Author's Notes: I'm really, REALLY sorry about the delays in getting this chapter out! This hasn't been a great year for me...and don't even ask my beta-reader how it went for him...

On better news, I'm delighted by how positive the reception was to the previous chapter; I may have to do more vignettes in the future, just to pad out the timeline more, but I'll try to focus on keeping things relatively meaningful. I do apologize for the lack of tying specific time-periods to specific vignettes, but the truth is that I didn't really have any "timeframe" in mind when I wrote the last chapter.

Chapter 5: The Beginning

One month. Four weeks. Twenty eight days. As easy as it was for the lack of a familiar sun and moon to track and the sheer mundanity of their new jobs to lull them into a state of timelessness, the fact was that time continued to pass the quartet from Nerima by. And the proof of how long it had been since they stumbled into this magical hellhole currently lay in her mother's arms, gurgling with the contentment of a newly fed baby and idly sucking one of her tiny little thumbs.

"Aww! She's adorable!" Ukyo bubbled, hovering over Weltha's bedside as she took in the sight of the baby dark dwelf.

"Is too-too cute! You have lovely baby," Shampoo agreed, hands clasped tightly as she stared rapturously at Weltha's newborn. There was a certain smugness to her expression, however; Shampoo had arrived early from work the previous evening and found Weltha in labor - she had been the one to take charge, assisting the duergar with the delivery whilst Ranma had gone sprinting for the official midwife.

"You have a name for her?" Nabiki asked, trying to play it cool, but unable to wipe a soft smile from her own features.

"Iliana. She's Iliana Ryltar," Weltha declared proudly, cradling her daughter in her arms.

Ranma watched the three girls as they hovered over the baby with a weird sense of worry, then forced it down and tried to give Baeloth a friendly smile. "Congratulations, man. You'll be a great dad, I'm sure of it."

The drow puffed his chest out proudly, one hand affectionately clasping his duergar wife's shoulder. "Thank you, all of you. It means a lot to hear you say that."

"Of course, with Iliana here now, that does mean we'll have to start making preparations to move out," Nabiki observed.

"That's not necessary!" Baeloth assured her, only for Nabiki to shake her head.

"No, we knew this was temporary when we arrived. We meant to spend one night, and now we've been here for a month. We appreciate your generosity in opening your home to us, but we have a nest egg now, thanks to our work at the Chattering Mimir. I... will admit, I don't know where we'll start to find a boarding house, but it's time for us to move on," the middle Tendo proclaimed.

The drow simply shook his head, a soft smile on his lips as he did so. "Truly, I have never met people quite like you... very well. But I feel I can help you one last time.."

The four teens all shifted their focus to Baeloth. "How so?"

"I work as a clerk for the Sigil Advisory Council, and a license to resell a building recently came across my desk. It's for a property in the border region between the Market and Lady Wards - the owner hasn't been seen in some time, and their deposit has been exhausted. If you can pay for it, then I can sell the property license to you directly, instead of releasing it to the open market and letting it be bid for."

"...Isn't that illegal?" Ukyo uncertainly pointed out.

"Technically, yes, but Sigil has run on an economy of bribes, barter and blackmail for thousands of years. Nobody in the office would even bat an eye at my doing this," Baeloth repplied, grinning darkly.

"Sigil has some positive qualities, then," Nabiki mused aloud, but she was smiling as she said it. "That would be most helpful, Baeloth... we really cannot thank you enough for all that you have done."

"Yeah! If you ever need a favor, you can always count on us," Ranma interjected, with Shampoo and Ukyo nodding their agreement. Even Nabiki didn't look upset at Ranma speaking for her.

"I'm sure that we can help each other," the drow politely responded. "Now, there's some paperwork you'll have to fill out, but I can't leave Weltha alone.."

"Shampoo stay and watch over mother and baby!" The Chinese Amazon interjected. "Ukyo and Nabiki go with Baeloth and take care of paperwork."

"What, you don't trust me with the legal stuff?" Nabiki asked, playing up her innocence the way she would have done back in Nerima.

"Not half as far as can throw you," Shampoo immediately shot back. She was smiling as she said it, though. Well, her teeth were bared, at least. "Ukyo is smart girl, runs own business, bought on store; she make sure everything work okay."

"I think that may just be the nicest thing you've ever said about me, Shampoo," Ukyo playfully responded.

"No get too used to it," Shampoo quipped back, and this time there was no mistaking that she was just teasing. The fact she stuck her tongue out briefly cemented that.

"Do keep in mind that there will be some time before the legal transition is cleared up," Baeloth warned them. "It will take several days before you can legally move into your new property, and until then, you're more than welcome to continue to stay here."

"I... dunno what to say, Mr. Ryltar. That's really generous of you," Ranma replied.

"You saved my life - and the lovely Shampoo helped midwife my daughter. This has been a very small way to return the favor," the drow assured him. Then, smiling brightly, he held out a hand in invitation to Nabiki. "Now then, young lady; shall we go?"

Nabiki played along, smiling as she reached out to accept the drow's elegantly gloved fingers. "Why, thank you, Mr. Ryltar. Ranma? Don't forget that you have work today too," she added, before Baeloth led her from the room.

Ranma's eyes widened in surprise. "Crap! I'd actually forgotten that! Uh, you girls be okay?"

"We'll be fine, Ranchan. But Mrs. Ryltar needs us. You'll just have to explain things to Mr. Morte and hope he'll be reasonable..." Ukyo sighed.

Ranma nodded, and then quickly headed out in turn.

That evening...

"A hundred gold coins..." Nabiki moaned mournfully, shaking her head in dismay as she collapsed into one of the seats in the Ryltar's living room.

Her two female roommates (and, technically, romantic rivals) exchanged glances. "So, is it all taken care of?" Ukyo asked, pushing the point.

"Indeed it is!" Baeloth interjected, sweeping merrily into the den. "Once the paperwork goes through, you will be the proud owners of your own new place! You'll be able to move in within 3 days."

"Too-too good news!" Shampoo cheered.

"Yeah, that's great!" Ranma added. "But why does Nabiki look like the world is coming to an end?"

"A hundred gold coins..." Nabiki moaned again, burying her face in the headrest of her chair.

"Your companion seems a little overwrought at the cost of purchase," the drow dryly explained.

"Excuse me, but we're flat broke again!" Nabiki snapped, lifting her head up to glower at everybody. She angrily grabbed a leather pouch from her waist and tipped it out onto the table, allowing eight coins to bounce and clink across its polished surface. "A month's work, gone, just like that!"

"...Did you really expect anything else?" Ranma asked. "I mean, Baeloth told us that houses were really expensive here in Sigil - and does it come with furniture?"

"It does," the drow interjected.

"Thanks. Well, that means it's even more expensive. I bet Shampoo and Ucchan can both confirm that what we paid was a real bargain," Ranma declared confidently.

"You got that right, honey."

"Is so, airen."

Seeing there would be no sympathy for her point of view from the other members of the quartet, Nabiki sighed. "You're right... but we spent so long trying to get that money, and now it's all gone! One step forward to home, and then two steps back..."

"Yeah... well, look at it like this; would you rather have a nice place to call home while we fatten our wallet? Or would you rather be sleeping in a ditch in the Hive and eating cranium rats because you're that desperate to keep all our money in your own pocket?" Ranma asked sarcastically.

"Blech!" Nabiki spat, shuddering with emphasis. "Point taken... kami, I still can't believe you ate those things," she grimaced in disgust, letting out a wordless noise of pure revulsion and bodily shivering.

"I already told you, they actually taste pretty good," Ranma grumbled, recalling the time he'd won a few silver coins by being willing to bet on his own ability to eat a plate of crispy-fried cranium rats - a local Sigil lower-class delicacy, as it turned out.

Pushing the memories aside, Ranma continued, "Anyway, I told Morte about things, and he said he was happy for us to take the day off - with pay - to move into our new place once the paperwork's through."

At that, Nabiki perked up, glancing over at Ranma with renewed interest. "Oh? Is that so? Well, that's some good news for sure!"

"Yup! See, things'll work out!" Ranma replied, grinning that cocky grin of his that, much as they might deny it, made the three teenage girls' hearts all skip a beat. "We really owe you guys so much, Mr and Mrs Ryltar... if you ever need us, I swear, we'll be there..."

"You sound like a Ring-giver," the duergar chuckled warmly. "But thank you. It's good to know that there are people who can remember their debts, even here in Sigil..."

That night...

As she settled down amongst the covers, sandwiched in between Ranma to her right and Shampoo (this time) to her left, Nabiki found herself unable to sleep. Not because of her sleeping arrangements, but because of something she found weighing on her mind...

'And isn't that a shock? Before Sigil, I would have called somebody nuts for insinuating I could treat hopping into bed with Ranma as something casual...'

Gingerly, Nabiki reached over and began to shake Ranma's shoulder. "Ranma? Ranma, are you awake?"

Ranma grunted miserably in response, and Nabiki's lips twisted into a half-smile despite herself. "C'mon, Ranma, I don't like being awake either, but this is important..."

"Mrph... whatsit, Nabs?" Ranma asked drowsily, trying to stifle a yawn.

"Listen... about before..." Nabiki began hesitantly.

"What, when you were moping over the money?"

Nabiki rolled her eyes and thumped Ranma on the shoulder, knowing it wouldn't actually hurt him and not even trying to. "It wasn't about the money. It's about what the money represents. The whole reason we're trying to save so much money is because we need it to go back home. So, technically, that represents a month's effort to get back to dad - to my father, and my sisters, gone down the drain..."

Silence fell over their makeshift bedroom, before Ranma quietly responded, "You really miss them, don't you?"

"Of course I do. I may be the Ice Queen of Nerima, but they're still my family," Nabiki confessed. "You mightn't miss your father, and I don't really blame you for that, but my family is different."

Ranma went quiet at that, and for a brief moment, Nabiki wondered if she'd upset him. Then she felt arms snake around her torso and tighten and she let out a shrill "Yeep!" of surprise as Shampoo embraced her from behind.

"Shampoo know how you feel. Shampoo miss great-grandmother so much... want to go home and tell her Shampoo sorry for running away..." the Chinese Amazon sighed mournfully.

"...Wow, Shampoo, I'm sorry; I never even thought about that," Ranma admitted. "An' I'm sorry I took you so lightly earlier, Nabiki."

"Yeah, I'm so sorry that you girls at least have people to go back home to," grumbled Ukyo from her position on the far side of the bed. "Can we get to sleep now? I'm supposed to be manning the stove tomorrow... Yah! Shampoo, whaddya think yer doin?!"

"Hugging poor Ukyo, stupid. What it look like?" the Chinese Amazon replied, her voice a little muffled due to it being buried in a certain blushing bifauxnen's bosom.

"C'mon, gerroff! You weren't this huggy back in Nerima!" Ukyo complained.

"Actually, she was; she just never did it to anybody who wasn't me," Ranma chimed in, unable to resist teasing his oldest friend.

"Shampoo hug you too, airen!" Shampoo chirped happily, abandoning her death-grip on Ukyo and trying to scrabble over Nabiki to reach her reluctant fiancé, triggering a squawk of protest from the suddenly squished Tendo, who attempted to beat her back with a pillow.

Suffice it to say that it took a little while for the teens to calm down and finally get to sleep...

The day of the move, one week later...

A drow, a martial arts master, a Chinese Amazon, a crossdressing warrior-chef and a Japanese schoolgirl walked through the streets of the Market Ward. Only in Sigil would that not be the setup to some kind of joke.

"Today's the big day!" Nabiki chirped merrily and walking boldly along, trusting her impromptu bodyguards to keep the crushing press of bodies that characterized the Market Ward out of her way.

"Yep; we can finally move into our new home" Ranma replied, absently snagging an ambitious pickpocket's wrist and dislocating it with a deft twist of vice-like fingers, sending the goblin fleeing into the crowd with disturbingly pig-like squeals of pain.

"I gotta admit, it's a pretty sweet deal that we finally own our own place," Ukyo interjected, elbowing aside a drunken centaur.

"Is true! Make getting to work much easier too," Shampoo added, backhanding somebody who tried to cop a feel of her butt.

"Hey, Baeloth, how much further?" Ranma asked.

"In fact, we're here right now - this is it!" The drow wizard declared, stopping and gesturing triumphantly at the building before them.

The four teenagers stopped and stared. After a month in Sigil, they had become rather accustomed to Sigil's distinctive style - or perhaps more accurately, lack thereof. As a multiversal melting pot with no indigenous resources, forcing its inhabitants to buy, steal and recycle as much as they could, to call Sigil's architecture "eclectic" was a kindness. Even so, the structure standing before them warranted full attention, even if it wasn't where they were going to be moving into.

The basic layout was more or less an oval block of a building, about two stories tall. However, ringing the oval were five tall, slender towers, obviously added afterwards in an attempt to compensate for the limited space to be had in Sigil. Those same spatial limitations had shaped the towers, causing them to be built at strange angles, making them twist and curl in an effort to avoid the structures around them. The end result was an edifice that looked like a giant hand of stone thrusting itself palm upwards from the street, fingers clutching at the empty air.

This would have been an odd enough sight, but somebody had seen fit to stud the towers with eye-shaped windows. Then the whole structure had become overgrown with razorvine, the closest thing that Sigil had to an indigenous plant - a noxious invasive creeper with a stem as sharp as a razor's edge. The vines had grown rapaciously over the hand-shaped building, to the point that long tendrils now wove through the air between the finger-towers, linking them in an intricate web of vines and serrated, heart-shaped black leaves that would have looked like an open invitation to thieves... of course, any thief stupid enough to try would have found themselves missing their fingers.

"Well... at least we'll never mistake which place is ours," Ranma joked feebly.

"I think you'd probably be dead of alcohol poisoning before you could get that drunk," Nabiki dryly retorted.

"Hey, look on the bright side; all that room! We won't need to share a bed anymore!" Ukyo cheerfully announced.

"What wrong with sharing bed?" Shampoo asked, with slightly exaggerated indignation.

"You hog the covers and your feet are freezing," Ukyo shot back, punctuating her teasing with a poke of her tongue.

"Big talk for someone who snore like hog," the Chinese Amazon quipped in response, folding her arms over her chest for emphasis.

"So, anyway, who owned this joint before us?" Ranma asked their long-suffering drow assistant, trying to cut the argument off at the pass.

"This property originally belonged to a... Monsieur Mordred du Averoigne," the drow replied, briefly consulting some paperwork. "He was a gentleman of independent means."

"What's that mean?" Shampoo asked curiously.

"It means he never was forthcoming about how he made his money, but he certainly made plenty of it. Most suspect he was a wizard of some description,' Baeloth explained.

As one, the teens from Nerima glanced at the distinctly hand-shaped structure.

"That... kind of explains things," Ukyo muttered, mostly to herself.

"So what happened to this Averoigne guy anyway?" Ranma asked.

"Nobody knows. He hasn't been seen in quite some time, nor has anyone been paying the bills - which is how the property returned to the Council's hands, as I mentioned a week prior," the drow explained.

Baeloth led them right up to the door; a large and ornate affair that could have come out of any Western fantasy film, with two doors set against a stone frame and opened by rings of black iron affixed to tarnished brass effigies of demonic faces, which held the rings in clenched maws of metallic fangs. The drow reached into a pocket and withdrew a large key, also of black iron, with its end sculpted into the shape of a Valentine's heart. He inserted the key into its respective keyhole and twisted it firmly, eliciting a loud clanking from an unseen mechanism, before he took hold of one of the door rings and bodily shoved himself against the now-unlocked portal.

The door slowly swung open, with the creaky moan of a dying old man, and the quintet paraded inside. Thick murk greeted the Nerimites' eyes, lit only by the dull light creeping in through the ajar door itself, before Baeloth snapped his fingers and muttered a word of power. Candles burst into light in sconces all around the walls, lifting the shroud of darkness, at least to an extent.

"Charming..." Nabiki muttered sarcastically.

"It could use some work, but with a little elbow grease, I'm sure we can make it just cosy!" Ukyo replied, the fixed grin on her face belying her forced attempt at positivity.

"Where is everything? This is... lot of nothing," Shampoo added.

And well might she say as much. Other than a few doors that obviously led further into the building, there was nothing in sight. No furniture of any kind.

"The house's contents were seized as part of the reparations proceedings," Baeloth admitted. "But the basic furnishings were left intact, and further supplemented by the ones that you purchased as part of taking ownership of the property. Come; I'll show you..."

One house later...

"And that's everything!" Baeloth cheerfully declared as the quintet found themselves back in the front hall again. "Any questions?"

"I got one - why didn't you show us up the towers?" Ranma responded.

At that, the drow winced slightly. "Ah, yes... well, the truth of the matter is that nobody has been able to find any idea how to enter the towers."

"...What?" the four teens responded in spontaneous synchronicity.

"We don't know if the previous owner hid the doors behind triggers or used magic to conceal them or even if he relied on teleporting inside of them," Baeloth confessed. "Regardless, we have no idea how you can get into the towers."

"...You mean we just bought a house and we can't even get into most of it?" an appalled Ranma demanded.

"That's... technically true," Baeloth conceded. "But on the positive, because the repossessers couldn't find their way into those towers before you, that means that anything of value remaining is yours by right!"

"IF there's anything of value in there," Nabiki pointed out, looking decidedly unamused.

"Unfortunately, that's beyond my power," Baeloth responded evenly.

"Yeah - hey, thanks again for everything, Mr. Ryltar. I don't know where we'd be if it wasn't for you," Ranma said, bowing formally to the drow to emphasize his words.

"Oh, I'm sure a bold and innovative group like yours would have thrived," Baeloth replied, but he was still smiling proudly at Ranma's words all the same. "But I'm afraid that I have to be off now; I have other work waiting for me..."

The three teens watched as their first benefactor - their first friend - in this messed up city walked away, stepping out through the door and vanishing off into the streets, currently being swallowed by thick, greasy mist. Once he was gone, Ranma slowly scratched the back of his head.

"So... what do we do now?" he asked uncertainly.

"Settle in?" Shampoo suggested

"With what? Literally everything we own, we carry on our backs," Ukyo reminded her.

"Girls, girls, girls; it's obvious what we need to do now," Nabiki chided her companions.

"And what's that?" Ukyo responded, drowning out Ranma's indignant, "Who're you calling a girl?!" as she did so.

"First; we pick our personal bedrooms. Next, we go and do some grocery shopping - we have the basic furnishings, but that's literally all we were provided with. No Weltha living here means we need to start cooking our own meals," Nabiki pointed out.

Her three companions blinked, and then looked mutually thoughtful, before all nodding slowly.

That first night...

Sprawling atop soft cotton sheets, Nabiki stretched out all four limbs as far as she could reach, reveling in having the luxury to do so at long last. 'My own bed! Finally! No more cramming in with three other teenagers... No more Ukyo tossing and turning and snoring... No more Shampoo half-squashing me with dream-induced hugs, or half-smothering me under that ridiculous bosom of hers... No more Ranma trembling and whimpering to himself as he has a nightmare, only to deny it if I wake him up... it's all mine!'

The middle Tendo daughter lay there for a few moments, savoring her freedom, and then she wriggled her way under the covers. Closing her eyes, she rested there silently, only to suddenly roll over onto her side. Then, a few minutes later, she rolled around to the other side. She tried to plump up her pillow, and then finally opened her eyes and stared miserably off into the gloom of her bedroom.

'...So why can't I fall asleep?'

"cOMe To mE...

Nabiki's eyes widened, a shiver racing down her spine at the sepulchral voice pleading softly from the doorway. She hastily grabbed her pillow and dragged it over her head. 'No! No, I didn't hear that!'

"Cooommmeeee to meeeee..."

'Oh, come on! Can't I catch a break?'

"Cooommmeeee to meeeee..."

Finally, mustering all her courage and indignation, Nabiki sat upright and turned her fiercest glare on the door. "If you guys are playing some kind of joke...!"

"Cooommmeeee..."

Nabiki had never really believed that old saying about your hair standing on end. Now she did. Her whole body stiffened, her eyes went wide, and she stared in horror at the spectral hand floating at the end of her bed, index finger slowly crooking back and forth in a beckoning gesture. For what felt like the longest minute of her life, she stared dumbfounded at the ghostly vision, a part of her screaming in her mind to call out for Ranma to save her... but she held her tongue, and she wasn't sure why.

Whether she remained silent out of fear or misguided pride or something else entirely, she never figured out. She just watched as the phantasmal hand repeated its sepulchral cry and slowly floated away, drifting back until it touched her bedroom door and subsequently vanished from sight. Nabiki waited cautiously, finally relaxing as it failed to make a reappearance.

'Well, that just happened...'

And that was when Nabiki's bedroom door was suddenly flung open,the lost Tendo daughter finally finding her voice and screaming in fright at the invasion.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down, Nabiki! It's just me!" Ranma pleaded, throwing up his hands in submission.

"Ranma?!" Nabiki barked, a riot of emotions whirling through her head. "You just scared a year off of my life! What are you doing?!"

"Did you just see a -"

"A ghostly hand beckoning whilst pleading for me to come with it with the creepiest voice I've ever heard? You just missed it," Nabiki cut Ranma off with her answer, her bolstering confidence manifesting in the renewed sarcasm with which she discussed the affair.

"Airen! Hand is this way!" came Shampoo's voice from the halls beyond Nabiki's bedchamber.

Evidently satisfied that Nabiki was okay, Ranma turned and ran off after the Chinese Amazon's voice. Nabiki watched him go, and then, moments later, surrendered to her curiosity; throwing aside her bed clothes, she ran after her ersatz fiancé, determined to find out what was going on.

Minutes later, the four teens were in a portion of the large central hall that made up the proverbial 'hub' of their new home, watching as the spectral hand slipped backwards through a solid wall with a final uluating "Cooommmeeee..."

"Well, that explained nothing," Ranma grumbled.

"Somehow, I'm not as surprised as I should be that this place is haunted," Ukyo muttered. "It is weird that it vanished like that, though..."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Ranma suddenly blurted. "Remember what Mr. Ryltar said, about how the repo-guys couldn't find the doors to the towers?"

The girls looked at Ranma, glanced at each other, and then all looked as one at the wall where their haunting visitor had vanished, studying it with renewed interest.

"You think there's a connection?"

"Well, it makes sense, don't it? Why else would a ghost that's trying to get us to follow it lead us to a dead end?" Ranma asked, only half-rhetorically.

"Okay, in that case, give Shampoo one moment," the Chinese Amazon smirked, cracking her knuckles before she began to rotate her right arm, clearly building up tension in her muscles for a stone-pulverising punch.

"Wait!" Nabiki shouted quickly. "Before we go around knocking expensive holes in our own walls, let's try and find a trigger mechanism! The guy who used to live here surely wouldn't have resorted to just blowing up his place on the regular!"

"Spoilsport," Shampoo muttered, but she did as Nabiki suggested.

Ranma was the first over to the wall, tapping on it with his knuckles even as he pressed his ear to its surface. "Hmm... doesn't really sound hollow..."

"There's got to be something here..." Nabiki muttered. Her eye fell on a nearby candle sconce, and something about it drew her attention. "I wonder..."

She reached out and gave it a gentle yet firm tug. The candle bent forward with a smooth click - and Ranma suddenly fell straight through the wall!

"Ranma!?" three girls yelled in mutual panic.

"Oof! Hey, Nabiki was right - the wall here's hinged, it swung back into some kind of tunnel!" Ranma called back to them... which was odd, because as far as the girls could tell, the wall was completely unblemished where their fiancé had literally passed through it like a ghost.

"Airen? Where are you?" Shampoo asked hesitantly.

"That's a funny thing ta ask; I'm standing right here in front of you!" came the bemused response.

"Uh... Ranchan? All we see is just a wall," Ukyo hesitantly explained.

And that was when Ranma's face suddenly emerged from the wall, followed by portions of the rest of him. "What are you talking about?" He complained, even as the three of them stared back in shock at the strange sight.

It was Ukyo who recovered first, however, and she pounded a fist into her palm in recognition, triumphantly announcing, "I get it! It's a double-bluff!"

Ranma just blinked at her in surprise. "I still don't get - whoa, what the heck?! Now I know why you girls were acting so weird!" he admitted, having finally caught sight of his own strange appearance of being partially fused into the wall.

"Ukyo explain what going on, please," Shampoo needled her oldest rival (not counting Akane).

"Wel, there's two ways to protect a secret passageway in a place like Sigil, right? You can rig up a concealed door, or you can cover it up with an illusion..."

"Or you can get really cunning and use both at the same time; anything looking for illusions won't see the door unless they've triggered the mechanism, but anybody who stumbles on the mechanism won't see the door move because the illusion is still overlapping it," Nabiki added.

"Too-too clever!" Shampoo observed. "Wonder what he hiding..."

"Well, there's only one way to find out," Ranma announced, and then stepped back behind the illusory wall.

The three girls quickly followed, stepping through into a surprisingly mundane-looking hallway for being so elaborately concealed. From there, it was a short journey downwards until they found themselves at the foot of the stairway obviously leading up into one of the finger-like towers built onto their home. And that was where they found that the house wasn't quite as abandoned as they'd believed.

"Monsieur du Averoigne, I presume?" Nabiki muttered, trying to cover up her nerves with a dose of black comedy.

Sitting on the bottommost steps in front of them was a corpse. In life, it had belonged to a human man, clad in a finely decorated blackish-blue greatcoat, full-length trousers, sturdy-looking boots, gloves, and what Western fantasy fans would have deemed the iconic wide-brimmed conical wizard's hat. But this man had clearly been dead a long time; gray skin like tattered parchment had shriveled, clinging tightly to underlying bone, reducing what was once a person to little more than a dried-out husk. Ancient stains of red dust, so dark it was almost black, adorned the steps leading up into the tower, and combined with a gaping cut across the front of the greatcoat to make it clear how the man had met his end.

As if all that wasn't weird enough, the corpse was clutching onto a hefty grimoire in a literal death-grip, hugging the hardbound tome to its skeletal chest so tightly that even in death its grip hadn't faltered.

"Only in Sigil could we buy a house with a dead guy in it," Ukyo muttered.

"Only in Sigil could we buy a house with Ranma in it," Shampoo countered, either to try and alleviate the mood or just because she couldn't let her rival have the last word that easily.

"Can we focus on the important issues here? Like - what do you think you're doing?!" Nabiki asked sharply, cutting herself off in mid-sentence as she spotted Ranma reaching out to the corpse.

"Taking this book, what's it look like?" Ranma replied.

"I know your father was a thief, but do you really think stealing from a dead wizard who's already haunting us is the right thing to do?!" the middle Tendo incredulously demanded.

"Hey, that ghost wanted us to be here. It literally beckoned us to come and find this guy. Obviously, he must have wanted to pass this on, or he'd have been doing the usual 'get out of my house' routine," Ranma asserted, even as he closed his fingers around the thick bindings and started trying to pull it free.

Nabiki made a face like she'd bitten into a lemon, and then turned mournfully to her fellow females. "...Does that logic actually make sense to you as well?"

"Shampoo can see where Airen coming from."

"Gotta admit, Ranchan's got a point."

"Terrific," Nabiki muttered. "Well, don't blame me if we all get blown up!"

Which was when, with perfect timing, Ranma finally forced the corpse to give up its literal death-grip, filling the air with the grisly crickle-crack of snapping bones. All four teens winced, but the spectral retribution never manifested. Instead, a sepulchral sigh of relief literally gusted through the hallway, a phantasmal breeze that blew with enough strength to ruffle their hair in a strangely affectionate gesture. Then, with a sibilant susurrus, the corpse crumbled away into little more than an ashy heap of dust and discarded clothing.

"...Okay, maybe you were right, Ranma," Nabiki grudgingly conceded, even as Ranma looked smug.

Unnoticed by either of them, Shampoo bowed her head and began muttering what sounded like a prayer for the departed soul in her native tongue, with Ukyo trying to repeat the gesture, even though she couldn't understand a word of what the Chinese Amazon was saying.

After a few moments, Shampoo finished and asked the obvious question, "So, what is book, anyway?"

"Well, it's obviously some kind of spellbook, no doubt holding incredibly powerful magic!" Ukyo replied.

"Actually, it looks like a journal," Ranma corrected them, having flipped the tome open and beginning to shuffle the pages randomly.

"What could possibly be contained in a journal to make somebody so determined that people find it?" Nabiki asked, only half rhetorically.

"You never know, wizards do tend to keep books on the strangest stuff," Ukyo asserted confidently, before amending herself, "Well, at least, that's how it worked in the game..."

"No, no, Ukyo right; wizards be bookworms," Shampoo interjected. "Shampoo have great-aunt who is village witch, and she have library you could get lost in."

"...I found myself within a vault, so vast I couldn't see the walls in the distance. An ocean of gold and silver coins lapped at my boots, studded by valuables like islands, beneath a roof so encrusted with precious stones that it twinkled like the most luminescent of star-studded skies..." Ranma read aloud, blinking to himself as he tried to picture the image that the journal was painting.

"Do tell...!"

An unmanly squeak of shock ripped its way out of Ranma's throat, the Saotome heir jolting as Nabiki suddenly grabbed onto his shoulder, trying to clamber over him so that she could read the journal herself. "Where'd you come from?!"

"Go on, Ranma - what else does it say?" his Tendo "fiancée" asked, still craning her neck to try and look at the pages over his shoulder.

"How about you back off and let me read it?" Ranma grumbled, shrugging her off of him before pushing her back. Still, he began shuffling through the pages again, flipping them rapidly and visibly skimming through the text. "Huh... looks like some kind of logbook of places he went, and how much money he made by doing so. There's stuff here about portals 'n' buyers...seems like he was some kinda art dealer."

"Interesting..." Nabiki purred. She reached out to try and take the book for herself, but Ranma instead pointedly snapped the covers closed and stepped out of reach. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going back to bed. We have work tomorrow, and it's way too late to deal with this craziness right now," the Saotome heir declared in response.

"Airen is right..." Shampoo agreed, yawning loudly to emphasize her point.

"Yeah; we solved the mystery, we'll worry about the rest of the details in the morning," Ukyo agreed, before she turned and walked back up the hall towards the main room.

Nabiki watched, fuming mildly to herself as the others followed Ukyo. 'Don't they realize what this might mean?! ...But, I have to admit, sleep also sounds good. Alright, fine, you win this time, Ranma; we'll address this in the morning, I swear!'

Once the quartet had all emerged back into the main room, however, Ranma stopped and turned back towards the illusion-shrouded wall. Once he'd felt out its boundary, he painstakingly carved the kanji for 'Door' and an arrow pointing to where the illusion began in the solid wall next to it. "For when we need to find it again," he replied when the girls all looked at him in curiosity, which triggered nods of understanding.

The next day...

Unfortunately, there was a certain drawback to having one's sleep interrupted in the middle of the night, especially as half the residents were very much not morning people. Namely, they all overslept, leading to a mad panic to gobble some food, get dressed properly, and race to the Chattering Mimir to be on-time for work.

Fortunately, being a bouncer was relatively casual work for Ranma; the clientele of the Chattering Mimir were not the rowdiest by nature, and Ranma's ability to non-lethally but firmly put-down outbursts of violence had been well-established over the past month. So Ranma was able to get away with reading through the journal at his stool near the door, so long as he kept one eye on the customers in case of trouble.

Of course, this didn't escape the notice of Morte, who promptly drifted over. "Watcha reading, basher?"

"This journal we found on a dead guy in a hidden room in our new house," Ranma replied absently, turning to the next page.

"Ooh, anything juicy?" the skull cackled playfully.

"Not in that sort of way... apparently, there are portals hidden in the towers of our new place; this guy was using them to visit other worlds, where he'd get his hands on stuff and then sell it on to rich folk here in Sigil... how's that even work?" Ranma asked, looking up at the glassy-eyed bartender.

"Hm. Sounds like your dead guy was a knight of the cross-trade - they're planeswalkers who basically specialize in art-dealing, sort of an adventurer-merchant cross," Morte explained as he clacked over to Ranma. "See, on any world where folks know the planes exist, there's a lot of jink to be had in selling stuff that you can certify is from off-world; doesn't matter so much what it is, because some folks will pay stupidly high amounts of jink for absolute junk, just so they can show off how connected they are. Even here in Sigil, there's a big trade in otherworldly stuff - if anything, the fact you can reach the multiverse so easily here makes the rich more determined to get their hands on exotic goodies."

By this point, Nabiki had wandered over, yen signs practically glittering in her eyes. "So, there's really a lot of money to be made in this kind of thing?"

"Well, it depends a lot on the precise objects you're bringing, who you're selling, and most importantly, where they're coming from," Morte elaborated, his voice taking a knowing tone at Nabiki's avarice. "Stuff from Oerth tends to set the standard for price, but junk from Toril is often worth less than that, because it's so easy to get there. Artifacts from more remote worlds - Cerilian, Krynnish or Mystaran, for example - are worth more. And the most remote worlds are naturally worth the most; Athasian artifacts are incredibly valuable, since portals there are so hard to find and the place is so stupidly dangerous to get anything back from..."

"I see...thank you Morte, you've been very helpful," Nabiki purred gleefully, the feline tones making Ranma shiver instinctively.

"I see that glint in your eye, missy... thinking of going into business yourself?" the demi-skull asked; if he still had eyebrows, they would have risen in interrogation.

"Well, that's something we'll need to discuss, if you'll give us a moment?"

"Cooking's already taken care of, so go ahead. Just remember; play with knives, you might just get cut," Morte warned, before he drifted back over to the bar.

His return to his place dealing out the liquor triggered Ukyo and Shampoo's approach, and the two quickly made their way over to their housemates.

"Morte said you wanted to talk?" Ukyo asked, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Is important?" Shampoo added.

"Very important," Nabiki promptly declared. "Ladies, Ranma, we have here an opportunity. We all know that if we want to get home, we need money. And, no offense to Morte, we're going to be here a long time if we have to save up our collective wages for it. But this book," she reached out and tapped the open pages for emphasis, "This book offers us a way to make big bucks by taking Mr. Averoigne's place."

"How would that work?" Ukyo asked, somewhat skeptical of the idea.

"The book's full of details - where the portals are, where they lead, how to open them, stuff he's sold, who he sold it too... we could basically pick up Mr. Averoigne's entire business with this thing," Ranma interjected.

"We talking same Mr. Averoigne we find as mummy in our house last night?" Shampoo interjected, more skeptical than Ukyo.

At that, Nabiki winced. "Ah... yes... that is the downside to this opportunity. The rewards are clearly great, but the risk is pretty high too... it might actually be better to just sell the book. There are others who'd be glad to pay for it..."

"True, but the portals are all in our house, so they'd demand we sell that to them too," Ranma pointed out. "Plus, even I can tell we'd probably make way more cash taking up Averoigne's old network for ourselves then letting somebody else buy it from us..."

"Well, there you have it: what do we do now?" Nabiki asked, looking at her fellow females and then at Ranma.

Ranma looked pensive for a moment, then sighed softly. "I ain't afraid of trouble. If we can make a real profit off of this, and get ourselves home, then I say we take the chance."

"Shampoo confident in Ranma's skills, and Shampoo's own. Shampoo willing to fight to get home. Shampoo say we use what book say!" the Chinese Amazon boldly declared.

"I gotta admit, I'm a little nervous about this - the last guy who used this book got killed!" Ukyo reminded them. "But... if we work together, I think we can pull it off. Plus, I wanna go home to Japan, too. Alright, I say we use it."

"Then it's settled!" Nabiki declared triumphantly. "We just need to figure out how to start using this book to our advantage..."

"Well, that's easy - the last entry here talks about a job that Averoigne was going to undertake, but he never finished it," Ranma announced. "All we gotta do is open the portal, get this piece of junk, and then bring it back to the guy he was gonna sell it to."

The girls crowded in close to study the book, with Ranma obligingly holding out so they could see. The air around the quartet began to almost visibly crackle with excitement as determination truly set in. Finally, they were ready to stop merely surviving from day to day and start actually taking steps to complete their quest and return home!

Chapter End & Closing Notes

And here's our ending! Not gonna lie; originally, this chapter was going to be much longer and feature around the misadventures of our heroes as they try to get their first portal open, but it took so long to just get this much done that I decided to split the chapter in half. Still, we are finally almost ready to begin planeswalking - I hope you guys are excited!

To those true fans of Planescape who are here, firstly, allow me to express my surprise that you're actually reading this trainwreck. Secondly, allow me to apologize; I'm well aware that "knight of the cross-trade" in the Cant actually is a term meaning "thief", but I felt it worked really well as a Sigil slang term for the kind of merchant-adventurer Ranma and his girls are looking into becoming, so I got creative. Besides, it's been 300 years; a bit of linguistic drift isn't that hard to accept, is it?

So, I wonder if anyone will recognize the inspiration behind the new Chateau de Saotome...

I really need to get back into the swing of writing fanfics again... I'm considering tackling the various oneshot ideas I've had, which I could more comfortably release as "first drafts" - it might up my output a little. Actually, on that same line of thought... would anyone read a Ranma/Urusei Yatsura crossover written by me? What about a Ranma/Oddworld crossover?