"I can't believe you get to do this."

Ruby looked down the ladder to where Weiss was standing. She shrugged. "Someone's got to, and apparently May doesn't fit anymore." She looked back to Elm, Blake, and Amaranth, who were sharing the small chamber in the sail with her. "Amy's hair is too big and Blake's... too big."

"Thanks." Blake answered. She knew the pressure suit was not designed to fit someone with a chest her size, but the comment was still unwanted.

Amy was holding her long hair in her hand, staring at it. "I still have a hard time believing that the suit is so tight-fitting it can't accommodate this."

"The suit is the size it is." Elm stated. "Weiss, your hair is too much as well."

"I can cut it."

Ruby exchanged a shocked look with Blake. "Wow. I never thought I would hear that."

"Yeah, that's pretty extreme, Weiss." Blake said, half-feigning concern.

Weiss climbed halfway up the ladder so she could poke her head into the chamber. "A small price to pay for some quality alone time."

Blake shrugged. "That's fair. Any chance we can get a bigger suit?"

"I think there are only two of these suits built right now." Elm said, shooting down the idea. "They're made to fit the specific person who is meant to wear them, and they take a long time and a lot of resources to make and test. And since May doesn't seem to be able to do it again for some reason, Ruby is the next best candidate."

Ruby gave a gloved thumbs up to Weiss as Elm sealed the back of the suit. She grinned. "This is going to be a new experience only one other person has ever had."

Weiss rolled her eyes. "Oh well. Robyn walked May through it before. Who's doing it for Ruby?"

Elm pointed at Weiss. "You are. You'll have an expert guiding you, but she needs a familiar voice in her ear." She turned to Blake and Amaranth. "And you two better be paying close attention so you know how to put this on someone."

Amaranth nodded enthusiastically. "Yup! Definitely!"

Blake gave her a sideways look. "I have." Her yellow eyes turned back to the manual in her hands, flashing up to what Elm was doing and back to the manual, following along as best she could. She'd noticed Elm do several things that weren't in the manual, and skip over some things the manual said to do. She was keeping track of those things just in case Elm was testing them, but also in case Elm was right where the manual wasn't.

"I am also paying attention, by the way. I just can't see a lot of it." Ruby said.

Elm didn't look too enthused by Amaranth's answer, but she moved on. "There will be plenty of time to practice in the future. We're going to be using these a lot more often soon."

"Wait, what? Why?" Ruby asked as Elm put the helmet over her head and began sealing it. "What if I don't want to go deep sea diving all the time?" Her voice was muffled by the thick helmet.

"There's more than one environment where pressure suits are needed. Down here is one, yes, but very soon we're going to be going into another one." Elm looked back to see that Blake and Amaranth were watching her with rapt attention. Weiss was also completely captivated by whatever Elm was about to say. "Outer space."

Blake dropped the manual. "What?"

"Doesn't that just not work?" Weiss asked skeptically.

Elm shrugged. "Not with Dust, no. But we are working on some alternatives, and this platform is for drilling natural oils from the ocean floor. There's something in that oil that we can use for fuel that we think will operate in space. We don't have enough just yet, but once this platform is fully operational it won't take very long before Endymion is off the ground."

"Uh... end of what now?" Ruby asked, barely audible.

Elm knew Ruby wouldn't be able to hear her, so she clarified to the rest of them. "Endymion is the ship Ironwood has been building for space travel." She patted Ruby's shoulders and raised her voice. "Done! You're ready to go!" She gave a thumbs up, signaling for Ruby to start climbing. Ruby turned, grumbling incoherently as she stepped to the ladder. Elm pointed at Weiss, who was right under where Ruby was going. "Watch your head."

Weiss dropped down to allow Ruby room to get on the ladder. "I can watch myself." As soon as Ruby was up, Weiss popped her head back into the chamber. "I of course want to hear all about that."

"Talk to General Ironwood after. Right now, get to the bridge."

"Oh, right!" Weiss ducked out of the sail and rushed to the Nautilus' bridge, where Ironwood was waiting. The general brought her over to a station where she was given a headset and sat beside a sailor who was apparently the expert who would be helping her guide Ruby. She clicked on the headset. "Ruby, can you hear me?"

"It's too late to go to the bathroom, isn't it?"

Weiss ignored that. "Okay, let's get started."

"What a disappointment." May said sarcastically. "I was so looking forward to going in there again."

"Well, it's no one's fault, really. The Relic changed you." Robyn sighed, casually motioning to May, indicating her body. "You complained that the suit was a bit big in the chest, and now it's... too small for you."

"I'm positively seething." May was perfectly content to lay around and do nothing for the rest of the trip. Robyn and Joanna were sitting on the bunk next to May's, while Fiona was laying on the one above them. They had decided that they needed to have a talk as a team, regarding Ironwood and his mission. May still didn't trust the general all that much, but she saw the value in going along with him. She turned the subject to that. "So that didn't go exactly as planned, but it's worked out pretty well. What are we saying about this going forward?"

Robyn looked up to see the others all looking at her, waiting for her thoughts on the matter. She nodded knowingly, staring blankly at the floor as she worked through her thoughts silently. She only opened her mouth once she had something to say. "We'll help as best we can, but right now I want to focus on the election back in Mantle. We've been away several days, and it's almost election day. We don't know what Jacques Schnee has done in our absence."

"So if Ironwood comes to us with another mission like this, we'll have to turn it down. We have some makeup campaigning to do, and then you've got a job on the council to focus on." Joanna said, smiling. She was taking it as a granted that Robyn would win.

"We hope." Fiona agreed. "Jacques Schnee is a tricky man. Who knows what he's been up to?"

Robyn nodded. "Yeah... I wonder how Qrow is handling him."

Fiona looked thoughtful. "Qrow has a different perspective from the general. I bet he's handling Jacques very differently. We know he handled you a lot better." She said, poking a little fun at their leader.

Robyn gave Fiona a soft glare. "Handled?"

"I could have said 'dealt with'."

"Qrow told me the truth." Robyn corrected her. She stood up and spread her hands out to indicate the submarine they were on. "And because of that, Ironwood told us about all of this. Qrow explained the embargo to us. He told us about the plan for Amity. I wish Ironwood was putting more focus on helping Mantle, but given his situation and his shortage of Huntsmen and Huntresses, I understand why he's doing it the way he is. The worst thing is that I can't even see how I would do better."

"Mantle is struggling still. Ironwood doesn't have the numbers to deal with all of Mantle's problems..." Joanna took a deep breath, then added, "And we were spending our time causing more trouble for Ironwood. Time and effort we could have spent helping Mantle. Like that big Sabyr running around in the sewers. We kept hearing about it, but we didn't do anything about it."

May closed her eyes, rolling over to face the wall. "That'll be a problem for future May. Right now let's get some sleep."

Ruby was exploring. She was the second person to get to stand in this underwater base, and she knew May hadn't looked everywhere. She'd probably already looked at a bunch of stuff May didn't get to see. Most of it was kind of boring, except for the bit about being far below the surface of the ocean. She found a ladder that went down to a lower part of the base. While Weiss constantly reminded her not to leave any of the doors open, she moved further into the unknown depths.

"Ruby, are you sure you closed the door at the top?"

Ruby rolled her eyes. Poor naïve Weiss. "Of course I did."

"Excuse me for not taking that as a given. You have a habit of leaving things open that should be closed."

"Oh no! I forgot!"

"What? What did you forget?" Weiss was appropriately alarmed.

"I left the oven on back in Patch!"

"What?! Ruby! That's not funny!"

"I thought it was." Stepping away from the ladder, Ruby was faced with another door. She went through, closing it behind her as usual, and turned to see the new room she was in. There were windows. "Oh... wow..."

"Wow?"

"I can see out to the ocean..." It was completely black. "Well, there's nothing here to see." She was about to turn and go back, since there were no other doors and the room was rather small, but just as she was turning to leave she realized there was a single chair in the center of the room. "Huh..." She stepped around the chair and slowly sat down. "A viewing room?"

"General Ironwood says that room probably won't ever see use."

Ruby looked down at the controls in front of the chair. "Oh... There are guns down here."

"So we don't know about any Grimm that can survive this deep underwater. Defensive guns on the platform are a precaution, but probably won't ever see use."

"Yeah, considering I couldn't see anything out this window even if there was anything to see."

"There are lights, Ruby."

"Doesn't light not work very well this deep?"

"I... what?"

"Never mind. I'm gonna start heading back. There's no power, so I can't test the guns." She got up and headed for the door. It was open, so she quietly went through and closed it behind her. It wasn't until she'd climbed back up the ladder when it struck her as a little odd. The hatch at the top was open, and so was the door beyond it. She closed both, leaving them behind her as she headed back to the airlock.

Every door along the way was open.

"...Hey Weiss? Why am I closing these doors behind me?"

"What? The platform is designed to be super robust. If there is a breach, any one section will instantly collapse in on itself, but the doors prevent that from damaging the rest of the base. At least that's what it's supposed to do."

"Uh huh..." Ruby looked around her. There were other doors, which were remaining closed. It was only the ones that led back to the airlock that were open. "I think I may have been closing these wrong." She checked the one she'd just closed, then pushed and pulled it in all directions to try and see if it wasn't properly done. It didn't budge. "Hmm..."

"You sound like you're puzzled."

"Yeah... these doors keep opening on their own. Or I'm really really stupid."

"I'll let Ironwood know you're stupid."

"Funny, but they're not just unsealing. They're swinging open a bit too. I don't know if that makes sense, but... I'm sure I closed all of these."

Weiss sounded like she got serious about it suddenly. "How many doors are open?"

"Right now, like... a dozen? I already closed three of them again."

"The general has uh... found this information upsetting. With it happening to that many doors, it doesn't sound like a malfunction so much as a design flaw."

"Oh cool, I'm in a highly pressurized deep sea platform with a design flaw causing its safety features to stop working. I'm coming back now."

"Probably for the best. We'll have to give a full report to Commander Dori."

Ruby was closing another door on her way back. "Great. Giving reports is my favorite."