The shuttle ride from the Armistice Station was quiet. There were no windows for Yuki to watch out of, just the array of sensors in front of the pilot as he changed the orbit of the shuttle, once, twice, and then completing the orbital transfer that would put the shuttle into ellipse where it could aerodynamically brake as it came closer and closer to the surface of the Earth with every cycle.

Yuki Kaizuka hated the fact that there were no windows in the Shuttle, but understood the practicality of not having surfaces that could crack or break under the immense stress that space travel put upon everything, including her own body.

Maybe she had grown too used to the simplistic life aboard Luna-2. Where she didn't need to worry about wearing a vac-suit for great periods of time, or need to think about 'which way is up?'

There was a different kind of life found in orbit of the Earth, as the shuttle plunged along its path towards the atmosphere, where it would use the sparse and infrequent particles of air, of water, to slow itself down and begin an in-atmosphere transit towards New Orleans. A kind of life that she wasn't familiar with, orienting herself using all her limbs, not just her legs — keeping a constant mind of things like "up". Things that the human mind was a far cry away from being able to naturally understand. Maybe the Orbital Knights, and their soldiers and servants were better equipped for it; having spent their entire lives in space, in Castles that didn't make gravity but instead created a facsimile in the spin of a cylinder. Maybe, in that respect, Vers' Orbital Knights were better equipped to be in space than she, or any other Terran Soldier or Citizen would ever be.

She kept her time, mostly strapped to the seat of the shuttle, waiting for the signal that she could take off her helmet, once they were cruising in atmosphere. Not looking at particularly anything, but instead keeping an eye on the way the pilot operated the shuttle, making the most minor of corrections to the vector of the shuttle through space, using tiny, controlled out-gassing of the control-surface thrusters to adjust the orientation. Eventually, the pilot leaned back, flicked down his visor on his helmet, and motioned for Yuki to do the same. She complied; silently.

Within moments, the shuttle's frame started to buffet and feel like it was being battered back and forth. The aerodynamic braking had started. At one point, the shuttle began to creak, like the frame of the shuttle was coming apart, and Yuki slammed her eyes shut against the sound, and did her best to focus on nothing, until, eventually, there was a pull beneath her eyelids and on the skin of her face, and the buffeting and creaking noise had died away, replaced instead by a constant thrumming and humming that wasn't there before.

"Re-entry complete," the Pilot mumbled to himself, and flicked up his visor again. "We'll be making our approach into New Orleans airspace within the next few minutes.

He flicked open a switch on the panel in front of him, and there was a new sound, a new humming that was differently pitched, and differently placed within the shuttle as it glided towards the Earth. Yuki looked around, trying to find the source of the humming, but was instead met with blue sky.

The pilot had opened the blast and reinforcement shutters on the otherwise hidden windows; filling the cabin with a soft, dark blue. She leaned against the harness keeping her against her seat, and tried to get a better look out the window.

This was something that she had never really gotten to see, during her time aboard Luna-2, or the Armistice Station where windows were a positive hazard. The blue of the sky beneath her, of the ocean, and then the dotted greens and browns of land as they glided over Mexico, and then out again over the Gulf.

"Huh." A different voice than the pilot spoke, this time from behind Yuki. She did her best, against the harness of the shuttle, and the bulkiness of the vac-suit to look at the owner of the voice. "I don't think that will ever get old."

"Haven't been back to Earth either?" Yuki asks.

"Nope. Haven't been since they picked me up. And look at me now, being dropped right back off in the city I left behind." There was a grin behind the voice of Jessamine.

"At least you have a friend this time around."

"And a mission." Jessamine points out.

Yuki does her best to shrug.

Another thrumming reverberates throughout the shuttle. This time, Yuki recognizes what it is, more from seeing the lever that precipitated the noise than from the noise itself; the landing gear of the shuttle being extended. She watches through the window again, as more and more land becomes visible through the left-hand side of the shuttle as it comes in for an approach into New Orleans' airport. As the sound dies away and the landing gear locks itself into place, a new shade comes into view from the left-side of the shuttle. A dark, burnt gray. Yuki doesn't recognize the color, but knows what it is anyways; its the shades of a burnt-out, abandoned city.

Jessamine clicks her tongue at the view.

"What is it?"

"I'll tell you when we get down there." Jessamine responds.

"That's not suspicious or worrying at all." Yuki points out.

"Its not supposed to be, but whatever. It's not bad. Just something I noticed, something I'll tell you when we get off the shuttle."

The sun had well and truly begun its descent in the western half of the sky by the time Yuki and Jessamine had stripped themselves of the vac-suits, and disembarked from the shuttle, and set foot on the sun-baked tarmac of the airport grounds. To Jessamine, this city was nothing that unfamiliar than when she left it. Maybe with more cracked tarmac from the patient pressure of the plants in the soil beneath it, and a twinge more green as the abandoned terminals of the airport were starting to become well and truly overrun.

Where Jessamine kept her eyes to the ground; Yuki's were instead painted to the west — where in the late afternoon, the sun was eclipsed by something unnatural, casting a long shadow that she could see painted against the skyscrapers of the distant downtown district.

The unnatural, Martian flower of the Landing Castle, still in bloom against the blue sky, its petals open to the sky; a glowing stem, visible in its luminosity even against the constancy of the sun which it eclipsed. Yuki, for even having seen landing castles before, was dumbfounded at the simultaneous beauty and horror of this black, metallic flower, protruding from the surface of the Earth like a thorn.

"You okay?" Jessamine asks, adjusting the strap of her backpack as it rests, cutting in to her shoulder; snapping Yuki from her sonder at the view of the landing castle no longer eclipsing the sun in its rest.

"Yeah, just… Forgot what they looked like." Yuki says, backpack at her own feet, waiting to be slung onto her shoulders. It contained everything she would need for a survival excursion, until it was time to move on from New Orleans, and head west, towards where the land would curve upward, and Jessamine would find herself remembering what home feels like.

"Never really stops feeling weird, does it?" Jessamine asks. "How many did you see?"

"Unique ones? Like one or two."

"I've only ever seen this one," Jessamine responds, "And no matter how many times you wake up in the shadow of it, it never stops feeling strange."

"Its not supposed to be there." Yuki blurts, somewhat without thinking, but also knowing that its the only thing on her mind.

Jessamine sighs, and gives a smile at Yuki before turning towards the terminal of the airport, and starts walking; "Well, good luck telling them to move it."

Yuki watches her go for a moment, before reaching down to sling her own bag onto her shoulders, following after Jessamine. As she watches Jessamine walk, part of her wants to admit that deep down, Jessamine almost looks more natural with her hair tied back, and a massive camping pack slung onto her back. Something about this Jessamine seems more fitting with what Yuki knows about the woman, and it feels more right to see her like this. Once her own bag is on her shoulders, she jogs after Jessamine. "The shuttle will be back for us in 10 days, it'll bring us in-atmosphere to Denver. Seven days there, then off to Seattle for five. Then we get a whopping ten days in Shinawara."

"Fun." Yuki comments.

The two walk side by side, as the roar of the shuttle's engines behind them slowly dies off in its departure from the airspace, and the only sounds that the two are left with, are their boots against the ground, and the song of a distant bird. They make it to the Terminal, across the airfield with nothing of note; just abandoned, or dilapidated hangars containing nothing but the ruins of planes and overturned crew cars. The silence is eerie to Yuki as they walk. There's no sound of jet engines, or the noise of car tires against tarmac as they navigate the busy grounds of the airport. There is just silence, and the distant birdsong that doesn't seem to get quieter or louder as they walk.

The pair pass underneath the shadow of one of the terminals, coming to a chain-link fence that separates the grounds of the airport, from the parking lot beyond. Jessamine leads Yuki to a spot where they can throw their bags over the fence, and then crawl through an animal-sized hole that has been gnashed into the chain-link. Yuki follows after Jessamine, and her jacket catches on a bit of exposed metal as she crawls underneath the fence. She swears momentarily and under her breath, before tugging the jacket free, and then finally getting to the other side of the fence.

She stands up, and realizes that Jessamine is standing right in front of her, hands in the air.

"What are you—" Yuki starts, before she's cut off by a voice that doesn't belong to Jessamine or anyone else that she recognizes.

"Hands up." The voice barks at her, and she complies; taking a side step to the left of Jessamine, and resolving the form of two men, leveling rifles at Jessamine and herself. They bear insignias on their chests of the Martian flag — a white circle surrounded by stars, two circular orange cutouts signifying the twin moons Phobos and Deimos, lines through the white circle signifying something that she had never understood when she'd been told it. But something signifying something important nonetheless to the Martians and their culture. "Who the hell are you? This is a restricted area!" The first soldier demands of them. He doesn't take much notice to the firearms on either Jessamine or Yuki's hips as they stand, hands in the air.

Before Yuki can open her mouth to respond, Jessamine does instead.

"We're with the UFE. Operating in accordance with the Armistice council, on a mission to make contact with the civilians in this area. We've got orders that are authorized by the UFE and the Vers delegation, if you need to see them." Jessamine spoke calmly, her words measured and with her hands still in the air, not looking Yuki's way, although Yuki looked at her as she talked.

"Show me." The soldier ordered after a pondering moment, deciding whether or not this young woman in UFE field-uniform was telling the truth.

Jessamine motioned at her bag, and the soldier nods — no words needed between the two to understand what was being asked — and even as Jessamine moved towards her bag, on the ground just a few feet away, but out of reach. So Jessamine had to move herself to get to it. Leaning down, she had to undo one of the outer pockets of her bag, and slipping the secured, waterproof folder that contained the official orders as she had been given from the UFE, and signed by Martian's own delegation, the signatures showing that the Vers Empire knew about their actions, and were approving of what they were to do, as detailed within the document. Jessamine hands it to the soldier, who takes a hand from hand-guard of the rifle, and takes the orders from Jessamine, who puts her hands back up in the air as the soldier reads. All the while, Yuki watches this, her heart pounding in her ears.

The soldiers reads the document, reads it once more, and then hands it back to Jessamine. Then, and only then, does he lower his rifle — and his compatriot does the same. "Shit. You picked a hell of a time and place to come down."

"Why?" Jessamine asks, lowering her hands. Yuki does the same, still nervous from having had two rifles pointed at her and Jessamine. Jessamine starts to put the document away as she asks the question,

"The Terrans—" The soldier cuts himself off, realizing who he's talking to. "Civilians have started getting antsy. Last week during a ration distribution, there was a suicide bombing."

If Jessamine's surprised by this, Yuki doesn't pick up on it. "Do you know it was actually a civilian doing the bombing, not a dissenter?" She stands up again to look at the soldier, her bag still laying on the ground.

The soldier shrugs, "Dunno. We're not the ones who are investigating. Just guards."

Yuki blinks at this, the informality of the soldier as he talks. Almost like she and Jessamine aren't Terrans, and these two aren't Martians.

"Is there a reason why the airport's being occupied?"

"Dunno. Just guarding.'

If this trips up Jessamine, she doesn't indicate it.

The sun continues to beat down, and distantly, there's a whistling as the breeze courses through a distant hangar that has been damaged in the time since it was last maintained. Yuki only then realizes how humid the air is here, how much the sun, even starting to get low in the sky was starting to feel unbearably hot against the skin of her face.

"I'm sure you're going to let us get on with our mission, now?" Jessamine says, breaking the silence between the Martians and themselves.

"There's no reason to keep you here, no." The soldier behind the man who's speaking squints at him, and Yuki isn't entirely sure she blames him. To the uninitiated, this whole exchange would look incredibly suspect, so to some extent, Yuki doesn't blame the man for being suspicious of them. "Just keep clear of the Landing Castle. We're under orders to fire on anyone who isn't Martian in that area."

"Noted, thank you." Jessamine responds, reaching down to sling her bag back onto her shoulders.

"Just so you know," The second soldier speaks up this time, speaking to both Jessamine and Yuki as much as he was talking to just Jessamine before; "We'll be informing our Count that you're here. If there's anything wrong with your orders, we will find you."

Eventually, the soldiers let Yuki and Jessamine go, returning to their station at the Airport, overlooking for anyone else who wasn't supposed to be there. Yuki didn't see where they went, but she was pretty sure that they were still nearby, watching as both she and Jessamine left the airport behind, and started moving in towards the downtown area of New Orleans.

The first thing Yuki realized, or rather dawned on her, was how silent things were. She hadn't been to a city that wasn't Tokyo, or one of the other districts surrounding Shinawara, and so had only ever known the bustle of a city. The constant, pulsing lifeblood of a metropolis that kept it moving, shifting in subtle ways that no one person could ever discern, unless they watched for long enough; and rarely people did.

That wasn't here, not in this new city, this place that she'd never been — just the wind and silence when the wind would be absent. There were barely birds. Just scattered, overturned or abandoned cars, many beginning to rust, or being slowly reclaimed by the green of weeds that were growing up and along it, giving the abandoned cars the feeling of having always been there.

Windows were conspicuously absent from the buildings that they passed and there was no sign of any human habitation at all. The streets were absent of families meandering between stores, couples lounging out in the shades of restaurant patios, or cars about on the streets or highway that they passed under.

To Yuki's eye, the city was absolutely devoid of life — like the ruins of the city had always been there, unoccupied, stoic, silent.

There was something else that Yuki had noticed, but didn't quite have the ability to vocalize yet — but if she were to, it could be roughly summed up as wondering where all the bodies were. For a city of, pre-war of almost four-hundred thousand, there should at least be some bodies, wouldn't there?

She followed Jessamine further into the city, before turning to the south, following an unmarked but obviously well-used boulevard, this one surrounded on either side by abandoned stores, burnt out homes, water-ruined churches, and the smell of mildew.

"There must've been a hurricane while I was gone." Jessamine says, breaking the silence between the two in their walk across the city. Yuki hadn't been keeping track, but the sun continued to dip further and further closer to the horizon, the shadows cast by the dilapidated buildings growing longer and longer.

"What makes you say that?" Yuki asks, and Jessamine stops, turning to her right, and pointing at a church that they were about to cross in front of.

"This Church was fine when the camp moved before I left. It looked like just about any other building on this street, except with more weeds." Jessamine sighed. "We thought about using it for shelter, but we didn't. Probably a good thing we didn't."

"Where did you end up?"

"The performing arts center. It's not that far, maybe another mile at worst." Jessamine shuffles her bag on her shoulders, and then starts walking again. Yuki doesn't take long to catch up with her.

"What made you come to New Orleans first?"

"I told you, didn't I?" Jessamine responds.

"No, you didn't."

"I came because it was a smarter idea than crossing the mountains and then trying to trek to Calgary. I would've probably arrived in the winter, and I didn't have the gear for the cold. Nor did I want to scavenge for it. Besides, just about every clothing and camping store in Denver was picked clean by the time I came down from the mountains and realized what had happened." Jessamine explains, calmly, her speech only lightly punctuated by the sound of her boots crunching against loose gravel or broken asphalt on the ground. "Better to come to Louisiana and its heat, than Canada in the dead of winter."

"Makes sense. But I more mean, why didn't you stay in Denver? Didn't you have family there?"

Jessamine makes a sound like a snort. And then laughs lightly. "No, I didn't. I'm an orphan. Never got to know my parents. Never got adopted — jumped around from foster family to foster family for a bit before I was deemed eligible to live at a boarding school. Which was infinitely better, trust me."

"Wasn't there anyone you cared about?" Yuki asks, genuinely curious.

"There were a few. But they disappeared after the Castles fell, just like everyone else did. People trying their best to leave no trace of where they went. So in all honesty — I have no idea where they are, but I assume they have no idea where I am either. So to either of us, the other might be dead. We just have no idea."

"Everyone I knew was either on the Deucalion, or died during the meteor bombardment on Shinawara…" Yuki laments for a moment, trying to brush the thoughts from her mind, the same way that someone might brush dust from a shoulder.

"I'm sorry." Jessamine says, slowing her pace until she's side-by-side with Yuki. "I can't imagine living through all this shit and having to worry about someone else, and yourself."

"It was rough at times… Lately it's been a bit easier — but I'm still anxious, you know?"

"Yeah, I hear you." Jessamine says.

They walk side-by-side in silence for a ways, until Jessamine motions with her head when they come to an intersection, and Yuki follows her, turning in the direction until they arrive in front of a silver and gray building. One who had retained some of its windows, and the others having been boarded up. Over the front doors of the building, was a large piece of cloth had been drawn between the two doors. Yuki squinted at it, trying to make out the words that were spray-painted onto the cloth.

"SURVIVORS WELCOME".

Jessamine smiles at this.

"What's up?" Yuki asked, watching Jessamine smile.

"Means they're still here." She explained, "If there was a reason to leave here, they would've made it more obvious that the place was abandoned." Yuki watches as Jessamine walks up, practically to the front door, and knocks.

There's silence, for at least a minute.

"You sure that there's anyone actually—?" Yuki starts, but then Jessamine knocks at the door again.

This time, the door opened, only after a few more seconds. A handgun peeked out first, followed by the silhouette of the person holding the gun.

Yuki yelped, and ran towards the door, upon realizing the gun was in fact, a gun, and Jessamine made no motion to move. There was part of Yuki's mind that was convinced she was going to see her partner's brains splattered against the cracked pavement, but instead, that didn't happen.

Jessamine smiled again.

"Took you long enough, ma'am!" She grinned at the silhouette. "This how you treat all your guests?" Yuki scrambled to a halt, a few meters away from where Jessamine stood, now hugging the person in the dark of the doorway. Handgun nowhere in sight.

"No! Of course not!" A woman's voice responded, "If I knew you were coming I would've cleaned up around here!"

Yuki finally gets a good look at the woman, an older woman, round around the edges, but with lines of sun-having kissed her dark skin, and graying hair atop her head that was extremely well kept. The woman turns to look at Yuki, and gives a look that Yuki can't quite read.

"Brought a guest with ya?" The woman speaks with what, to Yuki's non-American ears, sounds like a near-stereotypical drawl.

"Yeah! This is Yuki, she's from Japan." Jessamine motions towards Yuki, who, despite the adrenaline still coursing through her body from seeing the handgun prior, manages to give a polite smile and wave. "Yuki! This is Mama Parker, most people just call her 'Mama' or 'Ma'am'."

"Pleasure to meet you!" Mama Parker beams.

"Likewise." Yuki, somewhat timidly responds.

"But c'mon in! Everyone else is out on a expedition out towards the other end of the city, so it's just me, Doc Candy, Miranda, and the Murry siblings…" Mama Parker moved out of the doorway to the Performing Arts Center, and Jessamine followed her inside. Yuki wasn't far behind. She pulled the door shut behind her, feeling a soft click of the lock as it automatically sealed itself. "They're trying to meet with another survivor camp that we found out about some time after you left, Jess."

Yuki isn't familiar with someone calling Jessamine by the shorthand of her name. It felt the slightest bit strange, but she accepted it, and followed the pair further into the Performing Arts Center. In this immediate atrium of the performing arts center — where one might go to the box office or will call and secure tickets for a show, it had been turned into something more defensible, something resembling more of an armory and barricade all at once. Chairs and tables stacked atop one another, reaching towards the ceiling giving for all the world the impression of being more of a fortress than anything else. There are tables that aren't being used for defenses as workstations, with easily identifiable knickknacks of parts of fire arms, a reloading station, even some old military ammo cans that were open and had freshly-reloaded rounds in them, waiting to be slotted into external or internal magazines, presumably to be used for hunting or defense.

"Was all that ruckus by the airport you two arriving?" Mama Parker asks, leading them further into the center, past the box office and through an "authorized personnel only" door.

"Maybe? We arrived on a UFE shuttle. So maybe you heard that?" They pass through the dressing rooms and into the backstage area of

"Probably. Sounded like a plane, so I figure it was probably some official business. Didn't think you'd be throwing in with the UFE formally though. Thought you went up there just to report." She says, referring to the fact that Jessamine did leave all those weeks ago on a UFE shuttle, and then not heard from for all that time. No one even had time to say goodbye when the UFE soldiers came and requested that she come with them.

"I did!" Jessamine sighs, "But then they thought it'd be a good idea to send me back down with actual orders. Not that I mind, it's just… Weird. Actually being under orders, not working under my own direction." Jessamine tugs at the rolled up sleeve of her field uniform, "But its something to do, something keep focused on, so I don't mind it."

"And what is your mission, dear?" Mama Parker asks, leading them to the stage itself, where two young children, no possibly older than ten or eleven are play fighting with props from the backstage. There had been a production rehearsal going on when the Castle fell on New Orleans. Anyone who was inside the building survived the initial shock-wave, thanks to the building being built to withstand hurricane-force winds, and then some. Those who weren't outside, weren't so lucky.

"I'm here, mostly to talk to people. Information gathering, that sort of thing." The two children, now occupied with the fact that there were two new people, one of whom they recognized, the other they didn't, came over and demanded hugs from Jessamine. She did her best to lean down and hug them with her bag still on her back, and quiet them from asking too many questions while she and Mama Parker were talking. "Mostly interviews with as many survivors and survivor camps as I can find here, in Denver, Seattle, and then one location in Japan. Shinawara."

"Back where the Princess was killed."

"Allegedly killed, yes. The Martians seem to think that the Princess is alive still, if the rumor mill is to be believed." Jessamine says, standing up again, and then moving to Yuki's side.

"Well, is it?" Mama Parker asks, "You'd be the one to know, being the info broker and all."

Jessamine smiles, and Yuki catches a glimpse of the smile out of the corner of her eye, "Suppose so. Did anyone step up while I was gone, or not yet?"

"Nope, a few tried, but couldn't keep up with your pace." Mama chuckles, "No one can keep up with our 'night-runner'."

"'Night-runner'?" Yuki asks, blinking.

"Yeah! During the worst of the fighting, Jess here would sneak out at night to try and get force distributions, so our expeditions knew where not to go, if they didn't want to run into soldiers." Mama sounds proud of Jessamine, how she'd operate. "Only got nearly caught, shot at a few times, isn't that right, Jess?"

Jess shrugs and grins, "I'll let you keep believing that."

"Oh lord," Mama gives a shocked expression, and then gives a look packed with so much concern that its hard for Yuki to tell where the shock ends and the concern begins.

"See, but I'm fine. Made it this far without dying. I'll make it the whole way… Probably."

The trio talk shortly about a few more things, before Mama stands up, loudly proclaims that its time to start making dinner, and instructs Jessamine and Yuki to "leave their bags where they please", and asks them even though it sounds more like a order, to help with making dinner for those few still present at the camp. Jessamine and Yuki, of course, agree. And quietly sling their bags in a corner backstage, and with uniforms still done up, and pistols still on their hips, they follow Mama to the catering kitchen of the Center. Even the Murry twins join them, to help as much to ask questions of Jessamine about her journey to space.

Jessamine, happy to appease the two, gives them at least the more interesting parts of her journey — considering it was mostly business and not exactly for fun or anything heroic like the last time Terrans really went to space, back in the days before the Empire, a time before anyone in this room, except maybe Mama Parker would reasonably be expected to remember.

Doc Candy was not present, but showed up just in time for the food to be served, and to take two servings back with him to his medical station; one for him, and one for the heavily-pregnant Miranda, who was on bed rest until her water broke.

Jessamine, Yuki and Candy all exchanged pleasantries, and Jessamine promised to visit Miranda in the morning — after all, part of their mission was to talk to survivors on the ground, those who couldn't make it to the UFE shelters. Those who lived under Martian occupation, despite the lack of conventional occupation.

Mama, the Twins, Jessamine and Yuki all shared in their meal, a hearty stew made from a recent hunt, and vegetables grown in the park behind the center, that had been cultivated into land for growing things, now that global distribution of food-stock had dropped to basically nothing, and the UFE distributions of food had stopped coming.

Mama didn't say anything about the lack of UFE support, nor did she ask if it was coming back any time so
on. She instead, casually asked about the mission, the details of it, why the locations that were being visited by them, and then finally the question that even Jessamine didn't have a good answer for —

"So why did you come down to Earth?" Mama Parker asks, looking at Yuki directly.

Yuki, confused, finishes chewing - giving herself time to think about the question - and then swallows before answering. "Because I was tired of living up there, I think."

Jessamine takes another spoonful of her stew, watching Yuki talk through the corner of her eye.

"How do you mean?" Mama asks.

"Space has taken a lot from me. My home was reduced to rubble by a meteor bombardment, my brother was shot in the head by a Martian, and he's still in the hospital. Every day feels like a reminder of what I've lost." Jessamine stirs her stew absentmindedly as she talks, looking something close to forlorn, but not quite. "Even just being down here for half a day has given me something else to think about. So I think that's a good thing."

"Sounds like it. You'd fit right in with us — we've all lost something or someone down here. Something the Martians just can't quite understand." Mama gave a comforting smile, and Yuki's face brightened a tiny amount. The feeling that went through the back of Jessamine's mind gave her pause. She pushed it down into the back of her mind, recognizing it once again as the same kind of feeling that she had back on the Armistice Station, back during their conversation in the café when Yuki had decided to come along with Jessamine on her mission down to the surface.

Everyone present cleaned up after dinner, and it was only then that Mama Parker checked her wrist watch, and saw what time it was.

Time to usher the Murrey twins towards bed, and then for the adults themselves to head to bed. This was a task that was ordained not by necessity of exhaustion, but rather because by going to bed for what one might consider a relatively early time — considering the sun had set not that long ago — any motion or activity at night might draw undue attention to the shelter. Considering the Martians had imposed a curfew anyways, it was probably best to stay indoors during the night unless someone had a very good reason to be outside. Neither Jessamine or Yuki did, so indoors it was for them.

Generally, the people of the shelter would sleep on cots in the audience seating, try and make floor beds out of sleeping pads from camping stores on the stage itself, or futons that they had brought with them from their homes after surviving the blast. Or they had been scavenged from the homes of the people who didn't need them anymore, the unlucky ones. Jessamine and Yuki, at least, had their own sleeping bags and supplies, between the both of them, enough to survive the ten days in New Orleans that they would have before the shuttle from the Armistice Station would come down with fresh supplies and ferry them to Denver, and then the cycle would repeat for Seattle and Shinawara.

Mama Parker insisted that Yuki and Jessamine use the cots that were unoccupied, and ushered them towards a pair of cots in the orchestra area of the stage. The pair, bearing sleeping bags, and not expecting necessarily to change clothes, given the circumstances shared a look, before Jessamine looked up at Mama Parker who beamed from the stage above them; "You sure its okay for us to use these?"

"Of course! Todd and Marcus aren't going to be needing them tonight, so you two might as well!" Mama Parker reassured them of their situation, only to be interrupted by the Murrey twins making noise indicating that they weren't sleeping like they were supposed to be. "Have a good night you two!" She calls over her shoulder as she walks over towards where the Murrey twins are supposed to be sleeping.

A quick stripping of the outer layer of their field uniforms, and un-balling the sleeping bags that were near the top of their travel bags, and it was just as easy that the pair were ready for bed. Yuki settling in first, while Jessamine stoodd for a moment or two, looking up on the stage towards where the Murrey twins finally were settled into bed, and Mama Parker was nowhere to be found.

"What's up?" Yuki asked from her cot, arms crossed behind her head in a makeshift pillow.

"Just making sure the kids are headed to bed is all." Jessamine responds, eventually sliding down into her own sleeping bag, and using propping herself up on one arm to look at Yuki. "So, whatcha think?"

"Of?"

"Earth. Now that you're back." Jessamine clarifies. "Even if you're in a city you've never been before, you've gotta have some thoughts."

Jessamine studies Yuki's face, watching for a reaction as Yuki thinks about what to say next. She tries to ignore the feeling in her chest that she gets when she pays too close attention to the way that her lips would press together in thoughtfulness, or the way that her eyes would dart to a specific part of her vision when she needed to think about something hard enough. Jessamine was almost completely sure she knew what these thoughts and feelings meant.

"I think that it's sad." There was a pause before Yuki kept talking. "I think its sad that the Martians don't know what they're stepping on. That a blade of grass is just that. Not something to occupy or to claim. Mars doesn't see it that way. They don't have the luxury that we have. So of course they want to take it for themselves. But like— I've gotta wonder, whether or not the civilians of the Empire would ever get what Earth has to offer. Its not the civilians that are taking the land and sea, not the civilians who're occupying our cities. Its the Knights. I just think its sad that it feels like Mars will never see what Earth really has."

Jessamine blinks at this, before laying down on the cot, staring up at the ceiling. "That's… Strangely reassuring."

"How so?" Yuki asks, not moving from her position in her cot.

"That maybe its not all of Mars that hates Earth. Maybe, just maybe, your average Mars citizen would be just as happy to share what we have, as opposed to taking it from us by force. Better than not having it at all." Jessamine says, folding her own arms behind her head as she lays against the cot.

"You know? When you put it like that, it is reassuring." Jessamine laughs.