The Nautilus stopped with a bump, the entire ship becoming still in an instant. That marked the moment they were attached to the deep sea platform. In the next few seconds, the connection would be sealed and the passengers of the Nautilus would be free to move from the submarine to the deep sea platform. When Ironwood said they were free to, that actually meant he wanted them to, so they all climbed up through the secondary hatch and into the deep sea platform that it was connected to. The air pressure was different on the platform, much higher so as to keep the platform from being crushed, so they had to sit in a pressurization chamber for a couple hours while they waited for their bodies to adjust to the pressure enough to not simply give out on them.

Ruby noticed that the place felt very cramped and muggy, like the air was thick. That made sense, since increased air pressure presumably meant there was more air in the same amount of space. As far as she'd been able to comprehend, that's what the case was. Most of their party was out of uniform, a dark blue submariner jumpsuit they'd all been given for their time underwater, opting for something that allowed them more freedom of movement and an easier time cooling off. The tanktop was the clothing item in fashion, with the jumpsuit top tied around waists, and hair sticking to their foreheads and shoulders. The only exceptions, it seemed, were Ironwood, who was not willing to appear out of uniform, and May, for whatever her reasons were.

Ruby looked over to her neighbor, Jinn, and reached out to pinch the woman's bare arm. Jinn let out a surprised yelp and swatted Ruby's hand away. "What was that about?"

"Heh. You're squishy."

"So are you!" Jinn fired back, reach over and pinching Ruby in the same way. She stopped, taken aback by what she found. "What the..." She grabbed Ruby's arm more firmly. "Holy crap, you've got some serious muscle going on here. Are these standard issue? Where can I get some?"

"I drink milk." Ruby said smugly.

"Yeah, that doesn't explain this at all. You're a lot stronger than you look, obviously, but I guess a physical inspection reveals a lot."

"Are we physically inspecting each other now?" Amaranth pushed her way next to Ruby, shoving Weiss out of the way. "I'll help you inspect Ruby."

"Try to keep the excitement down in there. We have limited ability to recycle air, and you lot are really gonna put a burden on it for a while, especially since you're gonna be back in a few days. Resting heartrates please."

The voice of one of the deep sea platform's crew over the intercom got them to stop. They settled back down, though Weiss was now glaring at the back of Amaranth's head. Though they were only in there for a little more than two hours, Ruby was beginning to feel like she'd never seen anything other than these people in this room by the time the door opened. They still felt a little rush of air enter, which indicated that the air pressure wasn't quite the same in the rest of the platform, but it wasn't so much that it really bothered them more than they could handle. In fact, Ruby was already feeling like the air was crushing her a bit. Her body was adjusting, and she could feel it, but she felt like she might get a bit sick.

A woman in a dark blue jumpsuit, with the top open and tied around her waist just like all of them, and sporting a tanktop like all of them, though it was noticeably more greasy, stepped into the chamber. She saluted Ironwood. "General. Commander Dori reporting."

He saluted back. "Let's not waste time, Commander. Show us the way."

"Yes sir." She led them out, and they followed single file. Ruby caught a glimpse of the crew here and there as they walked. She realized that while the submarine's crew was all men, the deep sea platform was all women. There were only seven of them, and she only saw two or three, but it seemed pretty clear that the same rules would apply. The commander, who couldn't have been much older than Robyn, unsealed a big heavy hatch and swung it open, stepping through. "Here it is, General."

One by one, they entered the room, which was bigger than Ruby was expecting a place like this to be able to support. It was clearly a command center of some sort, whatever sort they needed here. From the random snippets of information she saw in various places, she realized that this whole deep sea platform was not normally intended for this. There was a drill. The platform was drilling into the ocean floor. For what, Ruby couldn't tell from the information she saw, but there wasn't a mention of Dust anywhere except in reference to minor supplies used to power a few systems. She found herself idly reading something that was written on a whiteboard on the wall. Something about barrels. That was strange, since the platform didn't seem to have any guns.

"Forty-three per day... that's not nearly enough to keep up with demand." Ruby heard the general talking with the commander off to the side. Everyone else was too focused on a table in the center of the room to notice, but Ruby noticed. Ironwood seemed deep in thought. He shook it off, whatever it was. "Keep trying. We need this to work out." Ruby didn't know what to make of the exchange, but when Ironwood went to the table she decided to join in as well so she didn't look too conspicuous. Ironwood turned on the holographic display, which showed a miniature of the platform. "Alright, let's get a good look at where we are. Commander?"

Dori stepped up, bringing up an image of the submarine and placing it on the platform's underside. Ruby was surprised by how small the whole facility was. The submarine could survive underwater with its crew for a month or two, but that was in emergency situations. These ladies had lived in underwater isolation for months as the normal course of their job. She couldn't imagine that they got visitors all that often. It occurred to her that there was another stopover on their journey. She had to wonder who was manning that deeper station. Any thoughts of what it was like living so deep underwater like this were dashed from her mind when she saw Dori zoom the holographic display out until the platform and the submarine were but a small spec, revealing that they were sitting on the edge of a gigantic cliff, a deep sea canyon or something. Just a few hundred feet off the starboard side of the submarine was an actual abyss. They were three thousand feet below the surface, but anything that fell down there... there was no bottom she could see, at least on the display, and she doubted it would be clearer if she checked out a window. She also hadn't been able to find a window.

"Well, that's not terrifying at all." Yang quipped, earning a glare from a few of the others.

"You want terrifying, here's a little sea fact." Weiss smiled knowingly. "The average depth of Remnant's oceans is about seven hundred feet deeper than we are now."

Commander Dori coughed. "That's a fun little kids' book fact, but we've been mapping the ocean floor, or what of it we can find, and more informed estimates put the average at about ten thousand feet."

"Okay, Weiss, I'm gonna ask you shut up before it gets deeper." Yang said, grimacing.

"And we're going almost twice that deep." Fiona looked apprehensive. "Are we sure the Nautilus can handle that depth?"

Jinn nodded. "It certainly can, if we make sure to pressurize it right. Which is what we're doing right now."

Dori pulled the display out enough to show, finally, the bottom of the abyss. There was another cliff not too far off. "There we are." She zoomed in on a spot at the edge of the even deeper abyss. "There's your next stop"

"That's so deep." Weiss stared at the display in wonder. "Who is even down there?"

"No one, for the time being." Ironwood answered. "Part of this platform's mission is to build that platform. It's operational for our purposes, but Human on-site tests have not been conducted as of yet."

"Sir, does that mean-" Marrow stopped, straightened up from where he was leaning over the table and cleared his throat. "Um, General, that means we're going to be the on-site test, doesn't it?"

"In a way, I suppose you're right. It's not our objective, but we will be compiling a report on it." Ironwood nodded. "Unfortunately, while fate has given us the opportunity to do so, it has not been all kind. We have personnel on the Nautilus for observing and reporting the results, but not for extra-vehicular activities."

"Wait, extra-vehicular?" Elm said, alarmed.

Commander Dori answered that. "We're loading the suit onto the Nautilus right now."

"Oh God, there's a suit." Yang blanched, looking to the general for help.

Ironwood just shrugged. "The atmosphere on the lower platform is not yet safe, we can't send anyone onboard without a suit."

"The suit's not for in the water?" Blake asked.

"It is, actually." Dori answered her as well. "It's designed to handle extreme external pressures without collapsing, primarily for water pressure. We haven't tested it in water, however, only in air pressure chambers. The air pressure onboard the lower platform is much higher than any person can withstand, so this suit is perfect."

"So it'll be safe. Who are we sending in?" Weiss asked, eyeing the general. "Or are we drawing straws?"

Ironwood looked amused at that suggestion. "We could draw straws. I was just going to select someone, but I could select the contenders and you draw straws."

"That's all fascinating, but if you're all done chewing up my oxygen, could you get off my platform now?" Dori smiled apologetically. "We appreciate your interest in our operation, but we really are heavily burdened by this."

"Very well." Ironwood pointed everyone back to the airlock. "We'll get out of your hair."

Ruby was suddenly aware that they were about to spend several more hours in the pressurization chamber. "Ah... yipee, my favorite activity; sitting."

"Yeah, I'm glad I went through all that just to learn what you could have told me when you got back." Weiss quipped, but offered the other side of the matter. "I'm glad I got to see the inside of the platform, though. Imagine living in there for days or weeks on end, even months."

Elm visibly shuddered. "I'd rather not."

"Well, it's not for everyone." Weiss turned back to Ruby. "Who's going to walk in the other platform? You volunteering?"

Ruby squinted skeptically at Weiss. "Why would I ever want to do that?"

"Well I'm volunteering." Weiss crossed her arms over her chest, grinning smugly.

Ironwood cut her off. "Denied. You have your job. In fact, all of Team RWBY is off of that particular job. Amaranth, you too."

"Oh... darn." Amaranth said, her voice dry with sarcasm.

As the pressurization chamber was closed with them inside, Ironwood began to explain dryly. "Ruby, Blake, and Amaranth are in training for the Ace Ops, Elm and Marrow are their supervisors. Weiss and Yang are Jinn's personal guard, so all three of them need to be able to stay together at all times. The eight of you are excluded from entering the lower platform."

Robyn picked up on the implication. "And since the crew of the Nautilus is needed onboard their ship, it falls to one of us. One of my huntresses, Raven, Pelka, or... you." She pointed to the general. "Am I understanding this correctly?"

"Yes." Ironwood nodded. "If you think you can't do this, say so right now and we can narrow down the field."

Fiona held up her hand. "I can't. Being in a submarine is already quite a lot, but I'm holding up. I don't think... that... is something I can handle."

"Same here." Joanna added. "I'd like to help however I can, but I don't think I can do that."

After giving them all a few more moments to think it over, when no one else spoke up Ironwood concluded. "I'll... requisition five straws." It wasn't eluding him that Raven was being counted among the options for this mission, but she wasn't known to be automatically suicidal, so purposefully sabotaging them all in this was something he considered her a small risk for.

A few hours passed with more idle chat, and about as much being accomplished as one might anticipate stuck in a pressurized chamber. When they returned to the Nautilus, Ironwood made straight for the suit they would be using. He was perfectly willing to do the job himself, but he needed to make sure it was compatible with his cybernetic arm. He definitely did not want to move too sharply and tear a hole in it somehow. When he got to the suit and saw what he was dealing with, he realized it was worse than he could have imagined. He wasn't about to go back on what he'd said before, so he turned to the communications console and clicked it on, selecting a line to the passenger area.

"Hill, I need you down here. Bring Leganda and Marigold." He knew both Robyn and May would certainly huff in annoyance at being told what to do like this, but it wasn't a matter that allowed delicacy. There was a very blatant issue with the suit.

It was only a couple minutes before the three of them arrived. As he expected, Robyn and May weren't particularly happy, though he'd gotten the sense that May was never happy. Robyn looked like she was about to voice her complaints when she saw the suit and immediately realized the same issue as he had. "Oh..." She looked to Pelka and May. "I think I know what the problem is."

The suit was small.

It probably would fit most of the women on the deep sea platform, but there was no way it would ever fit even Robyn. Ironwood was clearly out of the running. With all the others who had been exempt, it was left to Pelka and May. Whether or not Pelka would fit, given her wings and horns, was a serious question. Now that they could see her and the suit side by side, it was quickly evident that only May would actually fit into the suit. May realized this soon enough, looking back and forth between Ironwood and the extra-vehicular suit they'd been given.

"Ah... I guess I drew the short straw."