She'd noticed the difference before, but now that she'd gotten somewhat acquainted with human structures, Trinitite found the odd buildings in this part of Human Territory even stranger. Where most structures had enjoyed some kind of buffer of land between them and their neighbors, these seemed to be jumbled and crowded, the smaller structures utilizing space with little concern for claims or territory. Unlike in Seattle or other cities she'd seen, however, the structures were tiny. It was almost like they'd been crammed together, like aircraft on her flight deck.

Speaking of aircraft, these buildings didn't quite seem as sturdy as those found elsewhere. Looking at them, Trinitite couldn't shake the feeling that their builders hadn't been worried about doing a good job. Part of her was confident she could lift some of these structures, assuming she had the equipment to prevent her from tearing it apart or sinking into the ground.

Trinitite forced herself to stop focusing on the buildings next to her, instead turning her attention to her course and destination. She knew the fleet she wanted to visit was stationed along one of the major roads, part of the massive grid that served as the basis for much of human territory. Hopefully, that knowledge would be enough, because when Trinitite had first left, she might have been too demoralized to lend much thought to her bearing or location.

A pair of humans passed the abyssal, forcing her to hug the side of the concrete sidewalk. Again, Trinitite was no expert on these things, but their clothes seemed to be in worse condition than those on the worksite. One of them didn't have a jacket, which was unusual for these parts, while the other's clothes seemed to hang limply off of him, instead of hugging him.

In a way, the people here reminded Trinitite of a defeated fleet, withdrawing from a battle they'd realized was unwinnable. In general, there felt like there was a… lack of morale here, and the hope she'd taken for granted in Seattle or on the Construction site was missing. She hadn't noticed it earlier because she'd been too worried about herself, but now...

The abyssal terminated that line of thought when her rangefinders settled on a familiar sign.

Luzon Blues... So she hadn't been lost, after all.

Had it really been under a week since she'd been here? So much had happened since she'd tried to join this fleet. As an alarm, a bell chimed as she opened the door, but unlike the many times such a device had caught her off guard, she felt she hardly noticed this one. Now that the question of supplies was no longer grinding her down, surprises like that were easier to take in stride.

"Welcome!" The human at the checkout greeted her. Trinitite gave the man a small smile, nodding to him, but didn't do anything beyond that. The Abyssal had entered with two different plans, depending on who was manning that post, and it looked like she was going to go with the latter. It would mean she wouldn't be able to spend any time at the library today, but she'd already made that sacrifice by setting a course east from the construction site instead of northwest. More research was important, sure, but while she could get much more done at Mill Creek, Trinitite felt she had a duty to return here, at least once.

Passing the checkout area and entering the array of shelves stuffed into the building, Trinitite started searching for items that she might need, such as that propane stove. She knew where to find one, sure, but she didn't owe the Walmart Fleet anything. Giving Ineng her well-earned money felt much better, considering how much the Supply Depot Princess's Lookalike had helped her.

"...Who's gonna plug their ears

"When you scream,

"You can't go on...

"Thinking,

"Nothing wrong, oh oh…"

Trinitite's largest complaint about this place was, of course, the damn noise they pumped into the building. This wasn't too bad, she supposed, considering it's steady tempo and unintrusive volume, but it didn't need to be here at all!

Trying to ignore the noise emanating from above, the abyssal focused on the storage shelves in front of her. She recognized most of it from her raid on The Fred Meyers, although some of the labeling was in a different language. Was this what Filipino looked like when it was written down? The Supply Depot Princess's fleet had spoken the language amongst each other, but they'd labeled everything in English, like a narrow majority of other fleets.

Unfortunately, as the Abyssal checked more of the store, it seemed like that food and clothing was all they had. This was… unfortunate. She wanted to help Ineng, but she wasn't going to give her well-earned money for something she didn't need. Still, she'd come all this way, it would be a shame if she'd come all this way and traded for nothing, however…

The Abyssal drifted to a stop, her rangefinders focused on a bag of familiar white pellets. She'd kind of wasted the rice she'd had… what was the sauce she'd used on it? Warchester sauce? She'd have to locate some of that, too. Come to think of it, she'd passed over ice cream back at the Fred Meyers, but now that she had a better idea of how long it was going to take to locate her Princess, adding Ice Cream to her freezers didn't sound like a terrible idea.

All of that would wait, however. She planned to loiter around Luzon Blues until she met their commander, and while carrying something for a couple of hours wouldn't be a problem for her, she still preferred to keep her free hands on her walking stick.

"Do you need anything?" A familiar voice spoke up from right behind her. Despite herself Trinitite jumped, spinning to meet the human.

"Ah, Ineng." She sighed. "You scared me."

The easy honesty might have caught the juman off guard, because the Luzon Blues' leader's eyes narrowed in uncomprehension, before her face suddenly lit up.

"Ah, it's Elizabeth, right?" She asked, her rhythmic accent again reminding Trinitite of her abyssal lookalike.

"Yes." The abyssal confirmed. The lie had become much easier after answering it in two days of construction work. "I…" She started, taking a breath before continuing. "...would like to thank you."

"Thank me?" The human echoed. She leaned forwards slightly, eyes flicking over the abyssal's face. "Did you find a job?"

"Oh," Trinitite straightened, her eyes widening. "uh, that's right."

She'd been anticipating how she'd break the news to her ever since she'd left the construction site, but now that she'd guessed it...

"Not many other reasons you'd seek me out." Ineng supplied, reading Trinitite's face. "Your makeup looks fine."

"...you're kind of scary, Ineng." Trinitite admitted, her words slipping out before she'd realized it. Realizing the mistake, the Wo-class straightened, eyes widening as she clapped a gloved hand over her mouth.

What was that? She'd never be so open around the commander of a fleet, even a human one! In her experience, nobody who had that kind of power would accept something so candid! Sure, Ineng didn't seem like the kind of person to rip someone's rudder off for getting too familiar, but that also meant she didn't deserve being slighted like that!

Instead of reacting with anger or something reasonable like disappointment, however, the human laughed!

"It's a mother's intuition, Elizabeth." She provided, chuckling. "You'll understand when you have kids."

She wasn't so sure about that. Plenty of abyssals had 'mothers,' and she could say with certainty that they had no such thing. Also, when? Were all humans expected to exchange genetic information with someone? It would explain why there were so many of them…

She shook her head. What was important was that the human wasn't offended, somehow, so Trinitite could try to steer this conversation back on course.

"Maybe, but… uh" The Abyssal tempered, searching for the words she'd planned. "Right! Your advice helped me get a job, so I wanted to thank you!"

"That's wonderful!" The princess of the Luzon Blues Fleet exclaimed. "What's this job?"

"I'm working for a construction group!" Trinitite announced. She'd wanted to be more specific, but while she'd recorded the name of the fleet she was a part of in her log, she hadn't figured out how to pronounce it yet.

"Construction?" Ineng asked, her smile disappearing as her brow furrowed.

"Yeah." She confirmed, suddenly unsure of herself.

"Oh…" The human trailed off. Why did she find that surprising? As soon as it had came, though, the surprise faded, the human clapping her hands together. "Well, I wish you the best of luck!" The smile suddenly went thin as she locked eyes with Trinitite. "Just remember: You don't have to do anything they tell you to do."

Really? Trinitite guessed she technically had the strength to overpower anyone else in her current Fleet, and they'd have trouble leveraging any heavy equipment against her unless she cooperated, but that would break her disguise…

"Elizabeth." Ineng added, dragging the Wo-Class's thoughts back to the present. "The worst thing they can do to you is take your job away. If they try to do anything worse, you get out of there, you report it to the authorities, and you come back and let me know. Please."

What was this about? What kind of things would her employer ask her to do that weren't supposed to? The memory of the training videos returned, and the Wo-class straightened again in comprehension.

"You're worried about sexual harassment." Trinitite stated, pressure spiking in her boilers as the human's actions finally clicked into place. Were there so few women in the Construction Fleet because they had a bad reputation?

"Yes, but it could be much worse."

"I… see." Trinitite lied, although the training video they'd forced her to watch and the research she'd done gave her a good enough idea, she thought. Meeting the human's gaze, Trinitite took a moment to really read the human's face. They didn't know each other very well at all. Why was she concerned?

This gaze. The only other humans she'd seen stare at her with such intensity were the Captain of the Pacific Lilly and the real Elizabeth. Unlike the frustrated anger or desperate fear they'd shown, however, it had the authority to it that reminded her somewhat of Dan, or an Abyssal Princess. Beyond that, though, there was something else. Something she'd seen in her sisters.

"Thank you." She said, taking a breath. There were so many humans out there, and would be impossible for someone to worry about all of them, yet Ineng seemed to care about her. Maybe only while she was in her market, with money to trade for her supplies, but it was still far more than she deserved.

The Abyssal hadn't done anything to help her, after all, not until she bought something here, yet the human had not only helped her fix her disguise, get valuable experience on finding a job, and give her a suggestion of where to look next, but she'd also offered to… help, somehow, if her current fleet ended up betraying her.

"This…" Trinitite started again, looking away and dabbing at her eyes. She couldn't afford to cry. Not over something as cheap as a spoken promise. "Everything's okay right now, but thank you."

"It's not a lot of work on my end, Elizabeth." The Princess of the Luzon Blues fleet admitted. "Not now, but do you know anyone else in Washington who could help you if things went south?"

Trinitite looked back up, although she wasn't focused on who she was talking with. Quite a few people had been helpful since she'd made landfall… but she had no idea how to find them again.

"There was a nice State Trooper…" She started, although she knew she was wasting time with the answer. Come to think of it, the briefing he gave the abyssal during their journey hadn't been that different from the sexual harassment training, even though it had been much less formal.

"Know his name?" Ineng pressed. "How to contact him?"

"No." Trinitite admitted, her gaze falling. Given the light, then, Trinitite wasn't even sure she'd recognize his face.

"Exactly." Ineng stated, her voice reinforced with steel conviction. Trinitite almost jumped as she suddenly laid a hand on her shoulder. "Look. I don't know about you, but the group I got out with escaped the Philippines by looking after each other. It's how us refugees survived the abyssals, and it's how you're going to survive here, right?"

"Ye- Yeah." Trinitite stuttered, stiffening.

"Good." The steel abruptly left the human's voice, the Princess of the Luzon Blues releasing her hand and stretching. "Now, I have to get back to work. Can I help you find anything?"

"No," Trinitite said. If there was a propane stove here, then she would have found it already. "I was stalling so I could meet you, but now I should probably grab what I wanted."

"Alright." With that, the human turned, walking towards the back of the store. "Take care, Elizabeth!"

"You too." The Abyssal weekly replied. "Goodbye."

As she watched the human disappear into the next aisle, Trinitite found herself releasing a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. The aircraft carrier… wasn't sure how to feel about this. She was already somewhat indebted to the human, but she'd hoped that just buying some stuff from her market would be enough to make things even, again.

Now, however, the idea rang hollow. Sure, she hadn't actually taken up the offer the human gave, and someone could make all kinds of promises without any intention of following up on them, but knowing it was there…

Had she ever considered offering to help someone from another fleet? She had, but that had always been a part of a negotiation, ensuring that the Crossroads Fleet got what they needed, and not much more. It wasn't like there weren't abyssals she'd met who'd needed help, either.

Of course, she didn't have the authority that Ineng had, then, and even now, with fleets seeming to be much looser among humans, she didn't exactly have the resources to do so. This human, Ineng, probably wouldn't have extended the offer if she'd known what Trinitite truly was, but that didn't change the fact that she'd done so in the first place. As the noises broadcasted throughout the store faded away, replaced by a different song, the Wo-Class only felt like she was thinking of excuses, not rationalizations. She grabbed the food she wanted, taking it to the market's checkout, but her mind stayed focused on the issue she was wrestling with. Certainly she was overthinking things, but she still couldn't dismiss one question:

Was Ineng too trusting for her own good, or was Trinitite too selfish?

There's a lot to blame for the delay in getting this chapter out, including some pretty good reasons (Enlistment, a school project) and some really bad ones (Xenoblade Chronicles 2), so I'll skip all of those and thank you all for waiting for this. Here's another chapter that doesn't advance the plot at all, but it felt like a good character moment for Trinitite, so I wrote it in anyways. This might be poor writing, because it might look like it's setting something up, but hopefully you saw it more as tying up a few loose ends then opening more plothooks that I'll probably leave hanging.

You'll also notice that Trinitite used a couple of words here that I haven't written out her learning the definitions to. The bit where she learns a basic word through an abyssal lens can be funny, but I don't want to abuse it, so I figure having her figure out some vocabulary through osmosis would both make sense by this point, and ensure I can reserve the joke for when it might be funny to use again.

I... don't really remember what I had planned for next chapter. That's happened before, so we'll see. Perhaps another Saratoga interlude could be fun? We'll see when I start writing it tonight.