"Bathys is a city that sits some eighteen thousand feet below the ocean surface." Jinn turned on the holographic display in the center of the table and started marking out the boundaries and shape of the city, drawing the city with her finger. "There is powerful energy field protecting the city from the crushing pressures at that depth. Even one of the seven generators can hold the field up at least long enough for another generator to be repaired or replaced. They generators are distributed evenly around the circumference of the city. In the center of the city is the temple, dedicated to a god called Saldor. The centerpiece to the temple is an object called the Mouth of Saldor. This is the Relic, actually called the Voice of Confusion. That is our target."

There was silence for a few seconds as everyone thought through this information in their own ways. More than half of them came to the same conclusion at the same moment and were about to voice their concerns when Ironwood spoke. "Will taking the Relic harm the city's people in any way?"

That was what had been on their minds. It naturally didn't sit well with them when they realized they were going to steal a holy relic from a civilization none of them had known existed just yesterday. It went against their moral compass, nearly all of them, with the exception of Raven, and they all looked to Ironwood with concerned or distrusting eyes. He knew that this would not be acceptable to any of them, again with the exception of Raven, if taking the Relic was going to cause mass hysteria in the underwater city.

Jinn shook her head. "No sir. As technologically advanced as they are, they haven't been able to expand their city limits. This has led to crowding and poverty within the city. The religious caste has seized a tremendous amount of power and used their current woes to manipulate the people into fanaticism, sacrificing criminals, the weak, the poor, and the unwanted to the Relic. As it is, the Relic is being used as a tool for euthanasia."

"Wait." Robyn held up a hand. "You're telling us that taking this Relic will help them?"

"I... would say we should take a detour while we're there." Jinn grimaced. "If we want to try and help these people, the ruling religious caste needs to be broken. I can point out all the major and minor temples, and we can select which ones to strike. Killing some of the religious leaders will weaken them, and the more we hit the better."

"Enough. We're not here to throw their entire society into chaos, and we're certainly not here to assassinate people. We're here to get the Relic so we can use it against Salem, and that's all. Overturning their society is not our goal, and it shouldn't be." Ironwood said, cutting off Jinn's sudden secondary mission briefing. "Please tell me you didn't bring us here hoping that we'd kill people for you."

"No sir." Jinn answered. "I just thought... well, anyway, the Relic is here." She pointed at the center of the map, then used her hands to sculpt a tower in that spot. "It's out in the open. They make the executions very public."

A lot of eyes were back on Ironwood. They were relieved that they would be taking away a tool of mass murder from a tyrannical government, but now they wanted to deal a blow to that government. He was aware that the solution to the city's problems was found in the Relic, but even without the Relic that solution remained. They would probably just throw people throw the energy field when deprived of the Relic. Jinn had also said that the people of the city were fanaticized. There was no way to liberate these people, only ways to enrage them. It seemed likely they would be unable to immediately strike back, since he thought it followed that their problem was overpopulation and they had not found a way to reach the surface. Retaliation was not an immediate concern, but he still couldn't just approve an outright attack unprovoked.

"It's not happening. We can't help them, at least right now." He looked around the room. "This is a foreign culture. An attack like that could start an all out war, which I cannot allow. Now that we know where they are, we will be able to help them in the future, but at this moment the biggest threat to everyone in that city is the biggest threat to everyone in our cities as well. We kill no one. This is not a debate."

"Okay, about killing." Blake started, waving off the look Ironwood gave her. "How does the Relic kill? What does it do?"

"That's a good question. If we're going to start making our plan on how to extract the Relic, we need to know how not to get ourselves killed by it." Robyn added pointedly, looking to Jinn for an answer.

"Right." Jinn nodded. "The Voice of Confusion. You might think that's an odd name for a Relic, since a voice isn't a physical object. Well it's hard to describe physically, but when we see it, it'll most likely look like a cube of gold about this big." She held her hands about a foot apart, showing its approximate size. "Unassuming, in a way, but it has a different nature. And I mean different as in... it doesn't really belong here. On Remnant. It was not made for our world."

"Then who created it?" Blake asked, pushing for more information.

"I'm not sure." Jinn answered, shaking her head and backpedaling. "The knowledge is there, at the edge of my reach, and I don't know if I'll actually be able to get it. I'll have to take some time alone to work on that. In the meantime, you should know that the Voice fell to Remnant, flung from some other world out in the cosmos. In its wake, along its trail which it spent billions of years travelling, it left nebulae collapsed, stars scattered into clouds of dust, civilizations warped and extinguished. The power within the Voice of Confusion reshapes things, confuses the tiniest particles and rearranges them as it sees fit. Typically, any target will be reduced to a primordial sludge... and then the Voice consumes them."

This wasn't the same.

Ruby was no scientist, but she knew that someone being turned into sludge and consumed meant they died. Everything about what Jinn just said was terrifying, and Ruby wasn't the only person who saw that. Yang looked about ready to jump ship, even though they all knew they'd dove below the surface and were now diving deeper by the second. Weiss was going through her thoughts and comparing them to what Jinn was saying, and she was unable to find a compromise her mind could accept. Marrow look frightened, like a child who had just heard that a Beowolf was hiding in his closet. Elm was giving worried glances toward Ironwood to try and gauge his reaction to this revelation, but wasn't turning her head as though she didn't want to alert the deadly Relic to her fear. Amaranth had been gripping her chair since she sat down, to steady herself against a mild case of seasickness, but now her hands were starting to cause the finished wood to splinter in her grip. Joanna was holding her breath, hoping that someone would start laughing and it would all turn out to be a joke and they could start talking about the actual mission. Raven felt a stickiness, like some alien slime was climbing up her spine, fangs bound for the back of her neck.

This wasn't like the Cradle, or any of the other Relics. Jinn's words carried dread with them. She was afraid of it too. She hadn't even been able to properly convey what it would do, but they were scared enough. She knew exactly what it was and what it did. As far as Jinn was concerned, she had every right to be the most scared out of everyone. But there were some people around the table that had a different look in their eyes.

Ironwood wasn't shaken. He took the sense of dread in stride, seemingly aware that if Jinn had provided him with this mission, she must know how to accomplish it. He wasn't the only one. Blake was focused, keenly aware of the risks, but curious to understand more about this weapon of mass destruction. Robyn felt justified, like she knew there would be no question now she'd made the right call, to be on the mission to retrieve this horror. Fiona looked to Robyn, ever more determined to make sure that this Relic would not be a threat to anyone other than Salem ever again. May was deep in thought, considering every side of the information they'd been given, trying to sort out whatever she could about it and its nature on her own. Pelka narrowed her eyes at those shrinking back, wondering if they suddenly just didn't have the stomach to go through with the mission.

That division would be a problem, unless properly countered.

Robyn was the next to speak. "So how do we retrieve it, since it's so dangerous?"

"That's actually simple. You just... walk up to it... place a hand on either side, and pick it up." Jinn said, fully aware of how utterly mad that now sounded. They would definitely need some guidance in order to not get killed. "Touching it will get no reaction. The danger comes from touching it to something else. Once you have it in hand, do not hand it off, do not throw it to anyone, do not bump it into anything, don't even pull it against yourself. It will not end well for you. If it must change hands, drop it like a hot coal, and then let the other person collect it."

"So there are safety protocols for handling it." Blake remarked. "Does it affect the ground where you drop it?"

Jinn shook her head. "No. If all of its inertia is simple gravity, nothing will happen."

"You said it typically reduces a target to sludge and then consumes them." May said, continuing along that train of thought. "Would that imply that it hasn't always gone that way? What else could happen?"

Jinn sighed, but relented. "It has, twice, in its time on Remnant, done something other than utterly destroy a person. One time, it turned a young man into a god. The other time, it turned an animal into a man."

"So it destroys things, but Salem can't be destroyed. How is this different?" Yang asked.

"Well, it doesn't technically destroy, it confuses and rearranges. Salem will still be alive, but trapped as a formless mass of quarks, inside the void of the Voice when it consumes her. She will be there, alive, forever. Of course, that would kill just about anyone else." Jinn explained. "Don't get me wrong, this is no less a prison for her than the Cradle, but at least with the Voice, if handled properly, no one has to die."

"We can't allow this to be used again after we trap Salem inside." Raven said, stepping forward. "If we destroy the Relic, would that free Salem, or would it ensure she stays gone?"

"You can't..." Jinn shook her head. "No, you don't understand. You can't destroy this Relic. The brothers wouldn't be able to. None of Remnant's gods can."

May waved to Jinn to get her attention. "One more question, then I'll shut up. It turns people into sludge and consumes them. Or it rearranges them into an actual thing other than what they were. Animal to man, man to god. Could it possibly spit something it's consumed back up and reshape it then, after say... thousands of years?"

Jinn looked more than a little worried about that question, but answered it anyway. "It could, but it hasn't, at least so far as I'm aware. It's certainly shown no inclination to do that."

"So we know what it does, we know where it is, and we know how to handle it." Ironwood said, redirecting the conversation. "Now we need a plan to get in and get it."

"Getting in is no trouble." Jinn prodded two spots on the map, one inside and one outside the city. "There is an entrance through an underwater cave. The people of Bathys don't know about it at all, though there is a record in one of their old texts in the main temple's undercroft. We can take the Nautilus' onboard submersibles and go through the cave. Once we're under the city, we can swim out of the submersibles, safe from the outside water pressure, and come up through the sacred bath inside one of the minor temples."

"Bath?" Fiona piped up. "Will we have to worry about... you know... bathers?"

"Not if we wait for my signal." Jinn reassured her. "Yes, they do bathe in it, but they stay away from the deep end, and I mean religiously stay away. It's not the most visited temple, so we won't have to wait long for it to be clear, and then we can come up."

Robyn eyed the distance from the sacred bath to the main temple. "What's the scale of this city? How far is it between these two points, and what will we be moving through?"

Drawing a line from the bath to the main temple, Jinn started drawing out the streets and sculpting the buildings along the way. "Four thousand, eight hundred, and seventy nine feet through crowded, cramped residential areas, busy markets, another minor temple or two, and several military watchtowers. Dress appropriately, and you should be able to just walk the distance. Or at least... some of us can."

"What do you mean only some of us?" Elm asked, leaning over the table to get a good look at the route. She looked up at Jinn questioningly. "Who won't be able to?"

Jinn finished her work and stepped back, explaining. "These people have been separate from the rest of Remnant for a very long time. Genetically, they are... limited. They look certain ways, and they definitively do not look certain ways. So while those of us who can move most freely should head straight for the main temple, since it's the farthest, the real challenge is getting back with the Relic. I think a distraction would be the best thing. I mentioned before that Bathys has seven generators for the energy field, and just one of them is enough to keep the field up for a time. Those of us who can't just waltz through the market could instead covertly head for this generator here." She marked the placement of one of the generators, less than a tenth of the distance from the sacred bath that the main temple was. "An attack, any attack, at the right moment, should draw all their attention away from the main temple. They aren't used to this, they aren't expecting it, there will be no reason for them to suspect that it's a diversion."

"We can do that without killing anyone?" Ironwood asked sternly. "I won't make first contact with bloodshed."

Jinn nodded. "Yes sir. Like I said, any attack at all. It would be unprecedented, they'll panic and send everything they have to defend the generator. We can be out of there before they even show up."

Elm looked over to Ironwood for approval. "Sir?"

He thought it over, stroking his chin while deep in thought. It concerned him that some of them looked too different from the populace, but on some level it should have been a surprise that any of them looked like the locals of a city eighteen thousand feet below sea level. He didn't like the idea of carrying out an attack, even one with no casualties, against a people who didn't know their attackers even existed, but Jinn was very specific about how this would not cause the energy field to fail even if they completely destroyed the generator. They'd be making an enemy, but stealing a holy relic would do that anyway. "Alright. We'll do it. We need to know our teams."

"Okay, so tell us, Jinn. Who is so genetically different from them that we can't walk around in public?" Robyn asked.

Jinn took a deep breath, then gave the answer. "Well, the general, for one. And Elm... Blake, Marrow, Fiona, Pelka, Joanna... and me." She shrugged uncomfortably. "Blake could pass if she covers her ears."

"They don't have Faunus." Weiss stated, realizing the implication. "They've been down there for thousands of years, and have no idea that Faunus exist."

"And there's something about the culture that keeps the men and women separate." Ironwood concluded. "A man wouldn't be seen walking through the markets."

"Yes, but it's more than that." Jinn added. "Men are kept in the upper city strata. They are the governing body, the theocrats, technocrats, and the like. The women are the workers, the soldiers, very few of them are granted uh... reproductive rights. And entirely at the whim of the men in charge."

"That's... I hate that." Robyn said, suddenly bristling. "I can excuse it with the Faunus, they just have no idea, but to treat women like that is much too far."

"But that doesn't explain me or Joanna." Elm said, looking to Jinn for answers.

Weiss gave her the answer. "I think I know. These people have lived for generations upon generations, they might be totally unaware of the surface world, and they've lived all that time down there in the crushing dark. Artificial lights, sure, but have you ever gotten a tan from your bedroom lights? In that environment, they're going to be pale. Very pale. Skin as dark as yours and Marrow's is probably just as foreign to them as Blake's ears or Pelka's wings."

"So they're going to be headed to the generator to create a diversion, while the rest of us make our way to the temple." Raven reiterated. "That's Ruby, Weiss, Yang, Amaranth, Robyn, May, and myself. Possibly Blake. Do we need to leave anyone in the submersibles?"

"Yes. Weiss and Yang have their own mission, to protect Jinn. The three of them will stay behind in one of the submersibles." Ironwood said, answering Raven. He then looked to Robyn. "I trust you won't have a problem with leaving the other one in Fiona's care?"

Robyn glanced at Fiona, then back to the general. "No sir, that's fine." She turned to Joanna and clapped her on the back. "Try not to have too much fun blowing things up without me."