The journey back to the Nautilus was much quieter. Ironwood had retaken his seat in the front, but he didn't kick Fiona out to make space for Robyn. She figured it made sense. Other than her not paying attention when he was explaining all the controls to her, she'd screwed up one of the most important parts of their mission. Technically she didn't cause the mission to fail, so it shouldn't be all that bad, but they'd bumped into someone, and now she had to tell him that they'd accidentally killed someone. Not just anyone, but some sort of religious leader. All things considered, she didn't feel all that bad about it, since she knew what kind of society they were dealing with, but Ironwood had been adamant that they did not kill anyone. He'd probably think they did it on purpose. The only good thing to come out of it, at least that she was willing to tell the general, was that the Relic had consumed the man entirely. There was no evidence of his death other than his sudden absence. Perhaps between the destruction of the generator and the sudden disappearance of a priest along with the Relic, they might think he himself had taken it.
Pushing those thoughts out of her mind, she could hear Ironwood talking rather casually with Fiona. It piqued Robyn's interest that he seemed almost friendly with her. Still acting as a general would to someone who served under him, which she wanted to make sure he understood that Fiona did not, but at the very least he was acting as though she was a subordinate that he liked. Part of her was a little bit annoyed at Fiona for being likeable to the general, but she knew it was mostly just because Fiona had been paying attention when he explained to her how not to get them all killed in the crushing ocean depths. She wasn't even the most technically intelligent member of Robyn's team. Robyn herself, and May, both understood technology a lot better, but Fiona actually listened to instructions. She even read manuals, which was almost completely unique among everyone Robyn knew. It'd be fine, Robyn decided, just so long as she didn't hear any laughing between them.
She glanced over to Joanna, who had just finished a mission side by side with not only General Ironwood, but with two members of the Ace-Ops as well. She decided it made sense to ask how that went. "Joanna, how did things go on your end?"
Joanna thought for a second, then shrugged nonchalantly. "We got there, Elm shot the generator with her rocket launcher, it exploded. That's about it. Thought there would be more to do, but I guess we should be glad we didn't need to do more."
"Yeah..." Robyn didn't have anything to say to that. It sounded like Ironwood was in his element and commanded his mission to near perfection. She was probably thinking about this too much, though. Her team was still her team. She was the one who signed them up for this mission. She just wanted to get back to where they could be together as a full team, instead of split up in three different places.
Joanna leaned forward, her eyes fixed on Robyn. "What about you? Sounds like you had a problem."
May interjected. "Nothing we couldn't handle."
Robyn took a deep breath. She wasn't going to lie to Joanna, but she didn't want to say anything she wouldn't want Ironwood overhearing. "We had the Relic in hand when we were attacked. If Jinn is right about this Relic, then we're lucky it didn't kill any of us." She left out that it had killed someone, but she hadn't lied. It didn't kill any of them. At least, she was pretty sure that it hadn't killed May. If it did, then it brought her back to life, which was good enough for Robyn if it was good enough for May.
"Alright. I'm glad you're all okay." Joanna said, sitting back again.
Were they? Robyn wasn't sure yet, and only time would tell. They weren't wimps. They were trained for combat, Huntresses with years of experience. But this was a new situation that none of them had ever been through before. Robyn shook her head and leaned against the back of Fiona's seat, closing her eyes. She subconsciously understood that the Ammonite was docking with the Nautilus, and then that everyone was getting up and heading out. She waited until it sounded like Ironwood was walking by before showing any signs of being awake.
"You mind if I sleep in here for a bit?"
Ironwood stopped, looked back to the cockpit, then to the back door to the Ammonite. He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly irritated. "There are beds."
"They feel like Atlas Academy bunks." She didn't get up, or even lift her head or open her eyes. "I've spent a lot of time in small transports, getting sleep in seats like this."
"... Okay." Ironwood went to the back of the submersible and closed the hatch, then came back and sat down across from her. "One condition. I want you to tell me what happened."
"I can do that with my eyes closed."
"Then go ahead."
In spite of herself, Robyn opened her eyes. Try as she might, she hadn't teleported herself back to a place that made sense. She was still thousands of feet below the ocean surface. She let out a long, tired sigh. "Everything went according to the plan. We got to the temple without problem, we found the Relic, and when the diversion happened, we went in and got it. Only one person saw us. He looked like a priest of some kind, an old man. We tried to just run past him, but he hit us with something. Raven said it looked like some kind of energy blast. We don't know what. We had to fight back in order to get away, and the Relic... he was hit with the Relic. He's dead. None of us meant for that to happen, but it did." She looked to Ironwood, who was watching her silently. "Is that what you wanted to hear? That I screwed up the mission? Are you going to accuse me of doing it on purpose because I don't like what that place is?"
He shook his head. "I can't exactly shake your hand and know that you're telling the truth, but you said you didn't mean for it to happen. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did. We can't take that back. But I will trust that you didn't set out to kill that man." He stood up, walking halfway to the door before turning back to her. "Everyone makes mistakes. Owning up to them is what sets someone apart. That and doing everything in your power to make up for them. That said, I will be checking with Jinn to make sure everyone's reports are accurate."
She moved her head back, clunking it against the hull of the Ammonite. "Right. Then you should know about another thing that happened." That got his attention. "I'm positive that she's fine, despite the odds, but the Relic did something to May as well. I would prefer, and so would she, that we handle it ourselves. If there's something wrong, we want to deal with it. I'm asking you to stay out of it and to not bring it up. It's... more of a personal matter."
He was clearly concerned about that, but after a few moments he gave her a nod. "Okay. But if something is wrong, you come to me right away. The moment you find that anything is off." She nodded, barely visibly. "I'm serious. The first sign that she isn't herself."
"I promise you won't hear about this again."
"...I suppose that's good enough for now." He would be keeping an eye on the situation, but from a distance. In spite of it all, Ironwood did trust Robyn's instincts. He didn't want to be invasive, if she said this was a personal matter that she would handle. He would ask Jinn, but that was about all he would do until they returned to Atlas, at which point he would be keeping closer tabs on the Happy Huntresses and their exploits. Again, from a distance. Ironwood left the submersible, closing the hatch behind him and leaving Robyn to rest alone with her thoughts. She clearly needed it.
As soon as they were done with giving their reports to Ironwood, RWBY went to their beds and dropped down right away. Blake and Ruby found themselves called back for another debriefing with Elm and Marrow. Amaranth was only just now coming to, so the Ace-Ops wanted to make sure their new trainees were all okay. They also needed to try and be teachers and use the mission as a lesson.
Weiss watched them go, then turned to Yang. Yang was already asleep in her bunk. "Come on, really? That fast? We didn't even do anything!" When Yang didn't respond, Weiss quietly went and sat on the bunk next to her. "And I'm stuck in here with you. How come Robyn gets to sleep in a submersible?" She wasn't really asking anyone in particular.
The door opened and Raven walked in with Joanna and Fiona. Yang's mother was in the middle of shrugging something off nonchalantly. "I don't see what the problem is. So what if I just step out for a minute? I don't really need to stay down here."
Fiona sat down on a bunk and tried her best to explain the situation to Raven as she understood it. "If you used your Semblance to go back to Atlas right now, the space you occupy on the submarine would be empty suddenly, and air would rush in to fill that space, right?"
"I guess? I never actually checked if air travels through the portal." Raven shrugged, clearly not picking up on Fiona's point.
"The air pressure in here is really high. On this end, the air pressure inside the submarine would drop suddenly. Maybe not by much, but possibly by enough to cause a problem. If the internal pressure gets too low, it won't be strong enough to keep the external pressure from crushing the whole thing and killing everyone on board. We're not sure how much we can stand to lose before something like that happens."
Joanna nodded. "Even I picked up on the implications of that. You'd also be going instantly from a high air pressure environment to a very low air pressure environment like Atlas."
"...So?"
Weiss was incredulous. How did Raven not know this? "You'd explode." She said before she could stop herself. They all looked at her. Fiona nervously rubbed the back of her neck, and Joanna cleared her throat awkwardly. Weiss sighed. She stepped in it, so she might as well wallow. "Your body needs to adjust to a new pressure environment, otherwise it'll suddenly explode outwards."
"Nothing like that happened in the city just now." Raven said, waving in a general direction that was likely nowhere near the direction of the underwater city.
"It's under a pressurized dome. The air pressure in there was probably about the same as it is in here." Otherwise, Weiss assumed, Jinn wouldn't have let them go in there at all. "Otherwise we'd have died, pretty simply. And if air did travel through your portal, just opening one to Atlas would not only destroy the Nautilus with all of us inside in an instant, the sudden blast of high pressure air would destroy just about anything on the other side as well."
Raven was silent for a moment, contemplating this, then said, "I wonder if water travels through it."
"How have you not tested that?" Joanna asked.
"What would be the point?" Raven retorted quickly. "The only real application for water or air traveling through my portals is pressure-based attacks, but to use it would require someone I have a connection to being in the other location."
"Or getting drinkable water in the middle of the desert?" Joanna offered as an alternative. Then she thought better of it. "Wait, we're talking about free-flowing water. They could just toss a canteen through."
Raven was quick to agree. "Fresh water flowing through the portal into the middle of the desert would just be a waste of water. But the canteen trick, I've used that to help Summer search for missing people in Vacuo."
"Who?" Joanna and Fiona said together.
"Oh, she was a teammate of mine back at Beacon." Raven explained.
Weiss stood up suddenly. "Wait, Summer? As in Ruby's mom?"
Raven looked over to Weiss, as though just remembering that she was there. "Yeah?"
"You had a connection to her?"
"I did. It won't open anymore. You know, cause she's dead."
Weiss nodded. "I figured as much, but... what if she wasn't?"
"Then it would open." Raven said, like it was obvious. "But she is, so it doesn't."
"No, but... on our last mission, we encountered something that blocked our Semblances." Weiss knew that Raven was probably right, but if Summer had somehow found herself somewhere that Semblances didn't function, Raven wouldn't have been able to connect to her. If she took that to mean Summer was dead, she wouldn't have tried it again since then. "Did you see her die? Did you see her dead?"
"...No." Raven admitted slowly.
"Then who knows? Maybe she's still out there."