hurt in return.
But she was nothing if not a professional and this was what she was supposed to be best at. Ranma and the others could outfight even ancient dragons, had proved it, but they couldn't hold a torch to her here, and finally she was going to get a chance to earn her keep.
Not that any of the others had ever thought she hadn't done along the way, but Nabiki wasn't thinking like that right then, she was too busy dealing with her own guilt to really make that distinction.
The cleric merely nodded in reply, a faintly amused lift to the corner of one lip saying that perhaps this wasn't the first time she had seen an act like this but also saying that she wasn't about to make an issue of it.
Instead the woman gestured with a hand and summoned one of her flows forward before they took the bodily burdens from their latest guests, the power of their faith rendering the weight next to nothing.
If Ranma noted the ease with which the women lifted Akane and Ryoga he gave little sign of it, instead he was still trying to work out what Nabiki was about, and steadily moving closer to the point at which he was going to admit defeat on that one.
His teaching said that possession was nine tenths the law, that handing over the bodies of their friends was a loss rather than a gain, and therefore that Nabiki was wrong. But it also said that you didn't ever know all the forms and he could literally count on a single hand the number of times he had known her to be wrong. While the number of times she had beaten him at this game was well beyond numeration.
So he resigned himself to another long session of following her lead and waiting close by in case things did go wrong…
Camly the two white clad figures led the Nermians into the building proper, into the stone lined pristine halls that suddenly seemed so vacant.
Within a few paces into the hall even the few others they had seen at the door had disappeared and for all they could see they were the only beings in all the vast edifice, walking through this serene place hearing only the resounding of their own footfalls.
For Ranma there was an eerie familiarity about all of this, well nearly all of it; so many of the temples he had gone to on his long sojourn had tried to achieve this kind of hollow serenity, and he had often turned up in states as bad as he now was, and every bit as desperate for their help, albeit for himself and his father rather than for his friends and normally for more mundane matters like food for their bellies or a hiding place from a mob rather than asking for life to be returned to two fallen fellows.
All of which might have explained why he was still more busy thinking on what Nabiki was up to rather than paying a great deal of attention to where they were going.
Twice as they proceeded Ukyo went to speak, to break the silence they travelled in but both times she changed her mind, instead lapsing back into quiet and following on meekly behind their suddenly imperious friend and the white clad guides.
Like Ranma she was relatively used to this sort of thing, having gone to more than her fair share of temples in the years she was battling the sea to train hard enough to exact her father's revenge, and also having had to on occasion formally ask for help from them. But unlike Ranma she was far from at ease, her own temper still simmering in the background and her own mindset less eager just to accept Nabiki's lead on things.
But somehow that temper, normally shifting into vocalisation so very quickly these days, just didn't seem to be boiling over like it should. She would later figure it ha something to do with some enchantment on the place, but for the moment just didn't seem to care all that much.
Instead she just tried to work out what they needed all this space for if there were so few people about.
That to would later be answered, but for the moment it remained as much of a mystery as their eventual destination.
The second mystery was however soon answered as, having crossed another silent open colonnade bound garden, their guides led them up to what could only be some sanctum doors, their massive metal bulk seeming to shout purpose and distinction.
Onto their immense, reflective surface a thousand images were engraved, subjective and symbolic even trying to follow their nuances threatened all sorts of headaches. And in the middle of it all were two large metal rings, the handles that would open these sentinels.
Here the guides stood aside, allowing the Nermian exiles to step forward, perhaps watching for their own reasons as to who would be brave enough to take this final step.
Of they had thought to see awed hesitation or indeed any trepidation however they were soon disappointed, this was no ordinary group of petitioners and nor was it any local born citizens brought up on stories of the wonders beyond these gates.
Ranma, his mind still wandering as he tried to figure out just how he and Nabiki fit together since that kiss and that tone, wandered up to the rightmost gate, turned the handle and gave it a shove. All with about as much ceremony as he might have given to a bento box lid, maybe less.
It was left to Gos, alone among them knowing more about this than what they were seeing now, to feel the awe of the moment. It was rumoured that not one petitioner in a thousand ever so much as saw these gates, let alone passed through them into the presence of her who supposedly resided within.
His cultured Japanese brain rebelled at the ideas of near deity that clothed the stories of the Matriarch of this house, trying to explain away her apparent agelessness as just another trick presumably done by keeping the succession in a family line and making sure the Matriarch of the generation was well enough covered that nobody would be able to tell when she changed, that her rumoured powers were as likely to be through fairly minimal medicinal skills as through great magics, either would seem as supernatural as the other to people unaware of them.
But the fact that he was doing so standing on his own two feet once more was enough to see off that cynicism, this wasn't Japan, and this wasn't the dull humdrum world he had been born to; here magic did exist and there was no reason in the universe to doubt that they were going into the presence of one of it's greatest practitioners.
Ukyo might have wandered in with little more than curiosity tinged with relief at finally arriving, Ranma wandered in mostly because Nabiki did ahead of him but Gos stepped over that threshold with awe in his heart and eyes wide open for what he expected to be a wonder of the world they all now resided in.
He was not to be disappointed.
The room they stepped into was vast, a magical domed cavern that seemed to be both personal and close as well as immense beyond scale. Above them birds seemed to fly among indoor clouds, to their sides the room seemed to extend from view, filled with the comings and goings of millennia, and vacant as any tomb.
But all eyes were drawn inorexibly to the red-carpeted terraced steps that in turn led up to the throne that topped it and the woman within.
Garbed in robes of white and gold she seemed utterly ageless and ancient beyond measure, beautiful and alien; there was instantly no doubting the power that resided in her frame, or the intelligence that literally shone from her eyes, and there was absolutely no doubting just whose presence they had stepped into.
With a modern Japanese attitude to obescience it was only Gos who found himself falling to his knees automatically, the others following only when it occurred to them as something that might be more appropriate than a bow.
If the hesitation offended the ageless Matriarch then she gave no sign of it, nor any sign of much else, instead merely seeming to regard the newly arrived people as if they were but one small thing currently intruding onto a vastly more complex mind.
Where Ranma was, formally bowing as he might have to a master, he got the distinct impression that indeed they weren't the only people that the woman was looking at, that somehow the echoes that flitted around the edges of his vision were also somehow really here.
He shook off that thought, not really knowing where it came from in the first place and instead looked behind him for whether the 'guides' had followed them.
There was no sign of either them or he doors they had just stepped through, only the vastness of the room and it's near emptiness.
"Worry not for your comrades" the voice said, sounding from all around and just the top of the dais at the same time. "They are here" she said, not even bothering to explain either how that was possible or how she had known what Ranma was thinking.
At which point it suddenly occurred to him that it had been his thought she had answered and he rapidly tried to look over to where Nabiki was, checking that she wasn't about to tell him off again.
Only to find that moving wasn't possible at all.
At which point he was again going to protest when an echo of her words seemed to make its way back to his mind, and answer that question as well.
Which sort of made him feel even more foolish and in all the more need of holding his pigtail while he worked out what he was supposed to say next.
"I know who you are" she said, cutting off that plan too, "and why you are here" she added, "that has never been in question" she asserted, "merely whether it is in my best interests to grant your boon" she supplied.
Which sort of once again took all that he had had to say away. This really wasn't his forte in the slightest, heck even his father was better at getting things out of people than he was, albeit normally by offering Ranma in marriage.
But somehow he didn't really think this woman wanted to be another fiancée…
A tinkle of honest, golden, pure laughter floated down from the dais, and Ranma's face coloured afresh, only now remembering that she was hearing everything he thought.
"No need to apologise" she said, before the words reached his mouth, "and perhaps you underestimate your worth still" she added, confusing him afresh.
Did that mean she did want to be a fiancée? And what the heck would the other girls say about that, what would Nabiki say about that?
Meanwhile Nabiki was having a very different conversation. Unlike Ranma he had come in prepared for this divine being to know what it was they wanted, it wasn't after all hard to guess bearing in mind who they had brought with them and in what state, especially considering the purpose of the order they ahd brought them too. But she had been willing to bet that the woman-goddess didn't know all that they had to offer.
So she had prepared herself to bargain with all the knowledge contained in that medical almanac and everything else that Nabiki had picked up over the years of being around high powered, fight prone, martial artists.
"I have no interest in that" The voice announced, silencing Nabiki before she could even begin her offers. "Any of that" the voice continued, cutting through the second rank of counter offers too.
"Your science will come in time, the knowledge you carry make it's own way into the world, I have no need to hasten it's arrival.
"Nor any need for your chemistry nor the knowledge of any tome you have brought with you.
"All that you offer I already know" the voice asserted, "all that you have come to bargain with I have already at my disposal. Our needs are beyond your ability to comprehend" the voice finished and for the first time in a long history of negotiation Nabiki was genuinely concerned that she would not be able to even agree a price for what she needed.
Ukyo was perhaps not such a quick study, having steadily grown moe irate as the voice had predicted and answered all of her questions and proposals even before they could be voiced. In the end the voice apparently simply tired of her temper, tired of answering the steadily more petulant thoughts and simply stopped the former chef, absolutely and utterly.
Gos on the other hand was struggling even to gather his thoughts enough to form anything for her to answer, his very first impulse little short of absolute dread. He had been earnestly hoping that the Matriarch would have concluded everything she wanted to conclude with Nabiki and he wouldn't have had to risk his clumsy methods of speech with her at all.
Finding himself frozen and apparently singled out to do all the talking nearly sent him into one of the panic attacks he had thought left behind in his youth, deathly afraid that eh was going to say or do something that would bring down their wrath on all their heads.
"One of your friends had a similar desire" the voice announced, "although perhaps less emphatically" it said and suddenly the panic subsided, Gos managing to grasp hold of the fact that she was indeed talking to the others too and hold onto it desperately.
For all the growing up he had done recently he still would much rather as little as possible actually rested on his all too narrow shoulders, they had more than enough guilt just now as it was. He would happily go with whatever they decided, just as long as it didn't have to be his call.
"Very well" the voice finished and he felt some of the presence receded and let him breathe once more, relaxing down now the weight of that responsibility was off of him.
"Look lady" Gos heard, and needed not a moment to know it was Ranma who was speaking, even if he could still not turn to see the pig tailed warrior that had become part of their very core, "You can't really be after that" Ranma said, "or else somehow Oajii would have found a way to sell me ta ya a long time ago" he insisted, apparently completely unaware of any of the honourifics this woman was entitled to.
Gos cringed and Ranma continued undaunted.
"So hows about you tell us what it is you want and we cut the.." Whatever word that was going to be used to end that never happened, and Gos found himself as thankful as he had ever been for that small mercy at least.
"What I want" the voice said, not appearing to really interrupt Ranma but instead merely speaking as if completely in it's own time, "is you" she said and the silence that followed was filled with a thouand other thoughts.
They ranged from Ranma's 'not again' to Gos's mind numbing terror of being eaten soul and body as the darkest whispers of the stories about this woman had hinted at, and from Ukyo's reflexive 'go shove it up yer…' to Nabiki's just as instinctive request for clarification.
"Since you arrived here" the voice continued, "you haven't only made your way across the civilisation that resides in these parts, but you have also shaken it to its core she said. "challenging institutions from the primacy of so called noble blood to the Slaver's guild, from the might of the wizards of Pathandaway to an ancient power literally older than the mountains themselves."
There wasn't a lot for them to say about that, even if most of those actions had been more or less accidental, incidental to the mission they hadn't even been willing participants on in the first place, but nevertheless they had done them and denying it would be as fruitless as trying to say that they would have done things differently if they had the choice again.
At the end of the day they were who they were and living peacefully was one thing that apparently did not come naturally to any of them.
"I want you to continue that" the voice continued, "To continue to fight for what you believe is right; to continue to voice your opinions, to stand against the wind and not bend with it"
It wasn't exactly a lot to ask for them, not one of them could really see any of the others suddenly learning to respect the status quo, especially with a bagful of secrets outside and a heartful of bushido inside.
"Each of you carries within you a seed to be something great, from which might grow great things for all the people of this world" she asserted, "what I want is for you to nurture that seed and see it grow, to be all you can be"
"That is my price" the voice supplied, "for the healing of you and your comrades, for the returning of life to brave Ryoga and of mind to young Akane" she said, "and it is not negotiable." She finished with a very final note, leaving absolutely no doubt that their decision now would be binding, and that this offer would not be made again.
For Ukyo the request was a joke, a nothing. All that the voice seemed to be asking for was for them to be themselves, to not run and hide like the spineless denizens of this side, and she had more than enough hate to go around yet and really didn't expect to run out as long as there was a slaver still breathing.
Ranma too had little compunction in agreeing, even if he did see things a little differently than Ukyo. He didn't fail to notice for instance that the price very directly implied that if they were to find a way home in the future then they would be honour bound not to take it. He also noted there was no clause in there about retirement at all.
And he could guess why; their trip across this civilisation but a short taste of the sort of trials that they might face if they agreed, stepping out of here with an honour bound promise to fly against the established order, to fight for a brighter tomorrow
Even so, and even accepting that it might mean an early grave long before he was grey and old, there was no real problem in agreeing, not for him. Ranma's own code would have ensured the same choices anyway, as long as he held his honour dear he couldn't sit by and let bad things happen where he might have prevented them, not and still call himself a martial artist.
But they were not the ones that the Matriarch was most looking at, and nor was Gos, already sworn to follow the decision of the others, in fact it was Nabiki on whom the decision most rested, for it was her that this decision most ran against the apparent grain of.
All her adult life she had carried around the stigma of the Ice queen, the appearance of self service and callous disregard for the feelings of others. If you had suggested to any one of her hundreds of 'marks,' any number of people who had lost money in her betting pools or found their lunch money already owed before it was granted then the very idea of her dedicating herself to something larger than herself might have been could for derision.
But none of them had ever known what she did with the money, what drove the young businesswoman to such extreme lengths, and nor had they asked. None of them could remember the crushing poverty that her family had faced once her father stopped teaching and none of them cared to realise how targeted a lot of her dealings were.
Kuno didn't just pay the most because he was the richest or the dumbest, he had paid because his lusts should have had costs attached. Okay the money had been more important than the lesson but the lesson had been far from completely irrelevant to her.
But this was a different order of magnitude, a million miles from taking the money from people who should have known better and even further from hustling for bread money. Alone of all the Nerimans Nabiki really understood what was being asked of them.
The matriarch wasn't just asking them to cause trouble, she was asking for a revolution, for the Nerimans to stand proud with ideals that should have been a thousand years away for these people and fight to make them a reality.
"What do I get out of it?" the voice said, a peculiar tone to it suggesting that once again she was speaking only to Nabiki and not the all of them. "I am afraid you will probably never know that" the voice said, revealing for the first time that it's owner did not after all have all the facts, "but perhaps it is just a dream of a better world?" the voice finished and Nabiki had no grounds to argue.
With a nod that felt like the tolling of a bell Nabiki too agreed, and the pact was sealed, the Neriman Exiles had set their course and there was no going back anymore.