Archive of Our Own ^beta

Robyn Hill wouldn’t call herself patriotic, per se.

She wouldn’t call herself particularly invested in the glory of the Kingdom at large, or the seemingly ceaseless climb of the Atlesian GDP. She’s not even a big fan of the overgrown freezer aisle that is her homeland of Solitas, for that matter.

However, Robyn is very much, at her core, a community-oriented person – a loud and proud Mantler, nearly her whole life spent within three hours of that same city. Robyn was born, lived, loved, and fought inside that urban sprawl. For that sprawl. For all intents and purposes, Mantle – and by reluctant extension Atlas at large – comprised the size, shape, and bounds of Robyn’s material world.

And now it’s gone.

Well, not gone in the strictest literal sense; the physical matter is all still accounted for. It’s just been reduced to a desolate field of slush and sodden slag and smoking rubble, of forlorn and tilted office spires through which a tense handful of huntsmen and huntresses carefully weave their stolen airship, spotlights dancing over the icy waves.

Robyn’s lost count how many search-and-rescue runs through the ruins they’ve undertaken in the past few hours, each attempt lacquering another layer of disorienting glaze onto her eyes. She hasn’t lost track of how many survivors they’ve picked up, though: a fat, resounding zero. Zip. Zilch.

The whole of the self-proclaimed greatest city on Remnant has fallen, been dashed on the ground like an ornamental plate, the gaudy sort you don't break out 'til the holidays. And much like a mishap with a tipsy uncle, it's ended up in shards that only serve to bleed those who go reaching out for them.

As an informed guess, Robyn would assume that she’s in shock. That it explains why it feels more like her heart is hollow and high-strung, rather than overfull with grief, flooded and deathly cold, same as the city below. Atlas may have fallen hours ago, but Robyn’s still waiting on that earthquake to hit her, and gods, does she know it’s coming.

She thought it would be sooner that the sense of loss floored her, with only the adrenaline flow holding it at arms length. She’d stood by with a strong back and sharp archer’s eyes while Harriet was badgered into bypassing the autopilot, giving them one last chance to reel around and survey the crash site. A last chance which turned into… well, they’ve been plunged into pitch black now, so the sun’s gone down, that’s all Robyn can say.

There’s a clong-clong of a fist on metal from behind her, near the bridge bulkhead: Marrow announcing his presence to the jumpy watch crew. The guy’s got none of the eager spunk Robyn remembers from the Academy, or the disciplined posture from his tenure as a toady for a tinpot dictator. It’s all sloughed off of him, his chronically overenthusiastic tail as still as death.

“Hey, you three. Hare says if we want to have enough fuel to make it to Argus,” Marrow juts a thumb southward. “We seriously need to peel off now.”

Surveying the affairs from further back against the wall, arms folded and intermittently flexing, Elm comments, “It is getting late. The big fish is dead, but if the local Grimm come to sniff around, we’re in no condition to fight.”

Assuming there’s anyone else left pumping out negativity for the Grimm to smell in the first place. Robyn tactfully stuffs that thought under the proverbial mattress.

“Just – Just one more pass,” Qrow rasps, white-knuckling a steely pipe near the edge of the open cargo bay door. “Please.”

Marrow has the sense to look conflicted, lips drawn tight and averting his gaze. Unfortunately, Elm is forcing that duty-and-discipline facade back into place. “Have to be realistic, here. Nothing for it but to move on.”

The grand sum of Robyn’s patience with these people could fit inside a martini glass. Not that she should be thinking about drinking, not with Qrow nearby. The guy’s so traumatized even a psychic whiff of alcohol could tempt him, and there’s no judgment in that assessment. With what he’s been through, even the most penitent priest would be pushed onto a barstool.

“Hey,” Robyn starts softly, adding a steadying touch to Qrow’s shoulder. “We’ll be doing everyone a favor if we hoof it back to civilization. They’ll know what we know, ‘n we’ll know what they know. Check for ourselves if anyone got out–“ And Robyn comes away feeling like the vilest flavor of manipulator for this one, “–If any of your kids might’ve made it through.”

Qrow looks as if Robyn’s clamped a palm on his face and twisted it like a troublesome jar lid. The pained expression settles, the span of his shoulders accepting defeat and going slack, if still hunched, and he makes a quiet, rumbly murmur of unemphatic assent. He lets go of the pipe he’s been gripping, and Robyn is surprised to find the absence of a clenched handprint in the steel. Qrow shuffles to drop against the wall near the cabin door, leaving Robyn alone at the loading ramp.

Though Robyn would love to keep scouring the surface of the ruins ‘til they burn through their fuel and hurtle down to join the waterlogged ghosts at terminal velocity, she’s getting a mite tired of staring at floating, half-frozen corpses and having to scrutinize each for the familiar features of friends and family, in the world’s least helpful civic census.

Plus, trying to give Qrow such dubious hope allows a slab of guilt to embed itself in her lower intestine. She’s been playing Mother Hen over the guy as an outlet for her own writhing worry, else it gnaw its way out of her chest like snakes the second she thinks too deeply about her own missing flock.

Shit. That counted as thinking about them, too. Robyn grits her teeth through the slow-burning dread – don’t focus on it, just don’t – and gives the ravaged remains one last look for good measure.

Even setting aside the ambient horror of the situation, the sights of the city are bizarre. Namely, because it’s not ‘the city,’ not Atlas, not Mantle, but a chaotic, crumbled mashup album of each city’s greatest hits, partially submerged. Somewhere beneath it all, the homely ghetto of the Crater sits in a lightless, sunken crypt like the ruins of some ancient civilization, one with far more wealth and dignity allotted than the oppressed and underfed miners who’d lived there. The high-rise ruins of an Atlesian business sector smears right into an old Mantle residential project away at the very edge of the impact site, heavily blasted but free-standing, while its former neighbors lie crushed beneath the disc.

Down the line of banks and law firms the ship’s skimming between, Robyn can see the wreckage of her alma mater, Atlas Academy, arrogantly posturing above all else even as it crumbles apart. They’d curved around a jagged bluff of manicured grass not long ago and seen the wreckage of Schnee Manor, even the Marigold Estate. Past dreams of gleefully watching the places be blown to smithereens go sour on Robyn’s tongue, now.

Her fingers tap an anxious, arrhythmic beat on the edge of the hatch. Wonder where the old team apartments are, now. Their favorite 24-hour diner. The Chic ‘n Tiques consignment. Polendina’s clinic. The Sector 5 rec center. A dozen little bits of the Mantle she was happiest to call home.

Instead, Robyn looks across a dark, moonless lake swollen with innumerable dead. From the distance in every direction, warbling emergency sirens – some drowned, some crushed or toppled – still moan out their redundant warning, a dirge that’ll last ‘til their internal Dust reserves run dry. The ship’s spotlight tracks a series of loose bricks floating down one of the streams, following a larger clump of building insulation like little disaster ducklings. The procession of debris makes its way past a congregation of pale lumps bobbing in the water, lumps with limbs, face-down. Robyn looks away.

‘Home’ isn’t here anymore. This is a tomb.

Robyn butts the bottom of her fist into a luminous red button on the wall, its panel emblazoned in bold sans-serif black: SEAL HATCH. There’s a lurching of dense metal and a hissing of hydraulics, then the loading ramp curls upward to censor the sight of unparalleled loss.

“We’ve done all we can do. Hareball! Take us out.”

One could practically hear Harriet rolling her eyes from the pilot’s seat, and Elm does not look impressed as Robyn asserts some unearned authority as the only team leader aboard. Remarkably, besides requisite huffing and puffing and groused complaints about some little terrorist thinking she’s in charge, the Ace Ops nonetheless defer to a final say from the woman with the most shot-calling experience. Rumbling through the hull, the burn of the airship's engines builds to a roar, and they're underway.

The atmosphere within is tense, but cooperative. Liable to work together long enough to get where they need to go, but no risk of having to pretend they’re chummy. Even with Ironwood dead as a doornail, Robyn still isn’t about to play party icebreakers like twenty questions with Jimmy’s Goosestepper Goons.

Cluh-clunk-tcsssh go the thick maglocks wreathing the rear hatch. In a flagrant violation of common sense safety precautions, Robyn squats down then and there, resting her back on the slight incline of the upturned ramp. One arm folded behind her head for a pillow, her eyes lock onto nothing, blinking loosely at the metal ceiling.

What happened to the world?

A year ago – less than a month ago, even! – things weren’t great by a long shot, but they were comprehensible. Straightforward threats. The greatest villains on the stage were a gaggle of predatory billionaires, a textbook totalitarian tyrant, and the occasional Grimm. The gravest challenges were a hard-fought social war for the heart and soul of Atlas’ working class, and the risk of election fraud.

Maybe Robyn just doesn’t live in that world anymore; now she inhabits a world of gargantuan flying death-whale fortresses, Dustless magic, immortal witches, all torn straight out of the pages of a storybook. That, or maybe a mid-budget fantasy flick. Either-or.

Yearning for the familiarity of former normalcy, Robyn rummages in her coat, her efforts producing the scroll she’d swiped back from confiscation during the escape. She fingers the power button, and the holographic projection sleepily shimmers to life. Still has some juice, it looks like; she’ll go root around the cockpit for a charging port when she’s recovered the nerve to be around people.

She already knew she’d be pelted with [NO SIGNAL] popups the second she booted up, and even if the regional CCT tower wasn’t crunched into a crumpled bramble-heap of scaffolding right now, looking like it was squashed and gummed on by a titanic toddler, the only folks she’s got any interest in calling wouldn’t be in any position to receive it.

Robyn glides her thumb over the luminous surface of the holo-screen, tabbing through settings, contacts, on over to the gallery storage. Robyn may as well be clutching a stake over her heart, the way her finger hovers over the shrunken thumbnail for the most recent picture in the gallery. Wisdom tells her thinking about it will only ache all the more. Sentimentality tells her to do it anyway, coward, and Grief agrees – That’s two votes to one, and despite recent events, Robyn still believes in democracy.

Tap-tap, and the screen shifts, bathing Robyn’s face in a muddled blend of brighter colors, rather than the OS blue. The light shines up from the faces of her team, her family, not that long ago in the grander scheme of things – a shared selfie from a soft and silly moment, blissfully unaware that disaster’d been lurking just around the corner, and carried a pretty big crowbar to boot.

“Girls, really, you didn’t have to. I haven’t even won, yet.”

The Happy Huntresses’ grungy Mantle apartment – that is, the 12^th Street apartment, the latest hideout of many – had been thoroughly decorated with encouraging discount party store paraphernalia: shimmering streamers draped along the doorframes, a few of the team’s spare GIVE ‘EM HILL and SHOW YOUR TEETH banners plastered over exposed chunks of drywall, someone (probably Fiona) had even dug up a disco ball to dangle off the ceiling vents. It looked downright festive.

It had been the night before the highly-contested, hard-fought election for Mantle’s seat on the Atlas council. The night before the frying pan got fed up and chucked them into the fire. The night where there had been a glint of hope to spare.

Climbing up from their squashy gray sofa to meander on over, May sneered. “Now who’s being the team cynic? You’re stealing my gig, Hill; you can’t take that from me, where’s the honor among thieves?”

“Plus,” added Joanna, “Councilwoman Hill’s a whole two syllables cheaper than Future Councilwoman Hill, and you know how we are about frugality.”

Out from the doorway to the combination kitchen/laundry room/closet, Fiona traipsed up to the trio with her hands held wide, flat, and outstretched. One pulse of Aura and one activated Semblance later, the glowing palms produced a fresh and fragrant homemade sheet cake.

(“You could’ve just walked it over here,” muttered May. “It’s for the effect,” Fiona shot back.)

May had become the hobbyist chef among the Happy Huntresses years ago, but dominion over baked goods still lay firmly in Fiona’s court, courtesy of an old Thyme family recipe backlog, one of which had been trotted out that night: a chocolatey cake topped with salted caramel buttercream, cheap and simple, but inordinately rich, one of Robyn’s favorites. However, most notable of all was the artistic addition smack-dab in the middle, an absolutely ludicrous approximation of Robyn Hill’s very own features, painted out in gloppy, colorful frosting. One eye was bigger than the other, both were the wrong shade, her ponytail failed to fit on the cake’s frame and sloughed off the corner, they’d completely forgotten she possesses eyebrows...

Robyn sniffled. “This is the most hideous portrait of myself I’ve ever seen. I love it. I love you.”

Grinning, Joanna gave Robyn's hair a ruffle. “If that’s the case, promise you won’t forget all us dirty poor people when your ass is planted high-and-mighty in a fancy council seat, yeah?”

“Speak for yourselves, peasants,” sneered May, in an affected pomposity belying the absolute hatred of her heritage. “If she wins, Robyn might finally be worthy of speaking to a woman of my social caliber.”

Bare-faced joke or not, Fiona still tweaked the other huntress’ ear after she’d placed the cake on the coffee table, much to the ex-heiress’ squawking. Joanna separated the two before a silly slapfight could ensue, giving Fiona time to Semblance-suck up the other junk on the table and pop out paper plates and plastic tableware in its place.

“And like, we’re gonna be up way late in the evening for the final tally, and then the speeches, and interviews – we won’t even have time to celebrate to ourselves!”

“So, we can go over your speech package in the morning,” said May, serving up an uncharacteristically generous dereliction of prepwork which just about had Robyn double-checking that she’s not a doppelganger. “But let’s be real. You fought hard for this. You deserve it.”

Robyn willed her body out of its fondness-induced paralysis and shrugged off her outer coat, blindly tossed into the bedroom to be dealt with later. “I think you mean, we all fought hard. We all deserve it.”

By the time she reached the couch, May had already sliced up a neat rectangle of cake – the Frosting-Robyn having been given an incidental double-mastectomy in the process – and passed it over. “Yeah, but we aren’t the face of the movement. It’s not our faces on the TV, gods forbid.” She rolled her eyes. “And it’ll only get worse once you win. It’s a good thing you’re gorgeous, or else we’d really be in trouble.”

“Get a room!” teased Fiona, settling in with her own slice. “Or at least save any canoodling for after we’ve won! Victory canoodling!”

Gods, they were so hopeful. Enduring hope and rugged optimism in the face of unfathomable odds had always felt like Robyn’s forte, but even still, the pre-emptive celebration of victory had hit such excessive certainty that she simply had to try tamping down expectations just a little bit. Robyn wanted more than anything to see that future, to make plans, to build up both the city and the women she loved, no matter the outcome, win or lose.

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, girls. We’ve got our solid lead, but there’s still always a chance…” Robyn excised a chunk of cake to pop in her mouth, the explosion of sweetness a poor match for the sobering tone she’d been trying to hold. “We’re up against Schnee, after all; the man who only goes to the library so he can black out ‘play’ and ‘fair’ in every dictionary. Fighting the good fight might still fall short on this one. I just… I just want to say, I hope we make it, but no matter what – no matter what – I’m still perfectly happy to spend the rest of my life together with my girls, down here in our humble little home. Y’got that? Whatever happens, it’s the four of us, always.”

The weight of Robyn’s inflection silenced the room for a short spell, and strong as she is, Joanna was the first to lift it. She slapped her leader playfully between the shoulder blades. “Pfft! What are those, your wedding vows? No need to rush yourself, Robbie, we’re not going anywhere.”

“H-hah, yeah, I guess you’re right,” Robyn laughed distantly, around a sumptuous bite of dessert baked for her by a loved one, sandwiched in the center of a couch snuggling with her loved ones, watching terrible evening sitcoms to fall asleep with her loved ones, waking up to what could be the most momentous day of her life with those loved ones.

Hah.

Yeah.

I guess you’re right.

The crackly radio static filling the room ahead like marbles in a washing machine clears to make way for a voice in louder, professional monotone.

“Unidentified craft, this is Airship Dock Vacuo Proper. We have you on local radar, system is flagging your vessel as an unknown. Please report class, callsign, cargo.”

“Vacuo Proper, this is Mistrali Light Freighter Zephyr-62, transporting passengers– correction, civilian passengers, huntsmen, and Atlesian military, seventy-seven souls on board.”

“Acknowledged, Zephyr-62, standby… Descend and maintain 1,500, heading 110. Please confirm: craft is under military control?”

“Negative, Vacuo Proper; commercial class, independent, no armaments.”

“...Zephyr-62, wind is presently 270 at 18 knots, zero Grimm pings on flightpath. Approach pad B, docking clamps are open. You’re cleared for landing.”

“Cleared to land pad B, Zephyr-62, roger.”

Eavesdropping from her forward seat in the retrofitted cargo bay-turned-cabin of Yet Another Airship, Robyn takes that as her cue to stand and stretch. It’s been years since the Academy, so she’s a little rusty on her piloting jargon, but she’s willing to bet she can translate cleared to land as meaning this two-week-long streak of pitstops, ship-swaps, and constant layovers is coming to a close.

No more playing hopscotch across Mistral’s northern and eastern seaboards, spreading the word and the warning, trading news, all the while the Ace-Ops attempt to make sense of their upended chain of command.

At the end of the day, no matter what long-overdue acts of treason might’ve happened there at the grand finale, everyone’s favorite blueblooded brown-noser ‘Specialist Schnee’ is very likely the last surviving, most highly-ranked vestige of Atlas Central Command. Or at least, the last whose name doesn’t rhyme with Schmaroline Schmorschmovin.

That, at least, lit a fire under their bickering asses, and got them onboard with the obvious final destination of this misery-marinated pleasure cruise – the alleged dropoff point for the inexplicable magical portals: Vacuo’s Kingdom capital.

Getting there’s been another story. Grimm migration patterns have been thrown into the blender right alongside interkingdom trade routes and resource reliance – the entire Dust industry is wobbling on an icy cliff’s edge, for one – so between ships getting grounded by flocks of Grimm, refusing to fly without their usual freight, unable to fly without their usual Dust, and the Ace Ops’ dwindling clout failing to secure passage, Robyn wonders if they’d’ve all been better off hopping in a rowboat and paddling their way to Sanus. Ederne’s got the arms for it, they’d’ve made it in half the time!

Watching her feet, Robyn teeters through some dense clusters of huddled hunters, aid workers, and families, towards a scruffy sad-sack tucked in the back of the cabin, far away from anyone else and firmly curled in on himself.

She brings a hand out to tap Qrow’s shoulder, and retracts once she’s realized the man’s already awake, brooding in full effect. Branwen cocks his head up and meets her eye, and the pair share that low-energy nod of understanding, barely a jut of the chin.

Robyn can’t blame the guy for his lack of enthusiasm about arrival. For all he knows from the fragmented rumors they’ve gotten through the grapevine so far, the kids didn’t make it out – the kids that gave their all to protect so many, both a city of the ungrateful, and a city with nothing left to spare in gratitude… And to warn the world about the impending apocalypse, no less. Exciting times, here in Remnant, and Robyn’s feeling pretty nostalgic for the mundane.

Mister Five-O’-Clock-Shadow here’s known about this mess for ages already, already fought that war for years, lost his sister, his sister-in-law, and now it’s claimed his nieces, too. Robyn feels for him, but she’s learned she’s about as helpful as a paper pipe wrench for fixing this one. He's going to need real help and time to heal, far more than a failed councilwoman candidate trying to perk him up with cheesy platitudes. Especially when he’s got the experience to see right through her, see she’s dreading the confirmation as badly as he is.

“You ready?” she asks instead.

Qrow chuffs, low-hung head swinging from side to side. “Not even close.”

“Ditto. But at least we’ll know, right?”

“Mnh. Yeah. ‘Least we’ll know.”

Their mulling sulk-session is interrupted with a short rattle of the ship, followed by a shift in course. The drop in Robyn’s gut says they’re descending, and she turns to the nearest window she can find, a porthole in the bay wall to gawk through. Qrow keeps seated, but Robyn can imagine he’s been here more than once on his ultrasecret bird-spy adventures. Fair enough, more view for her.

Sprawling wide in the sunbaked flat of the sandy plain sits Vacuo, once upon a time the jewel of the desert oasis, now just a plain ol’ rock. Nowhere near the size and scope of mighty Atlas, it’s closer to Robyn’s own hometown in its spread, just… shorter. Save for the hulking pyramid of Shade Academy, the buildings rarely climb above a few stories tall, not like the lofty complexes and skyscrapers back h– Back where she came from, and the color palette’s brighter on the whole, buildings shaped with sandstone and adobe. Any patches of greenery, like the small, prized, and fiercely-protected parks stand out boldly amid all the earthier hues.

Compared to the predictable, angular urban grids of Atlas, Vacuo’s street-laying leaves much to be desired. Generations of re-re-rebuilding a city regularly stricken with quakes and sandstorms has left it a fractal pattern that makes Robyn’s eyes cross. The core of city, the square around Shade’s bulk, is coherent; it’s the boroughs further out where the roads themselves get fickle, randomly decide to peel off to hang with their friends from work, or chase a rat through the bazaar, or zig-zag ten blocks right into a dead end.

Just off the side of the city’s outer wall, like a frightened child clinging to Vacuo’s skirts, sprawls an unmistakable, undeveloped swath of makeshift tents and stone hovels by the hundreds, cheap and rudimentary, quickly constructed.

Robyn’s never been so happy to see a hovel, her first eyewitness proof that some of her city survived certain death. It’s only a brief high. The shanty town’s condition looks as bad as the Crater, if not worse – and that’s from a woman who spent a lot of time visiting, not just gawking from the railing or through candid drone snapshots.

Still, Mantle’s alive, in part; survivors to the last. Robyn can come away with that much, for all it’s worth, and whatever it’s worth is nothing in the face of her selfish need to know if she’s still got a home there.

“Attention! Hey, folks, this is your captain speaking! The Zephyr-62 is beginning its final descent to the platform – Everyone please gather your belongings and prepare to disembark in an orderly manner, thank you.”

Smushed against the hull to peep outside, Robyn can’t miss the steely complaint of the landing gears unfolding. That noisome leadership instinct nags at her to check on her team, and before she can bite back at her own brain about that choice of words, she’s already searching the cabin. When she double checks behind her, Branwen’s unbuckling his seatbelt, affixing Harbinger at the ready on his back. A safe distance across the ship and ultraconspicuous as ever in their perfect white getups, the Ops are doing the same.

Hareball’s zipped straight to the front of a line that hasn’t even formed yet, standing smack-dab in the center of the loading zone. Tree-trunk has to be careful not to club random civilians with her hammer just passing through the crowd. Fussing with his ascot, Wags flashes a Robyn seemingly friendly smile, in spite of everything. Decent kid. Might be a good fit for the Mantle community, if Robyn can knock some more sense into him – Wouldn’t be the first time she’s fast-talked a specialist type out of their commission and into a leftist theory textbook.

Whuuuuuuuuuuuh-whumf.

Robyn’s center of gravity goes haywire one last time, then stabilizes once the ship’s settled on its haunches. A susurrus picks up amongst the passengers as the doors crack open, the interior lights dimming while the auburn light of late-afternoon burns through the hatch, and the ramp descends.

Off traipse the Ace-Ops, still impatient and cocksure, bristling through to the fore of the crowd. They look pretty confident for people who haven’t the foggiest clue where Winter’s gotten off to, but they’re out of Robyn’s hair, now. The flecks of pure Atlesian white pop out from the nooks and slits in the crowd, fewer and fewer, ‘til they’re good and gone.

The more excitable element of the passengers have already bustled onward, abandoning civility in search of fresh sights or familiar faces. It’s only the laggards left, and Robyn figures that’s her cue to quit this scene. She triple-checks her gear, and plods out of the airship just behind Branwen.

Qrow trudges down the metal ramp first, looking for all the world like the husk of a man being blown around by a light breeze, moreso than guiding his own ambulation. Heavily, he lifts his head, expecting less than nothing. His eyes come back from that thousand-yard distance when he runs right into his welcoming party.

Some of his gaggle of kids have found him again, ganging up on the grizzled old huntsman with visible relief. The absence of a full set must still spear him with grief, and yet, there’s enough silver lining to catch the shine. A little hazel-eyed farmboy excitedly grabs onto one of his arms, while a boisterous redhead latches onto the other. Quieter, and keeping a partial distance, the boy with the pink streak and some minty-headed girl look on, with tired calm and fitful fidgeting, respectively. Their rapidfire chatter is drowned away by the hubbub of the dock, and his smile is hard, a slow-cracked jag in the ice that’s frozen him over in Atlas, with a warmth beneath. Soon, Qrow is dragged away through the throngs and towards the exits, ideally for someone to sit his ass down in a comfortable chair and help him get a kickstart through stages of grief.

Guess that’s that. Robyn wonders if she could be so lucky. It won’t be hard at all to find fellow Mantlers in this city – just go to the ramshackle hovel district and check for whoever’s complaining slightly less obnoxiously – but it’s only a certain set of Mantlers who could make her day one iota less of a miserable slog.

Robyn debarks, tangled up and tossed around in the flurry of passengers on their way through the port. Her attention is solely devoted to not contributing to the statistics for death-by-trampling when, between the shifting throngs, Robyn catches a glimpse – fleeting, likely inconsequential, but nonetheless a memorable bloom of short, spiky green hair…

She’s already shouldering her way through the crowd before her brain gives her legs the go-ahead, rudeness be damned.

There. Right there. It’s Joanna she sees first, shapely skyscraper that she is, but it’s Fiona who’s faster and makes first contact, the sheep faunus colliding with her like a fluffy meteoroid intent on burrowing into the planet’s core.

“R-ruh-r-rahb–“ Fiona sobs into her chest, and Robyn’s lower lip is fighting a losing war not to quiver.

“I’ll take that to mean you missed me, lambchop,” says Robyn, astounded at her own capacity to make words when her brain is shorting out.

Joanna joins the fray, descending from the side to squeeze Robyn in a hug so tight Jo might crack her like a chemical glowstick.

“We both did. And don’t play pretend like you didn’t miss us both right back.”

Did she ever. Robyn draws back for a second to get a proper look at them. The touch of Vacuo is already visible in their outfits, leaving Robyn the last still rocking their old team getup in full. Fiona’s traded in the longcoat for a lightweight taupe coverall, speckled with stains of oil and spent Dust residue, making her look like the cutest little greasemonkey in town.

Joanna’s shucked the coat as well, flaunting her muscles and taunting sunburn in her sleeveless white muscle shirt, buried under the buckles of a locked and loaded utility harness, and stuffed into a set of desert-camo cargo pants.

To cap it all off, both women have taken to keeping thick desert goggles on hand: Joanna’s pushed up on her forehead, Fiona’s dangling from their strap around her neck.

They look great.  Granted, Robyn might be a smidge biased in that statement; she’s just so happy to see them alive she’d still be smitten with their looks if they’d strode up in trashbags labeled ‘We ♥ The Oligarchy.’

Robyn chuckles, loosing a hand to wipe away some less-than-suave moisture from her eyes. “Of course I missed my girls, I had no idea what happened to you three after I got…”

Wait.

Robyn’s cardiac system goes arctic frigid, clamping her in place, all save for her head whipping up and out of Fiona’s fluffy hair to frantically scan her girlfriends’ faces.

Joanna said, ‘both.’

“Where’s–?“

The terror on her face must’ve been child’s play to read; Fiona drops the hug entirely to waggle her hands in the air between them. “N-no, she’s alive! Don’t worry! May’s fine! We’re all fine!”

Robyn tilts her head to Joanna. “She is?” The reconfirmation would help; her heart’s refusing to hit the brake on the breakneck pace it started.

Joanna retains one hand on Robyn’s shoulder, carefully kneading the muscle, while the other tips the sign for so-so. “Alive ‘n breathing? Yes. Fine might be a stretch, she’s been–” Joanna swerves to change course when she spots the next question’s in Robyn’s unblinking stare, as well. “No, she didn’t get dramatically mangled, so don’t worry about that. In fact, May’d’ve probably come today, too, but…”

Here we go. Robyn should’ve expected this, May’s modus operandi for stressful situations. “But she’s been doing it again?”

“Again would imply she’s stopped at any point since Atlas.” Joanna cautiously ushers the trio out from the center of a crowded airship dock, to spare the group the need to shout the foibles of their intimate relationship over the din.

“That tracks.” Robyn slows, unfolds her scroll, flashing her Huntress license for the customs official on their way through. “So, how bad’s it been with you three?”

With the global CCTS still dead as dirt, licensure sync updates for the Hunter’s Guild were getting delivered manually on recurrent interkingdom flights once a week. Being as everything in Atlas went pear-shaped faster than you could say ‘Fascism,’ Ironwood’s revoking of licenses for Robyn and the gang had never officially made it to Vacuo… and now, never will. The customs official’s scanner pings a pleasant chime, and they wave the group along.

“When you got bagged, we all had to split the bits of your job between us,” says Joanna, fingers trailing back into the bristly spikes of her hair. “It was easier for me ‘n Fi, I think, since we were the ones in the field – we had the adrenaline going for us, and the tunnel vision. May didn’t, since she was running comms and mobilizing evac. Strategizing, day and night.”

“Yeah, out of the old burger pub,” Fiona laments, ovine ears a-drooping. “I’m gonna miss that place, too! Bug Burger just doesn’t cut it out here, their fries are too squishy – But, anyway!” The sheep faunus jogs out ahead of the others, walking backwards while she continues. “We were all scared when you didn’t come back, but me ‘n Jo still crossed our fingers it was a temporary thing, y’know? It got to May faster than us.”

Joanna gently tugs one of Fi’s hands to keep her from drifting, just in the nick of time to dodge collision with a salty-looking local. “Case in point – we used to check in on every big passenger flight that touched down. Only lasted a week. After a while, it… got to be too much. May stopped coming up here first. Even I stopped for a while, only came up here if I was already in the district when a ship swung through, but Fiona…”

“One of us had to keep believing, right?” Something’s broken in Fiona’s voice, and Robyn’s heart fractures right along with it. She tries to keep the pieces together by screeching their procession to a halt and hugging Fiona again, any disgruntled looks from fellow pedestrians deemed irrelevant.

Fiona holds back any further sniffles from her hefty stockpile, and lets go with a smile that’s starting to look more genuine by the minute. “Back at the start of this, though, we were all still in sync, even May was still listening to us! She was already on a hair trigger that first night, when it was just the evacuation, but we could still pull each other out of our own heads! Ever since we got set up out here, though…”

Gotta rip the band-aid off sooner or later. “Give it to me straight,” says Robyn. “How rough are we looking on the Scale of Girlfriend Distress?”

Fiona pops a mock-military salute. "As of 0600 this morning, we have reached Condition Weltschmerz, steadily approaching Tequila Sunset!"

This comes as little surprise, and just as little comfort. "Oof. You never let it get Tequila Sunset bad." Robyn’s lucky she arrived when she did, to glue any incipient fractures flush together again. “And what about you two? How many kisses does Love Doctor Robyn need to prescribe for your symptoms? Please be candid with me; I’m a medical professional, and these discussions are strictly confidential.”

Joanna pulls an extra giggle out of her shortest girlfriend by giving Fi a brief noogie. “Ah, don’t worry. A couple short-lived fights aside, we’ve still been treading water, somehow. Not that you’d believe it in Drought City, here.”

“Hey!” Fiona baps Jo on the abs. “Don’t play all modest; I wanna milk this mood for all the kisses we can get!”

These ridiculous women. Robyn sheds some of that gunky residual grief as she laughs, jogging a pace forward to cut between the pair, arms asymmetrically draped around their shoulders. “Then I guess I’ll see if I can make it worth your while.”

“We lost that many, huh?”

If flowers weren’t at a premium in the desert, Robyn thinks, she’d truly like to lay some down.

The group had taken a minor detour on their way to show Robyn her new home. They’d only meant to swing through the market, grab some takeout for dinner and a few convenience store essentials, but the winding paths dragged them past this place, and… Robyn couldn’t not stop.

A short skip from the center of the ramshackle township sloughing off Vacuo’s outer walls like landfill runoff – colloquially dubbed New Mantle with varying levels of sincerity – there squats a broad slope of a hill. The hill isn’t much of an incline, accessible off the main road without trouble, and demarked with a knee-high border of rock. And dotting that hill, from base to peak, stand countless carved stones, which could only still number in the hundreds with a generous sense of optimism.

The graveyard for the lost: Those who fell with the city, those who went missing in-between, those who were lost to the resulting Grimm that swarmed the portals, and those whose constitutions failed soon thereafter from the shock of their new environment.

Thing is, as Robyn’s just learned, Vacuo was never that huge on formal ‘graveyards’ to begin with. A nomadic culture as far back as the long-gone days of the oasis, Vacuan tradition has mostly been given to more naturalistic rites, varied across the tribes and caravans. Sky burial’s apparently still a big thing, as many with remains in their possession opted to make the funerary trek out to that high spire interrupting the eastern horizon, and render up the empty wrappings of their loved ones to the elements and creatures of carrion. Other times, they'd simply bury the fallen where they fell, unmarked, leaving nothing but their memory to carry forward as the group journeyed on.

But, most Solitas folk aren’t so familiar with that business, and besides, nearly all the bodies they’d be looking to offer are the same Robyn had watched floating down the icy rivers of crumbled cities, far out of reach. Thus, in lieu of some grandiose Atlesian mausoleum, a nearby patch of tundra, or a carved nook in the caverns of a decommissioned mine, this is the best they’ve got. The initial batch of stones are rudimentary, carved out by a Dust mage with some Earth Dust skill, not the hands of an artist, little effort spared for presentation… All except for one, just up the hill – the group’s final destination on this detour, as they take their time wandering through the sprawling field of familiar names.

“Yeah. We’ve been trying to get a census on the survivors. Running into a lot of old faces try’na link up with relatives, you know how it is.” Joanna’s face blanks as a thought occurs, followed by a sudden exhale of silent laughter. “You’ll never believe who we found alive.”

That can mean just about anything. Robyn won’t bother pitching out a guess, and just asks “Who?”

“Pumice.”

Of all the people from the bad old days… “You’re shitting me; the Spec-ops Professor? Adding a squeeze of lemon to his water’d be too much excitement for his crusty heart to take; how’d that old bat survive the apocalypse?”

Fiona has finished with her quick prayer over a family member from the Crater, and rejoins the pair, matching their pace. “I’m more curious how he survived calling May ‘Mister’ Marigold to her face during the headcount.”

The bitter callback lands better with Joanna, who’s also seen the deteriorating state of their fourth in real-time. “For real, and while she was armed – I was thinking, did the dude actually want to die? Or did going through the portal zap ‘im blind? He can see her tits, right? Tssh. Speaking of the school years, at least we know Roscoe bought the farm. Good riddance.”

“And Cruller,” Fiona adds quietly.

Robyn deflates with a puff of air through her teeth. “Crap. I actually liked Cruller.”

“You liked Cruller,” chides Joanna, “because with him, you could finesse your way into skipping class. Guy was still kind of a chauvinist jerk.”

Fiona’s lips purse into a thoughtful pout. “Actually, jerky or non-jerky, maybe we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead – especially now that we’re here.”

“Fair point, hon.” Robyn punts a stray rock away from the base of the small monument before them. “At least we know they deserve the rest.”

Between many of the most notable names of the community laid to rest at the height of the slope, here, in pride of place, is a taller slab of polished grey granite. Beneath the pyramidal top is carved a pair of crossed axes amid a laurel wreath, that hallowed emblem of the late Beacon Academy. And beneath, in painstakingly etched lettering:

RUBY ROSE | WEISS SCHNEE

BLAKE BELLADONNA | YANG XIAO LONG

JAUNE ARC | PENNY POLENDINA

Lost, not forgotten, here are humbly honored

 those young Hunters who survived the first Fall

 and died saving so many from the next.

“There was a bit of bitching about what symbol to slap on top,” Joanna explains, “because, y’know, the twerps weren’t all from the same Kingdom. Technically didn’t all attend Beacon to begin with.”

Robyn moves to wipe the monument clean of some sandy buildup from the breeze, and in a reverent murmur, bids the kids enjoy some rest long overdue. “Right, right, the Doc’s kiddo. Speaking of which, did we ever find out what happened to him?”

Fiona siphons the fragrant bag of carryout she’s carrying into her Semblance, freeing her hands to give Robyn’s bicep a rub. “No… Nothing on our end. Had kinda hoped you’d heard something on your way here. We only know about Penny ‘coz of Winter, she was the one who said it was fine to put Penny under Beacon’s sign.”

There’s a snort from behind them, Joanna shaking her head. “You should’ve seen it. Last week when everyone was settling in, someone asked Winter why she thinks she knows so much what Penny’d prefer. Schnee near-on bit the guy’s head off, all piss and vinegar and eyes on fire. Screamed ‘It’s what she wants’ and flew away. Because she can just… do that, now.”

“Gods help us all,” Robyn concludes, giving the memorial one more respectful pat in parting, before starting down the slope. “She was a pain in school, she was a terror in the military, now fairy tales are real and the Ice Queen’s a holy myth figure. Whatever force of cosmic karma decided to give superpowers to her of all people needs to sort out its priorities.”

Given her own karma, Robyn half expects the woman to be standing right behind her as she says as much, but that’s not the case today.

“I still want to slug her for sticking by Ironwood ‘til the eleventh hour,” Joanna admits, “but I’m not gonna act like she hasn’t been putting in the work at helping keep us alive.”

Huh. Gut feelings would’ve had Robyn guessing Winter’d cloister herself behind a vanguard of military dregs and refuse to walk around in broad daylight, lest she catch a wicked sunburn or a bullet in the back from any of the groups with a standing grudge against her. “That’s some unexpectedly lofty praise from one of my own. What’s she been doing? Rescuing orphan faunus babies from Blind Worms? I’d say ‘pulling cats out of trees,’ but...” Robyn makes an impassive wide-armed shrug towards the general everywhere of Vacuo.

Glibness aside, it’s a genuine response Joanna offers in return, mildly bewildered even as she explains. “Oh, she’s been all over the place. In one corner, she’s corralling ex-soldiers and ex-cops not to go rogue on us, to keep ‘em strong enough to defend the place if things get violent. Then, she’s busy flexing that magic of hers to raise up stone for the shelters in bulk, and shoring up our outer wall. All that, on top of killin’ Grimm and dodgin’ people’s requests for The Divine Intercession of a Maiden In The Flesh. No lie, on Monday I saw some Fraternists trying to get Schnee to touch their clothes for a blessing.”

Yowza. “A saint she certainly is not,” grumbles Robyn. “Does she even sleep?”

“Hell no. She almost makes it out like she’s try’na to make up for what she did as a supercop, but I don’t think it’s that noble.” Joanna grimaces, having a wordless conversation of facial expression with Fiona before finishing: “She probably just doesn’t want to work through her shit. Wants to go all-in, nose-to-the-grindstone ‘til her brain’s too drained to think.”

The trio sigh in tragically-synchronized unison, each dawning on the same, immediate mental association. “That sounds like someone we know,” says Robyn, putting voice to the collective thought. 

Fiona adjusts one of the sagging belts on her coverall. “No wonder their parents always wanted ‘em to hook up. They’d be a perpetual motion machine that runs on impostor syndrome.”

“Eh,” says Joanna, with a notable hairsbreadth more concern for Winter’s wellbeing than if she’d said ‘Who cares.’ “We can’t do anything about Schnee’s ongoing clusterfuck right now, but we can get our own house in order. Speaking of which…”

At the corner of Not-Yet-Named Street and Unsurprisingly Nameless Boulevard, in this expansive bug splatter of low-grade domiciles, stands a blocky, two-story outbuilding that may as well be a skyscraper in the eyes of its stubby neighbors. Another contrast is its age: unlike the shorter stone homes and tent-structures of varying complexity that have sprouted from the sandy plateau all around it like particularly determined weeds, this building’s clearly been here a while. Long enough for its former owners to inflict the wear and tear of clumsy repair for a few years, then give up entirely.

There’re no points awarded for figuring out who’s currently laid claim; Robyn couldn’t mistake the sight of her own emblem if she tried, especially not in stark, reflective safety-white graffiti on the front of the building, spraypainted with a stencil blown up as tall as she is.

It’s a little intimidating, realizing that her girls had thrown that symbol up with the clear knowledge it might be a final tribute to her freshly-croaked self. “That’s us?” asks Robyn, pointlessly, to fill the air.

Taking her complicated smoothie of emotions for actual confusion, Fiona hops in to explain. “Yep! It used to belong to the city guard! It was one of their lil’ perimeter outposts for the hunters working night watch and distance patrols, but…”

“But when we all got here,” Robyn extrapolates, “it wasn’t the ‘perimeter’ anymore.”

“Pretty much! Though, they might’ve been looking for an excuse to ditch it to begin with. It IS a little run down, I’ll admit.”

Robyn travels a few paces backwards, squinting up at the waist-high sandbag walls on the building’s flat top, beneath a propped-up, swishing tangle of camo-netting. “Hm. I imagine the lookout on the roof’s a pretty good vantage of town… Have we got power? Air conditioning?”

Fiona’s focus drifts to the rusty grey metal of the boxy Dust unit glommed onto the side of the building. “Yeah! Er… Sorta. When it works.”

“Indoor plumbing? Bathtub?”

“Thankfully.”

Taking a second to think about the final, most crucial factors, Robyn steeples her fingers under her chin. “Do we have a landlord?”

“Nope!” chirps Fiona.

“Then we’ve got ourselves a mansion, as far as I’m concerned.”

After languishing in the aftermath of whatever high-concept, modern-fantasy BS came nipping at those Beacon kids’ heels to tear a city from the sky and crush another beneath, Robyn’s calling time-out. She deserves a quick break; she’s had more than enough fantasy – or more recently, post-apocalyptic – shenanigans for one lifetime.

Robyn needs some domesticity. She needs the kind of mundanity that a night with her girls can bring, be it cuddling or indecently cavorting. She needs a chance to talk to them, to really open up about important feelings, about… well, she needs to settle in, first.

The irony is they’ve been living in homes this ‘quaint’ for as long as they’ve lived – one former heiress excluded – but at the time, they were slumming it under a city of far-more luxurious lodgings. Now, their digs are statistically above-average, perfect to christen as the new Happy Huntress Home Base. Robyn’s so accustomed to calling it a hideout during their later years being passive-aggressively hunted by Ironwood’s cronies. Even though a chunk of that military survived disaster, they’re out of their jurisdiction now, and the Happy Huntresses can afford one static place set up for the long haul.

The entrance opens straight into a sizable rectangular ready room turned living room, where hunters were once filled in on their mission briefs before being turned out into the sands. It’s bizarre, seeing mismatched bits of their old apartments’ kit – a painted pinewood coffee table here, the triple-cushion couch there, that standing lamp, all in common Atlesian monochromes – cast against the backdrop of chalky, Vacuan sandstone architecture, flooding it with a critical lack of feng shui.

Fiona had grabbed everything she could during the final evac, or so she’s claimed, stretching the limitations of her Semblance and split 20/80 between their own junk and more useful supplies for the people. Said supplies’ve already been spent, but some furniture and personal items remain, enough to  look lived-in and not like a crummy ad for vacant real-estate.

There’s an interior column near the center of the room and cornering the ‘conversation pit,’ stone the same dusty texture of a crusty baguette stood upright. Already, Robyn foresees myriad bruised foreheads during refrigerator runs for a midnight snack.

Just adjoining to the west side, and half obscured by a mid-height counter, is a utilitarian kitchen add-on, complete with a four-seat metal dining table. As for the rooms further down the hallway, Robyn can’t guess as to their purpose, because her attention’s been wholly stolen by the stairwell. Gods, how long’s it been since Robyn’s lived somewhere with a second floor? Better keep herself humble before she turns into a snob.

“So! Welcome to…” Fiona wiggles her nose. “Actually, I don’t think we’ve really given it a name. Chez Hill, maybe Fort Hill? Can we do that? The Hill House? Wait, no...”

Robyn hums. “Being as you thought I might be dead, I don’t think my name’s on the lease, sweetheart.”

“Shaddup, you’re our figurehead,” gripes Joanna. “We’ll name things after you if we damn well please.”

Breaking off from the others, Fiona drifts over and around the counter, flicking on a light over the kitchen space. “Gimmie a minute to unload stuff, then maybe we can give you the full tour!”

Left alone with Joanna at the threshold, and with their faunus girlfriend momentarily distracted, Robyn is soon seized up into a tighter, unrelenting hug, a crushing steamroller of softness. “You asshole,” Jo whispers, in utmost fondness. “Really had us thinking we’d have to hack it without you.”

Robyn’s arms fold around the taller huntress, head resting against her shoulder. “Look who’s talking, miss ‘teleported across the planet and left my leader behind.’”

Joanna doesn’t sniffle, but her shoulders still rock with a suppressed huff of gratitude.

“We just… got locked into our panic positions. You know how it is. Had to toughen myself up and be the badass backbone bitch that night, and every damn night after. Fi had to be the heart, ‘n she couldn’t stop either, no matter how hollow the cheer’s been getting in the face of all this shit. May had to be the nerves… and she’s gone and fried herself. She’s been doing more spirals than a drill-bit factory, ‘n the rest of us weren’t that far behind her, but...”

But now, Robyn has the chance to unlink her arms, bring them around and up, to cup behind the nape of Joanna’s neck. “But I’m back. Now we can split the weight, like always.”

Fiona returns from stowing away some of their miscellaneous groceries, and begins de-summoning their bags of carryout onto the dinner table, emancipating them from their plasticky confines. Through the oft-inexplicable time dilation of Fiona’s storage void, the boxes still steam with thin, fresh plumes of pure zestiness, and Robyn’s stomach rumbles impatiently –  there’s some köfte in there with her name on it.

Joanna disentangles from the tender moment before too long, potentially an effort to preserve her unassailable butch credibility. She starts for the kitchen, helping dole out the plastic silverware.

Though Robyn would love to rush over and gorge herself on something besides brick-flavored travel rations for once, there’d be a missing place at the table, and that she can’t abide. Not to sound pathetically needy for asking, but Robyn reiterates her question from the airship dock. “So, where is May, anyway? Did she step out, or…?”

Two arms, one on each girlfriend in the vicinity, mechanically crank a finger back towards a doorway on the opposite side of the living room, built into the northern wall, one of the few thresholds within the building Robyn’s seen to feature a full-standing, wooden door.

Joanna’s the only one that clarifies: “You’ll find her in the war room.”

“Hold up! I thought we changed it to ‘tactical command center?’” asks Fiona, who certainly isn’t already sneaking bites off her doner kebab.

“Uh, you nerds did, I’m still holding it down for war room.”

Robyn opens the door with the caution of a woman expecting a trip mine. It swings outward without a creak, for which Robyn offers the wood a grateful mental fist-bump. No real knocking yet, though, not ‘til she knows what she’s dealing with.

Grandiose titles aside, the Happy Huntresses’ new ‘tactical command center and/or war room’ remains, inexorably so, a garage – permeated with such wonderful, heady fragrances as Eau de Motor Oil.

Lowered and locked for the evening, the silvery rolling shutters are wide enough to roll a dune buggy through, and if Robyn had to guess by the piles of automotive scrap randomly flung to the farthest reaches of the room, said buggy never made it back out again. The more pedestrian exit just to its side has seen the door’s glass elements blotted out in a crinkly mess of chrome, duct tape wrestling down layers of aluminum foil into a pin.

Thusly shielded from that overbearing Vacuan sun, the room’s light comes from smaller, caged bulbs strewn through hooks in the rafters to dangle above the various workstations: The repair bench co-opted for weapon work and reloading Dust rounds, a large, freestanding whiteboard covered in neat, marker-smudged columns and rows of patrol scheduling, the makeshift map table forming the centerpiece, and the muttering, finger-drumming, leg-bouncing huntress who’s chosen to occupy it.

May. There she is, the last missing piece accounted for, alive and ostensibly well. Robyn’s heart buoys to see her, just enough that it adds some room to sink again, observing her condition from afar. Even at a scant look, it’s tellingly rough.

In the midst of the smoothed cement floor, propped on arms spread wide over an upended double-wide shipping crate, with a massive swath of drafting paper for a frayed and flimsy tablecloth, May pores over maps and Grimm reports, tracking probable nest locations, areas of density.

While Robyn’s other girls have made modifications to their wardrobes, befitting this bitch of a climate – She’s been here all of two hours and already misses the frost – May, like Robyn, remains clad in the hallmark Happy Huntress longcoat and its associated accouterments. At least Robyn’s got the excuse of her nonstop, meandering travel plan barring her ability to bulk up on clothes; she can only assume that for anyone who’s been here a few weeks already, it falls neatly into either stalwart denial of recent lifestyle changes, or cantankerous spite towards the elements, with a cheeky dash of ‘I literally have zero sense of self-preservation’ sprinkled on for taste.

May’s crossbow-staff lies in pieces across one end of the map, ostensibly disassembled for repair and abandoned midway once another new obligation elbow-dropped itself onto the pile. On the other side, blotting out Vacuo’s trade district, is a toppled cairn of energy drink cans, the sorts of acidic beverages banned in two-to-three other Kingdoms and advertising vitamin supplements that don't even exist to Robyn’s limited pharmacological knowledge. What in the hell even is guarana, anyway?

Strategic analysis concludes that to impishly shuffle in for a surprise hug from behind now would get Robyn elbowed in the face. Since she enjoys keeping her nose bridge in one piece instead of two, she does the polite thing instead, rapping her knuckles on the threshold. “Knockitty-knock. Anybody home?”

To the credit of May’s training, her flinch is subtle. Motionless for seconds that stretch towards ages, she pulls a quick quarter-turn, enough for a fleeting look at Robyn, then angrily through her.

May checks her corners, then growls as she returns to her map, voice distant and disaffected: “I don’t know which one of them put you up to this, Em, don’t know why you thought it was smart to play along with it, but I’m warning you: What I DO know is which stretches of desert aren’t assigned patrols, and where precisely I will bury you if you don’t cut it out.”

Oooookay, there! Not quite the reception Robyn’d planned for in the more optimistic daydreams across a dozen long flights: The vision of an emotional ex-heiress leaping into her arms and latching on like a touch-starved koala joey. Getting threatened with violent sand-entombment wasn’t on the docket, but hey, Robyn can work with this.

She pulls the door closed as she bodily enters, in the hopes the illusion of privacy might loosen her lieutenant’s lips a bit. Robyn saunters up behind May and steadily slips a hand up behind her shoulder… Then opts to be daring instead: she darts the last few inches over, clamps fingers around the wrapped bundle of May’s ponytail, loops it once as is her custom, and tugs.

“And who’s this ‘Em,’ exactly? I’m hurt, Princess; did’ja forget my name already? Because I have it on good authority you can moan it pretty loud when I–”

Oh, now that gets her attention, bless her gay little heart.

May whirls around on the spot, her wrapped ponytail whipping over an empty water bottle as it goes, to the tune of two hollow plonks on the floor. She reaches for Robyn’s sternum as though terrified what will happen if she touches, expecting her body to be made of crumbling ash, or vapor, or that glowy goo crap ghosts’re made of in the movies. There’s nary a glob of ghost-goo to be found, and the disbelief is gradually traded in for plain old shock.

“Robyn…?”

“Threatening to murder me right out of the gate isn’t part of our usual protocol, but I know how things are, don’t sweat it. Though I imagine that’s a bit of a challenge in these parts.”

Robyn’s least happy Happy Huntress is fighting her hardest not to bawl in sheer relief. Whatever May’s been through has given her the grit to maintain a level of terse neutrality well beyond her perennial moodiness. Now that Robyn’s got her turned around, she can really size up the situation, see what she’s working with when it comes to the other woman’s state of mind.

May swallows thickly. “Took you long enough.”

The other girls had often joked that May's eyes were – appropriately, for girls like her – yellow as the yolk of a fresh-cracked egg, a fast track to seeing those eyes roll like flipping ‘em in the skillet. Now, they're the yellow of sad and sickly things, dark-ringed beneath like exertion physically slugged her in both eyes. Slow, not darting, as they fall off to the side like an unwatched pencil.

There’s not even a lick of tan on her, attesting to having kept cooped up in this command garage of theirs more often than not, and that duties outside are spent invisible for as long as she has spare Aura to safely burn on it. A few shining tracks of new, healing scar tissue etch her upper chest, cheek, and forehead, and it’s difficult to estimate if they were souvenirs from the siege or all that came after.

The only leniency she’s seemingly given her personal dress code is to loosen her torn, tangerine scarf while in private, laying bare some blatant sentimentality on her part. Even now, May’s still sporting that special choker they’d gifted her some years ago: the loop of hardy burnt-ochre leather boldly crested with the Happy Huntress emblem, and much like every member of their group, it looks like it’s aged years in a matter of weeks.

So, she’s probably still a romantic sap, it’s just a question of how much back strain Robyn’s gonna catch pulling her back out of a slump and over into the living room.

“You wanna come have dinner? Fi dragged us through a local place, snagged some of that unconscionably hot chili chicken shawarma she says you like.”

The rapidfire bunching and unbunching of May’s shoulders telegraphs her internal conflict about as nakedly as her face. After an unduly long pause for such a simple suggestion, May returns to the table.

“Maybe later, just… leave mine in the fridge. There’s still work that needs finished tonight, and no one else is chomping at the bit to do it.”

“Work that I’m confident will wait long enough for basic bodily needs like food and sleep and PG-13-rated snuggling with three hot girlfriends. You look like you need to take a break.

"I don't need a break,” May lies through her teeth, “I'm fine. Worry about them, not me."

A sour feeling crystallizes, shatters, blows away on the wind in a matter of seconds: the barebones feeling of hurt that May isn't enthused about her return. Robyn knows better than that: knows from the badge on her chest, the band at her neck, and the quake in her voice that May is still hers without question – but she’s running on autopilot, the hazard contingency, and no one's been able to shut the machine down for maintenance.

"Oh, I'm sure you are," Robyn fibs right back. "But as for me? I’m jetlagged, I have a heat headache, my charming wit has been dulled by the near-apocalypse, and I’m finding myself in need of a little R&R after an interkingdom flight. Add the fact Jo and Fi are having some emotional aches of their own, and a good girl like my Princess wouldn't leave us wanting for comfort, would she?"

There’s a hiss, a mouthing of something just short of profanity. "Tch. I'm not stupid. I know what you're doing."

“’Course you do. And it’s still working, isn’t it?”

“Mrhg,” is May’s refined and elegant retort.

Robyn’s going to have to start breaking out the big guns. Hope she hasn’t gotten rusty these last few weeks. She reaches around and pinches May’s chin between two fingers to pull it over.

“Hey, sweetheart? Look at me. You’ve got ‘til the count of five minutes ago to get your pert little butt out there and help your girlfriends decompress.” It’s been a few weeks since she’s had to put That Voice into practice, all the more reason to brush it off and finish with a classic flourish: “That’s an order, Bluebird.”

Robyn clicks the timer on her mental stopwatch and sets out for the exit back to the living room. She doesn’t make it to six before a low groan sounds out from behind, as does the rustling of papers rolled up, the clatter of empty cans cleared away, the click of an emergency radio shut off.

Eeeeyup. Still got it.

With the last of her wayward flock in tow, Robyn returns to the living room, where the welcoming party has now been assembled in full.

“Heeey! Check it out!” cheers Joanna, to May’s immediate disgruntlement. “Look who–“

“If you start with ‘look who came out of her cave,’ I’m going right back in there and nailing the door shut.”

Jo snorts and hooks May right out of Robyn’s grip with a headlock, resulting in a lot of incoherent bluster from the bluenette. “Oh, no you’re not, twerp!”

The pair roughhouse for a spell, as is their wont, and end their horseplay perched against the back of the Atlesian couch, with Fiona leaning onto the inconvenient load-bearing baguette pillar.

Everything drains into a loaded silence. Finally reunited, the group helplessly stares at one another, with oh-so-much and oh-so-little to say all at once. They’ve got a bowling ball’s worth of sentiment and status updates, and only a pinhole to push it through. If they start now on all the what happened to you’s and the are you hurt’s and did you lose anyone we don’t know about’s, they’ll be here ‘til the city's early risers start setting up their market stalls.

Putting her former high-society petulance to good use, May grows impatient and smashes the silence clean through. “So, what now? We can always fall into a heap and blubber over each other for a while, since I'm banned from being productive tonight, but I’m obligated to ask if there were any other big plans for the evening?”

And Robyn had drafted some big plans. Workshopped a half-dozen methods of approach, from the lazy to the lascivious, some more daring than others. In the end, she doesn’t need to drag out any sort of pageantry to make it a momentous night.

“Y’know, I kept myself warm on the nights flying here dreaming of what would be waiting for us, if we’d all survived. I’d roll in dripping with moxie, fingerguns blazing akimbo – the timeless sexual dynamite each of you know and love – but truth be told… I’m a little tired for that. I want to get some imminent business out of the way, I want some grub, I want to rest… Honestly, I just want my girls.”

With boundless understanding, Fiona speaks up for the group: “That’s okay, Robyn! We can chill!” (“In this climate?” snipes Joanna) “As long as we’ve got you back, we’re fine with an uneventful comeback!”

Curse her own dagger-sharp wit; there’s an opening here, and Robyn could take it so easily. The time doesn’t quite feel perfect, but if she keeps delaying this much longer, keeps running the risk of life taking away her shot entirely, she’s going to burst into a mess of unfulfilled gay viscera. She’s made big, life-changing, relationship-altering choices on less pretense before, hasn’t she? Screw it; once more unto the breach.

Robyn raises her hands for pause. “Now, hold on there, honey-mutton. I said I didn’t have much of a libido, I never said tonight wouldn’t be eventful…”  

Here goes nothing. Factoring in what she’s been through in recent memory, the cataclysm she’s crawled away from, this has no right to be so damn daunting. Robyn coughs her throat clear, adjusts her lapels, and – in a single smooth motion – drops down on one knee.

The instantaneous reaction is about as predictable as anticipated, with just enough confusion to give it some extra zing. A murmur ripples through the other women assembled: Joanna’s “Holy shit,” an “Ohmigosh, it’s happening” from Fiona, and May with an “Is she seriously–?” stilted in abject disbelief. 

“Now, you all know as well as I do that my inspiring, award-winning speeches aren’t worth jack if I haven’t had preptime and a proofreader, and being as I was half-convinced I’d never see you girls again, I’m working with neither. Plus, there aren’t words beautiful enough to capture how I feel about you all, so I’m quite likely about to make an ass of myself. Record this, and you’re fired.”

A hand begins fishing in the custom-sewn secret pockets on the inside of Robyn’s coat.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about this over the years – us, what we have together, what we’ve made together – and I had plenty more while I languished in a hard-light cell, where no amount of ruthlessly dunking on Jacques Schnee in the scrawny flesh could stop me from worrying what was happening to you three. I already had to wonder whether I’d survive to see you again, and that was before the city I’ve lived under all my life falls and crushes the one I was born in. Had me thinking I’d lost my home in more ways than one… Now, I’ve got my girls back, and they’ve got me.”

It undoubtedly frazzles the audience when Robyn steadily withdraws what appears quite similar to a cheap, matte-black sunglasses case. That’s on account of it being a cheap sunglasses case.

“This is absolutely not the right time for me to be doing this, but look – I just can’t put it off anymore. I have to try, even though I might only be slapping an extra label on what we’ve already got, because I don't want to lose our chance to prove it to the world while there's still a world left to whom we can prove it. And I’m well aware there’s only so much celebrating and self-indulgence we can afford when we know we’re up against extinction, and the batch of kids who’d already been fighting that fight for us have already bought the farm. We’re staring down the end of the world, ladies, and there’s no one I’d rather be holding hands with when the curtain falls than you three. In that spirit of desperately clinging to what matters most, I ask you, my dears, my beloveds, resplendent wings of my soul...”

Robyn pops the case open with a smirk that runs the narrow canyon between charming and shit-eating.

“...Y’wanna maybe get hitched and stuff?”

That convenience store pitstop on the way over had paid romantic dividends in the form of props for this smarmy display Robyn’s putting on. The case itself, for its convenient size, and its thematically-appropriate contents: two Green Apple JewelPops™.

Robyn haughtily plucks the tiny plastic rings and their cartoonishly large, sugary-green lollipop gemstones out of their plastic packaging, and offers them up. One to a giggling Fiona, another to a Joanna, cheeks puffed in her refusal to let out a laugh – But to May, Robyn smiles innocently, and waits for the inevitable question. Any moment now.

“Hey! Hey, alright, hold up – where’s my ring, huh?”

May’s (honestly valid) consternation falls right into Robyn’s trap. She gives May a roguish wink and eyebrow-waggle while canting her head a few degrees, double-tip-tapping at her throat, eyes flicking to that personalized choker peeking from under May’s scarf. "Oh, we did you first years ago, sweetheart."

Blood makes a stampeding rush for her face. "My– That’s– That isn’t an excuse! I still want my ring!"

"Whoa there, bridezilla!” Robyn leans aside, shielding her mouth with the back of her hand as she stage-whispers to the others. “Yeesh, Atlesian women, am I right?"

Playing the peacemaker, Fiona claps her hands. “Actually,” she pipes up, “I think I might have something that can help resolve this little problem! Aaaaand… Presto!”

Now it’s Robyn’s turn to be speechless; the object Fiona’s withdrawing from her shimmering Semblance is instantly recognizable, one that Robyn never in her wildest wonderings thought she’d see again, not without renting a submarine and spelunking into the sunken, death-filled deep of Old Mantle.

Balanced across Fiona’s palm is a rectangular box of lacquered walnut wood with a brassy clasp and hinges, six inches in length, which she pops open gingerly and lifts up the lid.

Squeezed into a pad of forest green velvet, all in neat row, sit four deceptively elaborate rings: the bands, a bright, brassy-hued tungsten, resemble stylized wings, bending around to link tips beneath. The settings of each have been inlaid with heat-treated, energy-depleted Dust crystals in four distinct shades: Lavender, light brown, gold and green in irregular, freeform gemstone cuts.

The egg’s on Robyn’s face now, and she sputters senseless incoherence as Fiona begins blithely passing them out to the others. “You knew? The whole time!?”

Fiona finishes with her own green-capped ring, transferring her JewelPop™ to her right hand to make room for the real deal on her left. “Why are you surprised? Even before Atlas fell, you’ve been leaving me to lug around this ‘ooh mysterious box ooh but don’t open it though’ for like, five different apartment moves! You even forgot to lock it, once – they all spilled out inside my Semblance!” Her hand sucks the case back inside, and the faunus admires the shine in the overhead light. “Plus, old Mr. Quartz always kept looking at our left hands weird when we’d bump into him at the community center? Almost like he’d sold some custom stock to a certain someone, and was expecting to see them show up on her certain someones any day now?”

“A whole damn year. You are a tiny, adorable menace.” Robyn huffily slides her ring on with less fanfare than she’d’ve managed on her own terms, then makes grabby hands at Jo and Fi. “Fine, if you’ve already got those, give me the candy ones back, maybe I can still return them for the half-lien each!”

Joanna immediately jabs the candy ring in her mouth, and makes it a point to make as loud a wet pop as possible when she pulls it back out. “No takebacks.”

“Yeah,” cheers Fiona. “On these, and on us!”

May – looking for literally anything to be performatively grouchy about instead of letting the dam break on her levee of ecstatic tears – proceeds to sulk: “Sure, that’s all great. I still want my candy ring, too. Because... equality and such.”

Drawn to mischief like a shark to blood, Fiona skips over with a glint in her eyes, and pulls May down to her level by yanking the drooping end of her scarf. “You’ll take what we give you and like it,” she murmurs sotto voce, and pecks her cheek.

May doesn’t say much more after that, lungs left devoid of oxygen supply after a shrill, flustered, punctured-bagpipe wheeze. With Miss Crankypants (Soon to be Mrs. Crankypants-Hill-Thyme-Greenleaf) momentarily incapacitated, Robyn retakes the helm and steers the ship back on course.

“Anyway! I don’t want anyone to feel rushed into this blind fool idea of mine. Like I said: we’ve got ourselves a world on the brink, so it’s not as if I expect us to set up a party when our people are barely scraping along.” Robyn rests her hands on her hips, exuding a confidence she’s faking ‘til she can make. “On the other hand, I think my fiancees–“

Whoa; sparkly flutters in the belly just from saying it aloud. Gonna take some getting used-to, possibly by means of littering it into every last conversation ‘til everyone in town gets sick of hearing about Robyn’s good fortune.

“...Deserve better than getting hauled through a drive-thru chapel. I wanna do right by the women I want to spend my life with. Sooner or later, we’ll find a comfy lull in the End Of Days, and that’ll be our time to shine. Granted, polyamorous unions aren’t recognized anywhere outside Menagerie, but since when have we been prone to mind the law in times of unfairness? We can still do it here.”

Cocking her head, Joanna quirks a brow. “N’yuh-huh. That’s just a copout to skimp on taking us for a beachside honeymoon.”

“We’re in Vacuo now, it’s ALL beach,” Fiona counters conclusively.

“The hell it is! Desert’s desert!”

“The sand here,” Fiona gestures, “is touching the sand that touches the other sand that touches the water! Bada-boom, one big beach!”

(“I think we’re losing the plot here,” warns Robyn. “Girls...?”)

“Is that all it takes? Cool, let me just fill a glass from the tap and sprinkle some sand inside,” May forces out with painfully fake enthusiasm. “Oh, wow, instant beach. Who’d’ve thought?!”

“I’m divorcing you pre-emptively.”

Robyn’s palm swiftly finds her own face with a fleshy whap. Beneath that outward gesture of utmost exhaustion, she’s powerless to stop smiling.

After stuffing their faces with a wealth of Vacuan carryout for dinner – Joanna obliterating a glass of milk ‘because she needs to keep her bones strong’ while May snickered into her ghost pepper shawarma – Robyn receives a more formalized tour, one which conveniently ends upstairs, in an old office space now dominated by a bed advertised to sleep three, and which they’ve never had trouble cramming with four. Another carryover from the Solitas chapter of their lives.

Moving in pairs for speed rather than other, indecent compulsions, they squeeze into the showers for a quick rinse-off, Robyn personally promising herself a longer soaking tomorrow which she doubts her lovers will deny her. She’ll emerge a big, blonde prune, one lacking the distinct funk of long-haul travel.

Down to black track shorts and an old workout tee, Robyn utilizes the last of her athletic vigor to toss herself into the bed, face-first in the pillow. “Again,” says said pillow, in Robyn’s voice, “I apologize the exhaustion’s denying you all my legendary mastery of the carnal arts this evening.”

The fact she can tell which subsequent shoves and flicks and ruffles come from whom without even having to lift her head is just another sign she’s made the right decision tonight.

“Give it a rest and get some rest, dumbass,” says Joanna, as Robyn’s rolled onto her side, whereupon a muscular arm snugs her in, sturdy as the lap bar on a roller coaster. “We’re already marrying you, you don’t have to flirt like your life depends on it.”

“How cruel! You’d deny me one of my foremost off-duty hobbies?”

“One of your least-respectable off-duty hobbies.”

May finishes typing up some final patrol movement orders on her scroll (“It’s not work-work, I just need to hit send,” she’d promised) just in time for Fiona to swipe it from her, lain out of reach atop the dresser on their end. May rolls inward towards Robyn and gently clonks their foreheads together, leaving an invisible smear of moisturizing cream smudged on Robyn’s. “Why stop her now? She’s already barreled well past the lower limits of respectability my parents would’ve approved of in a spouse. Tunneled right into the bedrock.”

Why, the nerve! The gall! Robyn clutches a set of imaginary pearls she’d never once dare to wear in her life. “That’s a whoops on my part – And you know how much I’d hate to ever drag you down to my level. Here, Jo, roll me over, gotta get at my scroll.” Robyn blindly gropes for the nightstand, for effect. “Any of you know Winter’s number, by chance? May needs to marry someone with class.”

May chuffs. “The day Winter willingly answers a call from you is the day pigs fly.”

“Fantastic news: you just jinxed us. Now the creepy Grimm-witch is gonna whip up some winged Boarbatusks, and that’s on your hubris, hon.”

There’s a round of dry laughter soon smothered by the sour reality of the situation, and not for the first time in her life, Robyn regrets her hipfire quips. “Sorry. Murdered the mood a bit, there. I know the foreseeable future’s not brilliantly-lit, that’s for sure.”

“Yep,” Fiona agrees. “I think retiring to a cozy little farmhouse in northern Vale and raising cattle is gonna have to wait...”

Robyn snickers. “Now there’s a surprise. You actually want to be a cottagecore lesbian?”

“I like to keep my options open!”

This would be the time to reach over and give a rub just behind one of Fiona’s ovine ears, if Robyn could reach her, but she’s a bit blocked by a drowsy bluenette. Fiona clings to May’s back, jetpack style, arms tightly bent under her chest and legs locked around her hips, all while settling settling a chin into the crook of May’s neck.

It’s a diabetes-inspiring sight, and the time Robyn takes to marvel at it provides a chance to laser in on another, minute detail about the two, one that has her craning her neck back to check on Joanna just to confirm the damning evidence:

“Hold on a hot second, have… have ALL of you been wearing my old sleep clothes? Even after I not-died? You pilfered the comfy schlub clothes of the deceased? I name thee knaves and graverobbers!”

“It was just another way to feel close to you!” Fiona beams, at the same moment May drones: “It saved us having to do laundry as often.”

The beleaguered team leader’s head plomfs back to the pillow. “If you weren’t too small a size for me to steal from, so help me…” The retort is rudely interrupted by a long yawn, and the energy between them dims down as the day approaches its end, a few lazy, minty-fresh bedtime kisses shared as they settle in for good.

It’s quiet for a minute or two, until Fiona tosses out a quiet question for whosoever is still conscious: “So… are we going to start telling people? Like, that we’re engaged, and stuff?”

“Dunno, shortstack,” Robyn replies. “Even if we’re not tooting our own horn about it, even if they don’t scope the rings, somebody’s gonna overhear something, someday.”

Joanna stirs, arm abandoning Robyn’s waist to seek out where the blonde’s lain a hand limply on the sheets, and clasps it from above. “Y’know, speakin’ of overhearing… the walls here might be even thinner than some of our apartments’ve had. Worth keepin’ in mind.”

Wow, subtle as a brick through the window of a glitterbomb factory. “Pff. Good, let 'em hear. Let the neighborhood know Robyn Hill’s returned and she loves her girls to death and back.”

The women making up the other end of the bed are so truly zonked that their complaints at the crassness come in the form of incoherent groans. Miraculously, they still possess the wherewithal to plop their left hands in a dogpile on top of the pair of rights already laying between them, stacked four high on the sheets.

Jokes have bowed out and left the building for the night; Robyn dips her head in for one last kiss atop the clump of held hands. “Here’s to a life together, however long, and whatever we make of it.”

“Hm-rmm. Happy Huntresses, happily ever after?” asks a drowsy May on the edge of consciousness.

“Heh. I hope so, hon. Happily ever after.”