Going backwards through all the procedures was simple enough, though just as tiring as the first time, but before long May was back on board the Nautilus, climbing down the ladder from the upper most chamber of the fin. Elm was waiting for her and helped her down from the ladder. The helmet was going to come off first, but they had to change the pressure inside the suit since the pressure in the Nautilus had changed. They finally got the helmet off and May gulped in the fresh... the air was not fresh. It smelled like salted steel. She stuck her tongue out, feeling like she was going to be sick.

"You did well." Elm complimented her with a pat on the back. "Let's get you out of this."

They were both silent as they removed the suit, and as soon as she was free May hopped out and started putting on her clothes. It was only once she finally had something on that she bothered trying to start up a conversation. "So... did you know anything about this oil stuff?"

"The oil drilling project?" Elm asked. May nodded. Elm shrugged. "Space has been on the general's mind for a long time. Getting out of the reach of Salem and the Grimm is one of his biggest priorities. If he could, he would move us all off of Remnant, but that's not realistic."

"And drilling for oil is a step towards getting into space?"

"I believe the most promising rocket fuel we have uses a byproduct of the oil."

May finished getting dressed, putting on her hat. She then took it off and stared at it. "I don't have a hat."

"Oh..." Elm looked confused, then shrugged. "Someone must have left it in here, and I thought it was yours so I put it with your stuff."

May tossed the hat into the back corner of the room and headed for the ladder again. "Let's head back. We're on the last leg of our journey."

Once the two of them were back down and into the guest quarters, May accepted hugs and congratulations from Fiona and Joanna, then headed straight for her bed. She finally felt like she could sleep, if only because she was exhausted. It looked like Robyn had beat her to it. Her fearless leader was laid out on another bed, sleeping silently like she didn't have a worry in the world. Of course, May knew she had plenty of worries, but for now perhaps she could rest easy. May was hoping she'd be given the same mercy. They had some time before they needed to be up again, and she didn't want to spend any of it conscious.

"Thanks for the escort, sir." Amaranth gave a salute to Marrow, which he returned, and then turned and walked back into the guest quarters, putting her hat on. "Glad I didn't lose you back at the dock."

As she was fitting the hat onto her head, Blake commented. "What happened to your hands?"

Amaranth looked at her hands, turning them over to get a good look at the bandages all over her fingers. "Ah... yeah, I got some uh... splinters."

Blake nodded idly, then turned to look behind her at one of the chairs around the center table. The ends of the armrests were broken, splintered like they'd been crushed. She casually waved at the chair. "That was you?"

"Uh... yeah. Not on purpose." Amaranth nodded nervously. "During the mission briefing, when Jinn was explaining the Relic... I wasn't in complete control of my reaction."

Approaching her fellow student, Blake eyed the redhead neutrally. "You're okay, though. Right?"

"Yes." Blake was getting a little too close for Amaranth's comfort. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"

Blake backed off, walking past her. "That's a lot of strength for a girl your size. Anyone could break a chair, but crushing the wood with your bare hands? That's something else. Where do you get all that strength?"

"Adrenaline." Blake gave her a look that said she wasn't going to accept that answer, so Amaranth elaborated. "It's true, but... that's not all of it. My Semblance, it activates with my adrenaline. It makes me a lot stronger, and allows me to keep moving even if I've taken a lot of damage."

Blake thought about that for a moment, then poised a question. "But the splinters got through your Aura."

"Yeah, I... I broke my Aura. On splinters. I know, how lame, right?"

"A bit, yeah. How much physical training have you had? Missions. That sort of thing."

"Well... enough to get me here. But not as much, I think, as your team."

"And how much of that involved actually using your Aura? Your Semblance?" Blake pressed.

"Um... I have a hard time controlling it, so I try my best to avoid using my Semblance. I can usually keep my cool better than during that briefing."

"I see." Blake understood now. "You haven't exercised your Aura very much, then. It's not very strong. That's why it broke so easily."

Amaranth nodded. "I know... I haven't..." She let out a sigh, staring at the ground, and then the wall, just... away from Blake. "I stay away from actual combat. Like... all the time."

"That's what I thought. Honestly, it's the same for me." Blake admitted. "Compared to Ruby or Weiss, and especially Yang, my Aura is... fragile. I've taken maybe two dozen hits since I first entered Beacon." Most of those were from Adam and Roman. She was built to avoid taking hits, not to tank them. "But Semblance takes practice, using it over and over, to strengthen it so you can use it better, and more. Your Aura is the same. You need to exercise it, which means using your Semblance or just... taking hits more often."

Amaranth puffed up her cheeks and slowly blew the air out of her mouth, like she was using it as a time limit for deciding what to say next. "Yeah... like I said, I try to avoid situations that make my adrenaline spike. You suggesting I, like, ask someone to punch me from time to time?"

"That might be a little much, but maybe it couldn't hurt."

"Yes, how could getting hit hurt?" Amaranth said in a deadpan tone. "We'll probably both have to face that in our training, so let's put it off for the time being. Besides, we should get some sleep in before we reach our destination."

They were getting close now. It wouldn't be long before they heard the call to head for the mini-submersibles. Everyone else had gone to sleep, so that they would all be up and ready to go. Ironwood had gotten what sleep he needed, and now he was seated at the table looking over the holographic display of the city. He could sense Jinn quietly entering the room behind him. Something she'd said was running through his mind on repeat, over and over again. It's not that he couldn't get it out of his head, but he was actually giving it serious consideration.

"We didn't come here to set these people free. There's no guarantee we could anyway, and even if we did, there's no telling if they would be better off for it. We could be condemning them to an even worse fate." He aired his thoughts for her to hear.

Jinn walked past him and sat down in the seat next to him, looking over the city with an unreadable expression on her face. Eventually, she relented. "Some people would say that it's not for us to come to a civilization we didn't even know existed and tell them how they live their lives is wrong. You can see it's wrong, and so can I, but..." She shook her head and looked away. "You're right. You can't make a void without being fully prepared to fill it, or whatever is nearest will rush to fill it for you."

"Our fight is for all the people of Remnant. Atlas is my first priority, my duty, entrusted to me by the people of Atlas. Ozpin has entrusted me with another duty, that of safeguarding all of Remnant's people from the calamity that Salem would bring." He looked to Jinn meaningfully. "As much as I want to, I can't save them from themselves. But if Salem wins, they will die. I can rescue them from the threat they do not know about, and for that they will curse me. That's my mission, and it's the one I asked you to help me complete."

She returned his look. "...Yes sir."

"Now." He hit the table lightly, like a judge with a gavel announcing that this subject was done with. "You said you would try to find the information about the creator of the Voice. Have you succeeded?"

Jinn looked surprised, then resigned. "Ah... yes. Yes sir, I have it. Give me a second. I'll show you what I can." She stood up and backed away, putting distance between them. "Here. This is where the Voice's creator came from."

The room melted away, turning into an image of another world. At first, it seemed surreal, like a nightmare of swirling colors with no possible way to describe them, but those colors quickly coalesced into an image. A courtyard. It looked to be inside the walls of a castle. Ironwood looked up to see a black sky above him, filled with endless pinpricks of light. At first, he thought these were stars, but after staring at them for a moment he realized they were each a galaxy, enormous swirling masses of stars, each just another mote of cosmic dust. He saw something float around in front of his eyes. What he thought was another galaxy in the sky was in fact an actual speck of dust in the air. He reached out his hand and guided the speck down to where he could inspect it closer. It was one of them after all. He held in his hand now a full galaxy, an immense spiral armed galaxy swirling in circles in his hand.

He heard noise. Laughter. It was coming from the doorway ahead of him, the door cracked open. Forgetting the tiny galaxy, he stepped forward. The torches on the wall, the battlements above, this whole place was the size of a universe. Perhaps he was thinking about it wrong. Perhaps the truth was that it was outside the universe, a realm of existence beyond his understanding, and this castle was only his mind or Jinn's turning it into something he could witness without going mad. He'd have to ask her for clarification, but he sensed that he wasn't far off from understanding its nature, at least as far as he was concerned. He opened the door and stepped inside, looking into the hall of the castle's king. There they were, the court of the king. He couldn't see them, but there they were. Their clothes were a blur, their faces an indistinguishable mess, their voices gibberish. All save for one. The jester.

The jester cartwheeled away from the court, approaching Ironwood. He landed before Ironwood, planting his feet and putting his hands on his hips triumphantly. "You there! What ho, daring champ!"

Ironwood wasn't sure he wanted to talk to anything in this vision conjured up by Jinn, but he ventured a response. "I am just passing through."

"Yes." The jester nodded. "Fleeting thing, life. But you have come here to see me? All this way to gaze upon the jester, when the king sits but a few steps away." He motioned his hand to where the unseeable king sat on a throne. "What could possess you to come all this way only to stop here?"

If he wasn't here to see the king, but the jester, that meant the jester was the one who created the Voice. "The Voice of Confusion. You are its creator."

"Ahh... then you will wish to speak with someone who concerns herself with far smaller matters than I. Yes, I created it, and many just like it, sent one to each universe." He pointed down a hall to the side, shooing Ironwood down that way. "You won't remain here much longer, so go. Ask her a question. It'll be worth it."

Ironwood looked down the hallway. It was dark, with sparse torches. It looked like the sort of hall that led to a dungeon. "Who is she?"

"She is the queen." With that, the jester was away, back to entertaining the king and his court.

Reportedly, speaking to this queen would be worth his time, so he followed the jester's advice. Ironwood walked down the dark hall until he found the dungeon, just as he'd predicted, and there she was. Chained deep inside a cell, behind iron bars, a woman knelt on the cold stone floor, mumbling to herself. Her dress was torn and tattered, and her long dark hair lay across the floor in paling strands that looked like they had not seen care in forever. She stopped her quiet rambling when he approached, looking up at him with a frightful face. Her eyes were red, bleeding down her face. She smiled when she saw him.

"Finally, someone has come for me."

Whatever reason she was confined here, he was pretty sure setting her free was neither in his power nor his best interest. Ironwood ignored her and tried to think of what he could possibly ask her. It would be worth it, according to the jester, so what would that question be... "What is the cost? What awaits on the other side of Salem's defeat?"

She frowned. "You haven't come for me..." She looked back down at the floor, her eyes scouring the dust for something, which she found. "The trade for victory... is victory."

Ironwood blinked, and he was back in the guest quarters on board the Nautilus.

Jinn stared at him, concerned. "Sir? What happened?"