Author's Notes: I..live...again!
Seriously, though, I'm sorry for the long delay in updates. Real life hassles and a creative logjam were a pain in the ass. I won't promise more regular updates, but I'll try harder to update this story in the future, okay?
And we have a TVTropes page! Please give it some love!
For those who tried to picture our heroes' new home from the last chapter, it was inspired by Xayide's castle from The Neverending Story, particularly as depicted in the film version.
Chapter 6: Catch the Kalke!
"Come on, Ranma, let's go!"
"Geeze, hold on, Nabiki! We just got home from work!"
"Hold on to yourself! We finally have a clue to getting back where we belong!"
Ranma shook his head as Nabiki raced off ahead of him. "I never would have thought I'd see her so excited over something that wasn't money."
"Technically, she still excited over money," Shampoo pointed out.
"Yeah, as much as I don't doubt she wants to get back to Nerima, I think the idea of being wealthy is also pretty exciting to her," Ukyo added with a shrug that indicated that the roaming chef wasn't adverse to the concept either..
Ranma just returned the shrugg and pressed on to the main hall, where Nabiki was practically vibrating with nervous excitement.
"Come on, Ranma, let's get to the portal room already!"
"Sheesh, we ain't even married yet an' already yer trying to order me around," Ranma teased her, only to find himself blinking in confusion at the sudden shocked expression that washed over the Tendo girl's face before she could school her features back into their usual neutral expression.
Brushing it off, he added, "Besides, according to this book, we need to go to the lab tower first, which is over... here."
Trusting he'd memorized the book's scribbled notes about the secret passages right, Ranma walked over to one part of the room. Thankfully, he found the lever where the book said it would be, and attempting to walk through the wall resulted in him stepping into the floor of a spiral staircase. With the steps of the girls echoing behind him, he cautiously advanced up the stairs, and then let out a slow whistle as the room above came into view.
"Wow... so this is what a wizard's lab looks like..."
Ranma had no idea where to even begin describing what he was seeing. Even 'a tornado whipping through a junkyard, a glassblower's and a science lab' failed to scratch the chaos of what he was looking at.
Elaborate machines of clockwork gears and glowing crystals and rune-etched slabs of metal or stone filled much of the space. Shelves bristled with jars and vases, bottles and vials, beakers and tubes.
Over here, a miniature library made up of scroll tubes, books and slabs piled higgledy-piggledy; clearly reference material consulted and then abandoned in accordance with the previous owner's earlier usage. Over there, a small pool of sigil-engraven stones with a center full of glowing greenish blue liquid that bubbled despite the lack of any visible flame, sending plumes of ghostly mist towards the ceiling.
A large portion of one wall was given over to a combination of hearth and what looked to Ranma like blacksmithing equipment... except he never saw a fire that burned in technicolor before. Nor heard one that sounded like it was snoring.
"Wow... this something else," Shampoo murmured, staring around with wide eyes.
"So, what are we doing here, Ranchan?" Ukyo asked, tapping Ranma on the shoulder and snapping his attention back to her.
"More importantly, what's that doing here?!" Nabiki demanded, shoving forward and pointing past Ranma.
It really said something about just what kind of crazy junkyard the lab was that Ranma actually hadn't spotted it first. Perched on a table in the center of the room, busily stuffing wands, rods, staves, crystal balls, tomes and other arcane bric-a-brac was a little monster.
At first, Ranma took it for a monkey - one of those foreign long-tailed breeds, not a proper Japanese snow monkey. But then it turned to face them and he saw it had the head of a mad-eyed billy goat, seconds before its lips peeled back to reveal a distinctly monkey-like set of fangs and it belted out an ear-piercing screech that made the four teens clutch their ears in pain.
"Eeeyaaagh! No! You can't have them! They're mine! All mine!"
One hand-like paw stabbed in their direction, brandishing a wand at the teens. This bizarre, flanged device looked like somebody had taken sticks of gold, silver and copper and heated them until they ran like candle wax, then intricately woven them together into a strange, elongated shape of curves and holes and flanges, fused in some parts and distinct in others, all rising to form a three-fingered claw that cupped an egg-sized and -shaped gemstone. This gem was jet black in color, but at the same time alight with vibrant, almost glowing colors; a kaleidoscope of purples, greens, yellows, reds, oranges and blues in swirls and splotches.
The creature screeched like the mad monkey it resembled, and then there was pain. Waves of vividly colored blinding light erupted from the wand's gemstone cap, filling the air with iridescence like being stabbed in the eyes with knives made of rainbows. Four teens clapped their hands over their eyes, screaming in shock and pain, filling the air with their curses as their abused senses tried to compensate for the attack and resume normal function.
An ordinary man wouldn't have been able to focus through the pain and blindness to register as the monkey-goat-thing scuttled between their legs and down the stairs. But, as those who knew him would freely admit, Ranma Saotome was no ordinary man. Blinking the spots from his abused eyes, irritation-spawned tears still rolling down his cheeks, Ranma shook his head and roared in a rage.
"Come back here!"
He sprang down the stairs in huge leaps, outpacing his female companions without even thinking and sneering viciously as he managed to pin the goat-monkey's tail under his foot. "Gotcha!"
It screeched in pained anger, and raised its wand again, at which Ranma promptly shut his eyes and shielded his face with his hands.
"That little lightshow won't work on me twice!" he boasted.
FZZZAAAP!
Pain erupted throughout Ranma's body, every muscle seizing at once, every nerve screaming as raw voltage poured through him in a sizzling tidal wave of pure anguish. His hair stood on end and his limbs convulsed as he fell over backwards; he'd been blown up by Happosai's bombs more than once, but this was pain in an entirely new form! He barely even registered hitting the floor, instead laying there like a flipped-over turtle as he desperately tried to make his now-numb limbs cooperate with him.
The goat-monkey capered triumphantly at the foot of its fallen foe, chanting in a melange of unknown tongues, unaware that by this point, it had an audience.
"Ranma!" squealed a dismayed Ukyo, hurtling down the stairs heedlessly in her rush to reach her fallen fiancé's side.
"Stupid monkey, you pay for that!" roared an enraged Shampoo as she charged in.
"It shoots lightning?!" Nabiki blurted, still trying to wrap her head around the chaotic encounter.
The monkey-monster screamed profanities at them and leveled its wand once again, this time unleashing a rapid-fire barrage of baseball-sized globs of smoking purple sludge. Shampoo arrested her charge with superhuman speed, pushing herself to the limit to dodge and weave around the volley of slime-balls, now focused entirely on defense over offense and quickly beating a retreat. Ukyo grabbed Ranma and dragged him out of the line of fire, whilst Nabiki hid behind the door to the lab. All wise decisions, given the way that each glob of slime let out acrid sizzles wherever they splattered against the walls and roof.
Once all four teens were in cover, however, the monkey-thing ceased its barrage and scurried away, mocking laughter drifting over its shoulder as it left them to regroup nerves.
"Oh, man... that hurt," Ranma groaned pitifully, forcing himself upright.
"Take it easy, Ranchan! You just took a lightning bolt to the chest!" Ukyo protested, trying and failing to make him lie back down.
"It'll take more than that to stop me, Ucchan, I'm fine," Ranma protested.
"What was that nasty little thing?!" Shampoo demanded, even as she knelt down besides Ranma and also began examining his injuries.
"Who cares what it is? Look what it's done to our house!" Nabiki complained.
Three confused expressions greeted her statement, before Ranma, Shampoo and Ukyo actually did as she'd suggested. They all winced at the slick-surfaced craters now dotting the walls, ceiling and floor from where the acidic muck had eaten away at the stone.
"Okay, nobody breaks into my home and makes a mess like this! C'mon, girls!" Ranma snarled, rolling back onto his hands before using them to launch himself to his feet in one of his many casual feats of impossible agility.
"Shampoo with you - nasty monkey-thing pay for this!" the Chinese Amazon agreed, pumping her fist in emphasis.
A sudden muffled explosion rattled the whole house, and the four teens nearly fell over in shock.
"That came from the kitchen!" An indignant Ukyo cried, and led the charge there herself.
Surprisingly, the actual kitchen itself was untouched... but the trapdoor in the center of the room that led down to what passed as a kind of basement pantry had been flung wide open, and tendrils of smoke curled ominously upwards from the dark depths. Pausing only to snatch up the everburning torch that had been installed here as one of their first home modifications, Ranma leapt down the trapdoor.
"What a mess! What the hell, did it set off a bomb or somethin'?!"
Shelves had fallen from their former perches carved into the walls, and some had even been set on fire - the source of the smoke that was curling into the kitchen above. Fortunately, there hadn't been anything of value down here to damage, because it was a wreck now... much like one of the walls, which had blasted open. A gaping, jagged-edged hole now stood revealed, leading off into a deep, dark tunnel. Ranma stalked over to this aperture and paused on the threshold, cautiously looking inside as the girls dropped down into the cellar and came up behind him.
"How does one little monkey do so much damage?!" Ukyo snarled, stamping out one smoldering flame.
"I don't know, and I don't care! All I care about is finding the little vermin and watching you three cut its skin off," Nabiki spat.
"Whoa, wait a minute, Nabiki; you ain't comin with us!" Ranma protested, twisting around to face his Tendo fiancée with a shocked expression.
"Like hell I'm not! I'm not waiting here on my own whilst you three are wandering around kami-knows-where! Besides, that filthy ape stole from me - nobody steals from Nabiki Tendo!"
She clenched her fist and shook it at the heavens, pointedly ignoring the looks her housemates cast each other at her antics. This didn't stop her from irritably snatching the enchanted torch from Ranma's hand and storming off through the hole, forcing her housemates to catch up to her.
The tunnel beyond the hole in their cellar wall was far larger than they had expected; an arching expanse of stone divided in half by a deep channel filled with water and mud. The realization as to what this "tunnel" really was dawned almost instantly, but not one of the teens vocalized it, as if hoping that sheer stubbornness could change reality. The twin walkways were coated in a layer of mud and moss, garbage of all kinds scattered around almost like decoration.
Unspoken, Shampoo took the lead, her tracking skills being the most developed of them all. Footprints in the mud and handprints in the grime on the wall sticking out most obviously as she led them through the dark, dank depths.
Strangely, they weren't completely lightless, which the group had expected. As they pressed on, they passed great smears of phosphorescent fungi that glowed brightly enough to take the edge off the gloom, as well as the odd luminescent crystal or even the occasional sconce for what seemed to be an everburning flame, like the one they carried.
Still, the brightest light was that which they carried with them, and they instinctively huddled close to each other, wary of what the darkness might conceal.
Suddenly, Shampoo stopped and cocked her head, a confused expression on her face. "You hear that?"
The others followed suit, Ranma blinking slowly as he replied, "Sounds like... singing?"
Because now that Shampoo had brought it to their attention, they could hear a strange melody echoing from down one branch of the ever-forking tunnels. A strange, sepulchral uluation, with shifting tones, which was slowly growing louder by the moment.
"Should we check it out, Ranchan?" Ukyo asked, tightening her grip on her spatula.
"Oh, sure, following creepy voices in a sewer is a brilliant idea," Nabiki muttered with dripping sarcasm. She'd seen enough horror stories to see where this was going and she didn't like it one bit!.
"Nabiki have a point..." Shampoo conceded, having played enough horror games with similar plots.
"But, on the other hand, they may have seen that whatever-it-was... head for it. We can handle whatever's down here," Ranma declared authoritatively.
Nabiki rolled her eyes, but she didn't protest as the others set off down the tunnel. As they made their way along, the ululating voice - or was it voices? - began to resolve into actual words, making it undeniable that whoever or whatever they were approaching was singing.
"Mmm... sludge. Mhhhmhmhm... filth! Oooohhhh... rot!"
Not that they would really classify what they were hearing as 'musical'.
"Oily grime... fetid sludge! Putrid fumes and noxious muck! Slime beneath me... ooohhh... slime up above... ooooh, I love my... noxious love!"
Three girls and one boy exchanged uncertain looks, but none dared to back down at this moment, continuing their approach.
"The trash of the underworld... I consume all that lies within it... suckling the juices, and wallowing in it... Oh, filthy, foul, so good, I feel a special kind of horny! Sunlight and flowers? They depress and frankly bore me!"
And on that line, the adventurous teens emerged into a chamber, and as one they reeled and gagged, hands flying to cover their noses and jaws clamping shut to hold back vomit as the scent hit them like a brick to the face. This chamber was a large, circular one, centered around a deep pool filled with... water, and that was as far as they were willing to consider it. The walkways were slick with dripping coats of foulness, and the central pool had been filled with garbage; a reeking, festering heap of bones and rotting meat, carcasses and fruit rinds, moldering paper, worms and rats. Emerging from this sodden heap of compost were three massive worms, pallid gray but caked in a layer of greasy sludge, capped with deformed, reptilian heads - the apparent source of the 'music' they had followed to reach this point, as they burst into the next stanza.
"Swollen entrails, thick with decay... squeeze them tight and bathe in their rank rain! Noisome meat... putrid sludge... to me make the finest gourmet lunch! Slime beneath me... ooohhh... slime up above... how I love my... noxious love!"
And that was when the heap shuddered and quaked as a fourth monstrous head burst from amidst the piled refuse; a boil-dotted, cankerous, slimy salamander's maw, its jaws studded with row upon row of gnarled, twisted, splintered fangs, stretched skin where the eyes should be. Two great squid-like tentacles, bilious green in color, erupted from the rubbish and began dredging the pool, sweeping the trash back into the central heap.
"...What manner of abomination are you?!" an appalled Nabiki demanded of the creature, if not of the multiverse at large.
"Nabiki!" Ranma chastised her, appalled at her bluntness. 'I thought I was the guy bad at diplomacy!'
Four heads snapped towards them, seven to nine eyes studying the quartet from the three writhing wyrm-heads arcing above the heap.
"Abominations!" chirped one of the wyrms in a surprisingly chipper tone.
"Mutations!" added the second, just as cheerfully.
"Deviations!" interjected the third.
"That's all you're gonna find down here," chuckled the larger eyeless head - and the surprisingly suave, dulcet voice that emerged from the monstrous maw was perhaps the oddest thing about what was already an oddity even by the standards of Sigil.
"Uh... right. Look, mister, we don't want any trouble," Ranma began, trying to defuse the situation before it went wrong, even if he was only delaying the inevitable. Seriously, touching that thing? Ew!
"Call me Bubulous... as for trouble? Well, that's good. I don't need no trouble. I was just about to have lunch."
And as if to emphasize its words, the monstrosity opened its central jaws and just bit down into the compost heap, devouring a mass of... stuff... with great, wet, gulping smacks and slurps.
Ranma fought to keep the nausea off of his face and desperately pressed on with his diplomatic efforts. "Riiight... well, don't let us keep you... but have you seen a little monster running around? A goat-monkey thing carrying a big sack?"
Bubulous let out a noise like an ogre farting wetly into a half-squashed trumpet, rivulets of dung-brown slime pouring like waterfalls between his many fangs. "A kalke? Horrible little things... not even worth chewing the bones. As a matter of fact, one did run through here with a sack just a few moments ago..."
"Which way?!" Ranma blurted excitedly, vengeance and the desire to be away from this reeking monstrosity spurring him on past his manners.
"Over there," Bubulous replied, gesturing to one tunnel. "Shouldn't be hard to catch up to it..."
"Thanks a lot, enjoy your meal, c'mon girls, let's go!" Ranma rushed out, the words spilling forth in a single breath as he shot forward in the direction that had been indicated, the girls sprinting after him as fast as they could. Their feet beat a tattoo against the stone, skidding and squelching but somehow maintaining their forward moment as they plunged down the indicated route.
Unfazed at suddenly being alone, Bubulous continued leisurely, "Of course, that way leads to the borders of the Dead Nations, so you might want to be careful; ghouls like to come creeping out here to scavenge..."
The creature's words fell on deaf ears; the martial artists (and one vengeful businesswoman) were too far away, and aware only of the thundering of their own hearts in their ears. And even that swiftly gave way to a new distraction; screeches and shrieks, crackling discharges of energy and slurred obscenities, coming from just around the next bend.
"That's it! Get it!" Ranma snarled, powering ahead... only to come screeching to a halt as he realized too late he'd charged right into the middle of a brawl. He narrowly managed to keep his footing in the mud... only to be knocked over as the girls skidded and slammed into him, knocking all of them into the water channel.
They surfaced from the stagnant, oily water with a chorus of spluttering, spitting, gagging and cursing, scrambling back onto the banks. Shampoo shot off and hid her newly feline self behind a rotten half-a-barrel, whilst Ranma swore and stomped, the indignant redhead trying to wring the liquid foulness from her pigtail.
Even as they did this, though, their attention was fixated on the scene before them. Three twisted once-human figures, leathery skin stretched taut over wiry frames, fingers swollen into gnarled claws, jaws hanging open to expose lashing, wormy tongues and rotten, jagged teeth, had cornered the goat-monkey thing - the kalke, as Bubulous had called it. It screeched and capered about, trying to avoid the lunging, swiping claws from the hissing figures penning it in. It jabbed out with that cursed wand, and a tongue of amethyst flames erupted from the tip, striking the closest of the humanoids and hungrily devouring it.
The burning thing shrieked so loudly that the teens clamped their hands over their ears, certain they felt blood stain their fingers, and it swatted desperately at its own scorching flesh, but to no avail. The flames ate away at it without remorse, skin peeling away in rancid strips of char, dried musculature smoldering to ash and bones breaking under the heat before it finally toppled into the channel, filling the air with fetid steam as it continued to burn even underwater.
The kalke let out a whopping cackle and jabbed its wand again, and then again. At the first stabbing motion, one of the humanoids' head suddenly exploded, as if some invisible claw had scythed through the air and sheared away half its skull in a single motion. It collapsed bonelessly to the ground, even as the second gesture from the kalke's wand unleashed a howling wave of frigid mist that enveloped the final humanoid from head to toe. The teens could feel the temperature drop even from where they were, the crackling sounds of something fast-freezing filling the air before the vapors dissipated, leaving behind its target, blue-tinged and glistening as if it had been dusted with diamonds.
For a moment, all was still and silent, not a sound to be heard... and then a fourth figure suddenly came charging out of the gloom. It slammed into the kalke's last victim, which shattered like a glass pane hit by a charging bull, and swept down on the goat-headed monkey. It shrieked and tried to raise its trusty wand once more, but was snatched up in a black-streaked fist.
For this creature resembled the ones that had been attacking the kalke... but was easily half again as tall, and three times as heavy! Rather than being slender to the point of being almost skeletal, its skin strained to contain its swollen bulk, great rolls of fat rippling and wobbling with every motion. In fact, its skin actually tore as it moved, exposing glistening gobs of bloodless grease packing the wound, like a too-stuffed sausage that had been left to fester. Its jowls drooped and met in a bib-like mass of flab that dangled from the creature's throat like a beard made of tissue. Its too-wide mouth gaped open, and the kalke shrieked as teeth like gnarled fingers sank into its torso, the abomination biting the monkey-thing into two ragged halves.
The wand fell from now-limp fingers as the killer snuffled and slavered, stuffing its bulging cheeks full as it tried to cram the entire monkey-goat into its mouth at one time. Unable to fit the head with its proudly curling horns, the bloated thing bit off as much of the former kalke's torso as it could stuff down its gullet. Blood and shreds of flesh and chunks of bone rained down, spilling across a heaving chest and splattering across the floor as it chomped and snorted ,grunting and slurping obscenely at its foul repast.
"S-serves the little monster right," Nabiki declared, trying to sound more confident than she clearly felt.
Speaking up turned out to be the absolute worst thing she could have done, as the obsese abomination's gaze suddenly whipped towards them. Eyes that were little more than tiny pits sunken deep into its flab-wrapped skull glowed a sickly green, fixating on the teens like it was nailed there.
"Uh... hi?" Ranma feebly began, trying to be diplomatic - hey, it had worked just before, hadn't it?
It wasn't going to work this time. The beast's mouth dropped open to nearly hang on its chest, and it wailed like a damned soul.
"Meeeeeeeaaaaaat!"
That hellish shriek was their only warning before the creature charged, moving with deceptive speed for such a lumbering monstrosity. Its swollen feet slapped heavily against the damp floor as it barreled towards them, a living avalanche of necrotic blubber and rancid gore.
"Oh, fuck!" was the unanimous reaction from the teens as Ukyo grabbed a deer-in-the-headlights Nabiki and leapt one way, whilst Ranma tumbled another, narrowly avoiding a clumsy swipe from the creature before it skidded off the walkway and into the central canal.
Ukyo continued to leap down the walkway back towards Bubulous' chamber, Shampoo streaking after her as the unfortunately cursed Chinese Amazon reluctantly fled the fight. The creature surfaced with a burbling roar behind them, only to be cut off as Ranma launched herself through the air and kicked it in the back of the skull, sending it splashing back down into the murk.
Once she was just barely visible of the fight, Ukyo unceremoniously swung Nabiki out of her arms and onto her feet, the startled civilian barely managing to remain upright under her own power.
"Stay here," Ukyo ordered her, before turning and charging back the way she'd came, trusting Nabiki's sense of self preservation to make her obey.
"Ranchan, don't let it touch you!" the crossdressing chef cried at the top of her lungs.
"I wasn't going to play Omochio Tsukimasho with it!" The redheaded genderbender spat back, twisting around a claw swipe and lashing out with a high splits kick that audibly cracked the thing's jaw and made it stagger back until it tripped over the rim of the far walkway, tumbling onto its corpulent backside.
"It's a ghoul! Its touch will paralyze you!" Ukyo explained, even as she brought her spatula whipping around to bear - only to curse as she misjudged the curvature of the stonework surrounding her, causing the blade to screech as it skittered along the stone and instead slap meatily against her target's drooping belly.
That was a mistake, as the bloated ghoul suddenly latched onto Ukyo's spatula by its shaft and swung with all its might. Ukyo yelped as she found herself suddenly yanked off of her feet and flying horizontally through the air until she slammed bodily into the sewer wall. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, pain flaring over her body as her bones jolted, and she fell onto the walkway, stunned and seeing double.
"Ucchan! Alright, tubby, no more mister nice guy!" came Ranma's vengeful snarl.
Ukyo blinked frantically, trying to get the world to realign in her eyes, and succeeded just in time to watch as Ranma suddenly drove a broken shaft of rotting wood clean through the ghoul's back and out its chest. The ghoul shrieked in rage and spun clumsily around, forcing ranma to curse and jump out of the way.
"It...headshot! Ranchan, go for the head!" Ukyo forced out, trying to restart her limbs through sheer brute determination but not succeeding very well - her arms and legs felt like they were made of lead.
"Oh? You mean like this?!" Ranma snarled, and Ukyo watched as Ranma snatched up another spar of rotten wood and surged forward, stabbing her makeshift shortspear up through the ghoul's mouth and right into its brain.
A choking, guttural gurgle spilled from the ghoul's ruined throat, alongside a torrent of snot-green and coal-black sludge, before it toppled bonelessly forward, its bloated mass coming to a final rest with a thunderous splash in the sewer water.
"Yeah... just like that," Ukyo sighed in relief. 'Should have known Ranchan could handle it on his own...'
Head no longer swimming, Ukyo pushed herself to her feet, even as Ranma walked over to her and presented her with her spatula. Smiling, she gratefully accepted it, even as Nabiki and Shampoo came jogging up to rejoin the group.
"You killed it! Nice work, Ranma!" Nabiki cheered. "Now, where's the stuff that stupid monkey-thing stole?"
"Over there," Ranma replied, lazily pointing. "But I think we've had enough adventuring for one day..."
"What?! But the money! Our way home!" Nabiki protested.
"I've been electrocuted, spent an hour wandering around a sewer, and just went toe to toe with a homicidal mass of rancid pork! I don't even want to think about what might be on the other side of that damn portal! We ain't going nowhere till we've had time to rest, and that's final!" Ranma snapped, stamping her foot for emphasis, the stone beneath her boot audibly cracking.
Nabiki stared at him with a mixture of shock and exasperation, before turning to the other girls... only to visibly wilt as she saw them folding their arms and nodding along with Ranma... even the still-feline Shampoo. She sighed reluctantly and shook her own head. "Oh... alright. We'll do it in the morning, I guess..."
"That's better. Whoever this buyer is, they've waited this long, another eight hours or so won't kill 'em," Ranma declared.
"C'mon; let's get out of this stinking place," Ukyo joined in, already moving to grab the kalke's bag of loot. Pausing only to carefully take the wand and give it to Nabiki, the foursome set about the task of retracing their steps back to their home, ready to put this mess behind them and prepare for the new mess that lay ahead...
Chapter End & Closing Notes
And now we finally, FINALLY have the build-up part of the story done! I promise you all, next chapter, you WILL see them finally get to do some planeswalking! I know I could have skipped this chapter, but I need to get my hand back in with writing action sequences, and whilst I could have at least expanded it to have them travel through the portal, I figure that you guys have waited long enough for an update as-is. Hopefully, shorter chapters like this one will make updating a little quicker and more reliable.