Cinder wasn't satisfied with that cop out.

"Talk about what?" she demanded.

"You know what." Royal echoed her words. "But now isn't the right time, is it?"

"I don't know what," Cinder said.

Royal sighed. "Cinder, why do you think I act the way I do?"

Cinder began to feel strange--partially wary, partially something like excitement but more nauseating.

"Like what?" She feigned cluelessness.

No, this was not the conversation they were having, she thought. Not at all. This was about something else.

"The others keep saying just to talk," Royal remarked, as if to himself. "I wonder if they know just how difficult that is... You know what? Forget it."

"Wait, are you just giving up that easily?" Cinder went from embarrassed to insulted. "It couldn't be that important, then. To make such a big deal of it and then drop it."

"I really think you don't want to hear what I have to say." Royal sounded a bit more upset. "So what's the point?"

Cinder went quiet for a moment.

After reconsidering if she wanted to start this, and finding that the idea of stopping it was just too torturous to commit to, she decided to just bite the bullet.

"This is about that thing Mercury talked to me about, isn't it?" she said, less confidently than usual. "He said something to you also."

"No, but that confirms that he did say something to you," Royal said. "He's such a...narc... No, that's not the right word. Well anyway, he's not very trustworthy. What did he tell you?"

"I'd rather not say." Cinder would much rather not say. "It was...idiotic."

"I'd rather not say either...so both of us are going to sit here in awkward silence." Royal folded his arms. "Maybe I am an idiot... What would I know anyway?..."

He shook his head. "Honestly, I don't know anything. Maybe you get it... Maybe you don't. I didn't plan for it to turn out the way it did, but it did."

"Make sense," Cinder said sharply, but in her head she was begging for some clarity.

"I can't." Royal shook his head. "Just forget about this, all right?... Maybe Raven should consider not assigning us to the same teams so often."

What was he saying now?

"Where did that come from?" Cinder asked. "Did I do something to you?"

Well, of course she was usually a jerk, but...not more than usual.

"Yeah, maybe," Royal said. 

"What? Specifically?" Cinder frowned.

Royal was thinking to himself that there was really nowhere to start.

Be specific? Like he really could be.

Like, telling her that since the first time they'd met, he'd known something about her drew him like a magnet, and over time that had only gotten stronger?

Or should he explain that it was getting harder and harder to focus on anyone else while on a mission, and he had to force himself to look at and talk to them instead of her?

Or that he asked her friends about her because he wanted to know more and more?

No, he couldn't say that. She'd kill him.

Well, not really, but she'd freak out, and that was almost as bad.

Yeah, how did he explain that the whole reason he never talked about this was because he knew that would mean the end of their rocky friendship? How could he ask for more when she was barely okay with that?

Heck, he wasn't even sure she liked him, though he'd begun to have more hope lately that she at least didn't hate him.

Very complicated woman, Cinder...and very afraid of herself. 

"Specifically?" he said out loud with a touch of bitter irony. "I can't narrow it down that much."

Cinder frowned at him again.

"You're mad again, aren't you?" Royal said, not even upset now. Just resigned.

"I... Should I be? That didn't help. If I bother you that much, why are you still here?" Cinder said.

"I suppose because I don't want to be anyplace else," Royal remarked.

That one answer should have told Cinder plenty, but she refused to acknowledge it.

"What does that mean?" she insisted.

"I don't know... Can I ask, is the only reason we ever...talk, because you have to for your job?" Royal asked.

Cinder blinked. "I... What does that have to do with this? You said you had a problem with me."

"I just want to know, would you say we're friendS?" Royal said. "As a friend, there are things you can say to someone that you can't to a coworker. Would you say, based on all the conversations we've had about our pasts, our ambitions, and other stuff, that's where we're at?"

"I..." Cinder felt uncomfortable again.

But it wasn't unfair to ask her to answer that...

She hugged her sides. "Why would it matter...? If you have something to say, say it."

"No," Royal said. "I won't. Unless I have your trust."

"My trust?" Cinder said.

Now that he had an idea of what he really was after, Royal felt a little less unsure of himself.

"Yeah," he said more confidently. "If I don't have that, I'm not going to explain myself. There's no reason to bring stuff up if it can't be heard. I don't think we can really talk, unless you trust me."

"Why...? But...what kind of question is that? Do you trust me?" Cinder demanded. Despite her angry tone, asking that was actually much harder than she thought and made her feel strange.

"Yes." Royal sounded so confident, it knocked her for a loop.

"What?" Cinder was dumbfounded.

"I trust you." Royal nodded, without a glimmer of hesitation.

"You...me?" Cinder sputtered. "But...why?"

"I think you've more than proven yourself," Royal said. "Maybe I didn't always trust you as much as I would now, but even from day one you showed yourself to be on the right team... Your relationship with them was rocky at best, but it was still the right time. That's good enough for me... Usually I can't be sure where a lot of people really stand, but when their life is on the line, it shows. And since then you showed you can be an intelligent person to discuss things with, so on that side, yes, I would also trust your opinion. I don't agree with it all the time, but I trust where it comes from and why. That's all you can ask of anyone, right?"

Cinder blinked in confusion.

"But that's me," Royal said. "And we both know I'm far more trusting than you are--for good reason, I admit. I can't say I blame you, and I've tried my best not to mind...but I can't just decide on a whim to throw every caution out the window either. So if you're not there yet, then, I don't want to talk about anything that might be too much. Is that fair?"

"Too much... So you're saying that whatever this is that you won't tell me, it's because I don't trust you?" Cinder said. "How do you know what I think?"

"Well, you haven't answered yet. That's not a good sign."

"I...I can't answer that," Cinder said. 

Royal gave her a long look.

"Well, then I can't explain," he said firmly. "I'm sorry. And I imagine that's frustrating. I'm sure it is. But I can't help it."

The thing was, Cinder already knew... She might not admit it to herself. She might not really understand it yet--it was still just an instinct rather than a thought--but deep down, she knew.

There was only one reason he'd have refused to explain on the basis of trust. If it was that he was angry with her, he wouldn't have bothered to ask for trust, as anger would drive someone to say it no matter what. And she knew Royal's anger by now did make him do things recklessly.

So that meant it was something more complicated than anger.

And that really left her with only one conclusion.

And that meant that if he refused to say it, she couldn't exactly say anything herself.

It was kind of genius, if he'd been trying to mess with her. She only had one way out of this.

"How can you expect me to trust you anyway, if you're not answering me?" Cinder said.

"I believe your own friend, Miss Likstar, once told you all that she couldn't tell you things until you were ready," Royal said. "And at first you hated that. But in time you saw that it wasn't that she didn't trust you, it was that you didn't trust her. I think she herself would agree with me if she was here to ask. Some things can't  be said until you have some confidence. I guess you'll have to believe me on faith for that..."

"But who are you to decide when I'm ready?"

"I'm not the one to decide that, you're right...but let's just say I wouldn't be ready, unless you did feel at least reasonably sure of my trustworthiness," Royal insisted. "Call it a me problem if it makes you feel better... I should go so poor Jaune can come back in and finish your treatment, all right?"

Cinder stared at him strangely.

He got up and went to the door and paused. "Cinder.. since I know how you tend to interpret things...I'm not mad at you, all right? Maybe at myself, but not you. Life just doesn't work out to be like a storybook, right? People take more time than books do...so don't worry about it. I wouldn't lose sleep over this."

He went out.

Jaune came in shortly thereafter to finish.

Cinder said nothing to Jaune at all.

But since she was clenching her fist, Jaune finally said, "Are you okay?"

"Jaune," Cinder said, so abruptly that it was clear she hadn't really listened to his words, "what would you think if Pyrrha told you that there was something she couldn't tell you unless you trusted her?"

Jaune was confused but decided not to show it.

He thought.

"I think there are things Pyrrha didn't tell me till she was sure I trusted her," he said. "One thing was that she loved me."

"That?" Cinder said.

"She didn't tell me that till I brought it up because she didn't want me to feel like I had to do anything about it," Jaune explained. "And the other things too...like things it's hard to talk about. She let me bring it up. She's...a lot braver than I am about stuff like that, and a lot wiser, so I have to catch up to her a lot. But she always gives me time to and never quits because I don't get it."

"I don't see why she'd be so afraid to tell you anything if you're such great partners." Cinder frowned.

"Don't you think sometimes it's just not fair to put something on someone if they don't want you to?" Jaune asked. "I think I knew she liked me, deep down, you know? But I wasn't ready to ask her about it. When I finally did, she told me the truth... Now that we've had to deal with kids, I get the same thing with them... There are things you just can't say till they're ready to hear it... I hope that helps."

"Worst fears confirmed, if that's what you mean by help," Cinder said. "I hate it when people hide things for me."

"Well...Cinder, maybe they don't want to, but if you're going to hide from them," Jaune said, "then they can't help it. You remember that book Shine gave Salem and we all read later? 'How can the gods see us face to face till we have faces?' I think people are the same. You can't expect them to be honest with you if you can't be honest with them."

"And I'm not honest?"

"You're brutally blunt," Jaune said. "But honesty is about knowing how to say the good and the bad and the stuff you're not sure of. Not just the negative. That's easy. Anyone can be a critic. But to really be honest? That's not easy for anybody... It goes wrong so many times. I used to envy people who could lie better than I could...but you know, now, I'm okay with it. It's risky to tell the truth, but if you don't, how do you know any answer you get is real? Lies might be easier to swallow, but they don't do anything for you in the long run."

Cinder shook her head. "What planet are you from, Arc?"

"Same as you, Cinder," Jaune said. "I think you're about healed. I should probably go help the others. You should probably take it easy for at least another hour before you try to do anything. Keep your own Aura up."

He left.

https://youtu.be/0eP4draTJ_0

[Mitski-- "first love/late spring"--My sister thought this song would fit Cinder, and once I read the lyrics, I realized it really kind of does. Though it may be a bit early, so call it a harbinger.]

* * *

Cinder was lost in her own thoughts while she waited in the sick bay and kept her Aura up to make sure she finished recovering.

She was in one of the stalls, but she'd completely hid herself behind the curtain so no one would have seen her from the outside deck or halls.

The door opened, and she assumed it was Jaune or one of the others, but wasn't in the mood to even speak to them.

And the second after that, she realized it wasn't them, in fact, because the person didn't look for her.

They just went to the back where there was a cabinet, of medicine probably, and unlocked the combination lock on it. Then they opened it and rummaged around.

Cinder thought little of this till they spoke in a low voice.

"They're ready."

Then the person left.

Cinder saw their silhouette, and they looked like a Faunus with horns, wearing a long white lab coat.

Suspicious, she got up as softly as she could, slipping her shoes off, and followed them.

She just caught the sight of a coat going around the corner and towards the stairwell that led to the upper deck.

She raced after them, pulling out her scroll.

Unfortunately, the ship was kind of old, and the floorboards suddenly creaked under her weight, even as light as she was trying to walk.

Carp! Only Neo could have navigated--Neo!

Cinder began to text her: "Caught someone in sick bay, a faunus is--"

Suddenly the scroll seemed to grow heavy in her hand, and so did her eyelids... She fell to the floor.

"That was a close call." One passenger came stepping around the corner. "Mino is d--- lucky he had me watch his tail, since he picked up a tail... Who is this?"

She picked up the scroll. "Texting Neo, ey?"

Cinder had either consciously or subconsciously pressed the send button before passing out.

Neo had already responded: "A faunus is what? And what are you blooming doing here?"

"Best not to worry Neo, now." the passenger typed out: "Nevermind, false alarm. They were just looking for the restroom on this level."

Then she pocketed the scroll.

"Hypnosia?" Mino peered down the stair. "I thought I heard you... What's this?"

"You can't even sneak into a sick bay without getting caught," Hypnosia said, with chagrin. "This woman was following you. I don't think she was looking for conversation either."

"Let me see." Mino came closer and tilted Cinder's head up. "This is Cinder Fall," he said, with outrage. "On this ship? Our tips said she was still in Argus."

"They're onto us," Hypnosia said. "Dash it all, she probably saw you drop off that package."

"She wasn't in there."

"Did you check everywhere?"

Mino hesitated. "Well...there might have been one curtain shut...but I heard nothing."

"How could you be so stupid?" Hypnosia whacked him on the head.

"I call this a golden find," Mino said. "We can dispose of her right now." He began to lift his large foot.

"Stop right there, you idiot." Hypnosia shoved him away. "You know our orders are to take her alive if we find her. If we even could. She won't stay out for long. Besides, if you kill her now, we'll be noticed. No one knows she left that room. Maybe she was sick. No reason she can't take a little nap in there and feel refreshed. Bide your time."

"I don't like to let a chance like this slip away," Mino said. "Who is responsible for our condition but them?"

"All things to those who wait, you bullheaded git," Hypnosia said impatiently. "Help me move her a-- back in there."

Mino did so begrudgingly.

"Can we at least rough her up?" he asked.

"No marks! Too suspicious," Hyponsia insisted. "But I'll make sure she doesn't wake up for a while."

She rummaged through the supplies for a moment. "Aha...sedatives...at least a two-hour one... m Maybe there's better, but someone might come looking if we push it."

She injected Cinder with one.

"We could do anything, you know," Mino said.

Hypnosia gave him a look of disgust. "All you men are the same these days. Time was you wouldn't have tried something so low. Contain yourself, you sicko."

She huffily motioned that they should leave.

"Women." Mino followed her with a last disdainful glance at Cinder.

* * *

"What do you mean?" Roman asked Neo, about 10 minutes after this had happened. "Slow down, Neo."

"I got 'problem', but that was all."  Oscar had learned some sign language in this time. Neo often still used it when especially agitated.

But she slowed a little.

"Cinder texted you," Roman said, hand on chin. "Said there was a problem with a Faunus in sick bay...and...then... Let's see... Lie?--no, false or false alarm? So then what's the problem?"

Neo held up her scroll and pointed to the message, then motioned something else with her right hand only.

"Cinder wouldn't write that," Roman said. "She would be sure it was suspicious before messaging... You think someone else has her scroll?"

"We'd better go check," Oscar said.

They rushed for the stairs.

They narrowly missed Mino and Hypnosia leaving the area themselves, but they were already gone when they rushed in.

"Hey, guys, where are you going?" Jaune saw them. "I was just going to check on Cinder again. We're docking, and they're going to want everyone on board to report in for inspection...or we can send her back."

"That may not be possible," Roman called.

"Jaune?" Royal came from where he'd been in the game room. "Is she okay now"

"Uh, I don't know. I guess there's a problem." Jaune went after the others.

Royal at once followed him with a worried look.

Neo became one with the wall almost as she opened the door to sick bay. But no one was in it, and nothing seemed out of place.

But then, still maintaining her disguise, she pulled aside one curtain, and there Cinder was.

She resumed her usual form and motioned at the others.

"I declare," Roman said. "She's asleep? What was she, delirious?"

"No, this isn't right," Oscar said. "She was awake before. She wouldn't be asleep all of the sudden, not her."

"Let me see." Jaune pushed past them and felt her pulse. "She's alive, guys. Do you think she just fainted?"

Neo made some motions dubiously.

"'She just fainted and is laid perfectly on this cot?'" Roman translated. "That's also suspicious. No, you can see this set up a mile away, Arc. Someone should try to wake her up."

Jaune shook her. "She's not waking up. Maybe she's concussed."

Neo began to look around the room.

"What happened to her?" Royal demanded.

"Neo says someone was down here," Roman said. 

"Someone like the bandits or pirates?" Jaune asked.

"She didn't know. Cinder just sent some message about it being some Faunus, and then another on about it being a false alarm, and that's out of character," Roman explained. "As if someone else had her scroll."

"And they knocked her out and put her in here?" Jaune said.

"How would they know to put her here though?" Oscar said. "How would they know if she wasn't here already?"

"Then they saw her in here. This isn't that hard, Pine." Roman swung his cane, nearly knocking over a lollipop basket on one desk.

Neo suddenly motioned at them and held something up that she'd plucked out of the waste basket.

A syringe.

"Is that a drug?" Royal asked, in a very ghostly voice.

Neo shook her head and projected these words: "It's technically a sedative."

"Let me see." Jaune took it. "Oh...I know what this is. They use it at the medical center in Argus for hysterical patients... Don't worry, it only lasts for a few hours. It's pretty safe, unless you're highly sensitive to it, but I don't think Cinder would be."

"Someone wanted to shut her up for a few hours then," Roman said. "Or just keep her quiet while they escape. I bet they're already getting off the ship."

"They can't leave till the inspectors let us off," Oscar said. "So what did they want?"

"If it was a problem in here, any number of possibilities come to mind," Roman said. "But if they were simply looking to hide, they could be after anything."

"Or they could have been looking for Jaune," Oscar said. "Maybe we should search the room more."

They did, but didn't know how to open the cabinets.

"We need someone who's on the medical staff here to open this," Jaune said. "But if the bad guys didn't know it either, and there's no signs of it being tampered with, maybe it's safe."

"Unless the bad guys are on the medical staff," Roman said.

"Better let Raven know about this," Oscar said. "We might need the elite squad here after all. Should we tell everyone else?"

"We don't want them to panic," Jaune said. "And we don't know who we're looking for. If they freak out, that could bring Grimm. And, also, it will alert whoever it is. Maybe if they're still around, we can figure out who it was... There has to be some way to counter that sedative, but I don't know one. The other medics were all on deck with the children and other workers before the mandatory inspection is going on in Menagerie before they'll let us on the island, some kind of procedure that's usual for large groups of people, I guess."

"Well, that makes sense. They're an island--they can't be too careful about letting anyone who's sick onto it," Oscar said.

"Then the culprits are probably trying to blend in with the doctors. Why don't we go after them?" Jaune said. "Blake will know who the doctors are. She's had to get checked on by them."

"And you're sure there's nothing else they did to Cinder?" Royal asked.

"Unfortunately, there's no way to know that unless they left a mark..." Jaune said. "I see one for the sedative." He held up her arm. "But they didn't kill her, so that tells us..."

"That they didn't want to get caught doing anything that bad," Oscar said. "They know if they killed her or she disappeared, we'd have reason to put the whole ship on alert. They must not want that...so who is it? The pirates, the bandits? Or both."

They shrugged uncertainly.

"Royal, you stay with her," Oscar added. "Think about it, if the pirates are here, they know what you look like...and so do some of the bandits. We've been here the whole time, so that can't give anything away, but if you suddenly show up, it will. Let's hope they didn't see you before. Then you can tell us if she wakes up and remembers what happened."

"Yeah...well, her memory could be a little fuzzy after that," Jaune said. "Depends on the person... You know, I'd say they knew what they were doing if they knew to pick that one. They could have picked something really dangerous if they just grabbed a sedative or pain meds."

"Let's just focus on getting help," Oscar said.

They all rushed out.

* * *

On deck everyone was trying to get into some kind of organized line system.

"This has been the longest 10 days ever," Sun grumbled.

"It was 9 days," Blake said. "We caught that current that sped us up a little, remember?"

"It was still long," Sun said.

"At least you weren't throwing up over the side for 3 days in a row," Blake said.

"I'm sorry...but the doctor said you're doing just fine," Sun said. "And it goes away, right?"

"Eventually, but my mom said it took her months to stop having it," Blake said. "What if I'm like that? This would suck for months."

"Guys," Oscar hissed, sneaking up to them, "we have a problem..."

After he explained, they were both on high alert.

"How could they be here?" Sun said. "We haven't left this ship since it left Argus."

"We've seen everyone on it," Blake said. "I think...if there was any Grimm or anything else like that..."

"I don't know," Oscar said. "I didn't sense anything either. But...there had to be some opening for them..."

"Oscar," Ruby, who'd joined them by now, said, grabbing his arm, "when we docked...people got off... Do you think more of them got back on than got off?"

"Ruby, we took roll call," Oscar said. "I mean, we didn't, but the captain and crew did."

"There is the ugly possibility that some people were replaced while they were in town," Roman said, tilting his hat.

They all looked around the deck.

But the children at least numbered anywhere from 50-75, counting the ones who belonged to people already and came here just for extra safety.

And the adults, who were either their guards or the guards from Argus, numbered at least 40, plus the crew, plus some normal passengers and merchants. All Faunus. 

It could be any of them.

Jaune was talking to one of the medics.

"Counter it?" they were saying to him. "First, how do you take a sedative by accident?"

"Maybe they thought it was for something else," Jaune said.

"They're pretty stupid then...but we might be able to counter it, but I need authority for that. Does this person have a family member on board?"

Of course not.

"Jaune?" Pyrrha, with Lux on her hip, walked over. "Is something wrong?"

"Yeah, something," Jaune said.

Just then the plank was being lowered so that people could start exiting the ship.

"They have the booths set up for you to get inspected," a guide from Menagerie was saying. "Please exit this way."

"Finally," they heard Gira say loudly.

"We'd better tell him what's happening," Jaune said.

"Whoever it is will have to get inspected before they can go anywhere," Oscar said to the others. "We should watch the medical stands. Maybe see if anyone looks suspicious."

"Ex-White Fang members and little, bratty kids," Roman said. "What's not suspicious about that?"

"Royal, be serious," Oscar said sternly. "We have no idea what's being pulled here. And it's literally under our noses. I thought you said you'd be good at spotting this."

"Well, this is a little beyond my experience," Roman said, ruffled. "But of course we can look, right, Neo?"

Neo donned a medical outfit.

"Deja vu-ish," Ruby said.

"She's going to go blend in with the inspectors for a closer look," Roman said. "And we can watch from here."

Neo did so, and they all tried to take position.

While they did this, Blake and Sun went to look around the ship to see if anyone was hiding below deck, but they didn't find anyone in the next hour.

Jaune had contacted Raven to let her know something had gone wrong, to which her response was: "just freaking perfect."

But she sent Obsidian, Claw and Piper, and Weiss and Meridian.

"She'll send more help if we see a lot of 'em," Meridian said. "We need to find the Grimm. There have to be some on this ship."

"I can't just pipe for them to show up with all these children around," Piper said.

"No, we need the others to be off the ship first," Weiss agreed. 

It took an hour for that even to happen. In that time they didn't find anything on the ship.

Jaune finally got one of the medics to come and check the sick bay with him, but they didn't want to unlock the cabinet for him.

"We're the only ones allowed to open those, for legal reasons, and we can't just give you medicine," the medic insisted.

"Okay...look, I didn't want to say this, but we think someone might have gone through this room," Jaune said. "And is there any way they could have taken something?"

"Only if they knew the combination," the medic said, eyeing the cabinets. "And that would make them one of us."

Since he was not a Faunus, Jaune figured he could not be whoever Cinder saw, and hoped that ruled him out.

"If it's an emergency..." The medic reluctantly opened the cabinets.

But since they had no idea what they were looking for, all they beheld were medicines for ailments that were too dangerous be over-the-counter available to people on open shelves, shots for sedation, and vaccines for some of the few diseases the Remnant people got that were viral.

"Nothing new here," Jaune said.

"Well, I haven't done inventory since last week. It wasn't my turn," the medic said. "But the others would have reported it if they were missing anything."

"Unless they're the one who stole it," Jaune said.

"There's not enough here to be worth stealing, and who would steal from a ship's sick bay? We're not outfitted like a hospitable. This is the basic stuff. I don't even have IVs," the medic insisted.

"There has to be something they'd be interested in here," Jaune said.

He peered at the shots. "None of them are missing?"

"Mr. Arc, while I certainly can see why the thought of sedating those little terrors would be tempting, it's illegal and not easy to cover up," the medic said. "And nothing is missing, see...?" He held up his scroll. "I just pulled up the inventory for today, and it still matches what's laid out here."

Jaune didn't really know for sure that whoever had come in had tampered with anything. Maybe they just took the sedative. It just seemed odd that they'd pass up an opportunity to steal more things if they could.

He told them what happened to Cinder though.

The medic was convinced to bend the rule when he heard that the Argus leadership might be involved in this, and then he didn't intend to get in trouble with them.

But...well, even so, Cinder wouldn't be awake for at least 20 or 30 minutes, best case, and likely not clear-headed for a while after that.

Jaune felt this was too much time for the culprits to steal off the ship.

He left to keep looking.

* * *

On deck, Kali, who was now in on the problem, had been looking around the deck for anyone she didn't know, but she hadn't known everyone to begin with. She couldn't be sure...

There was a hold up in the human line suddenly.

Neo was close enough to hear, since she was still disguised.

"You're not vaccinated for the Water Fever?" one Menagerie nurse was saying.

"Is that a problem?" the female guardian of one child was asking.

"Well, you were supposed to be up to date before you came." They held up some paperwork. "Most Faunus are immune to it, but humans who visit and get bitten by bugs that live in the bays can get very sick. There's a vaccine for it that will last at least a year."

"I wasn't told about this," the woman said.

"I'm sure it was in the transfer application you filled out." The nurse didn't sound very sympathetic. "There were health requirements you had to meet to be admitted. You should be thankful we're letting you stay here at all."

"Why, you--" The woman was an Atlesian, based on her attitude.

"Okay, lady, let's not get all excited," said the huntress behind her. "Can they get that shipped here?"

"Yes, we carry it, but so few humans come here that we probably only have a small supply at our hospital," the nurse mused, twitching her...were they mink ears? "I think we brought some with us though."

"Right here," a different nurse said, wheeling up a case. "How many humans are in this batch?"

This was the line for just humans...and Neo had noticed it was so far a lot stricter than the ones for the Faunus who were being let in with a very rudimentary inspection.

She spied an obvious bias here.

"Our count is 30 humans, counting adults, and nearly 3 times as many Faunus," a huntress, who was also a Faunus, supplied.

"I think we have 20 or 25 in stock," the second nurse said.

"So little?" the woman guard asked.

"It's not at the top of our priority list to refill," the first nurse said rather tersely. "I guess some of you will have to stay on the ship."

The kids in line looked upset, at least the ones who knew what was happening.

The adults began to argue about how unfair this was--they were refugees, they wanted to sleep in a real house, etc...

[Well, I think everyone has guessed where this is going by now, but will our cast of heroes be able to in time? The suspense...]