The town of Terminal is... well, it's doing better than Jeneora was when they arrived. While plants could create everything that humanity could need, it's inefficient when minerals are often just lying around in the ground, waiting to be dug up. This town's specialty is copper, torn from the earth by great drilling machines and painstakingly processed by a hundred hands that have no better options for earning their meal ticket. It's utterly reliant on trade, though there are some nutrient vats converting energy and various (locally sourced) chemicals and minerals to something a human body can digest. Their buildings are not quite as makeshift as the previous locations the inhabitants have been to, and there's more of a feeling of a bustling town than a hovel that survivors huddle in and try to survive. Nonetheless, it's a grim place, cloaked in an eternal fog of rock dust and diluted whiffs of the nastier chemicals necessary to make raw ore into something usable.

The "sand steamer" is a steel monstrosity. There are no oceans on this dust bin of a planet, of course, so it does have wheels, but its shape—at least the shape of its lower half, where passengers stay for the trip—is very reminiscent of that of an upside-down cruise ship, the base wider than the top, with three rows of small windows peering out of the individual cabins inside. Its upper half, however, supports an enormous laser cannon as long as the ship itself, nominally meant to clear obstacles and to serve as a defence against the larger and more aggressive kinds of worms, who often hunt in packs out in the middle of the uninhabited desert this contraption travels through, aptly named the "Great Sand Ocean". The port they'll be embarking from has three long metal bridges extending towards it for passengers to board, leading onto the deck; below, large crates of cargo are being loaded and unloaded.

This ship isn't exactly a cruise liner, but it's not exactly not one. Its outside is as dusty and ugly as everywhere else, but inside one can find a measure of comfort and even luxury, as the main patrons are rich people wishing to travel between the Seven Cities without having to brave the dangers inherent in using baser forms of transport such as cars or birds. That said, there are slightly less exorbitant tickets that give you access to a cot in a communal room shared by dozens of others. The competition for these tickets is fierce, and it's mostly people who want to escape their little nowhere towns to make a living in the city and who have gotten some unexpected windfall—or who have been saving for a long time—who actually get those.

But most interestingly, these ships are powered by plants, and the ports it stops at between the Cities often don't have their own plants, so the arrival of a steamer can often mean a large influx of goods that these towns would otherwise not have any access to. It goes without saying that powering an enormous vehicle and providing people with plant resources is hell on the plants; this specific ship has gone through two of them already since it's started operations and this third is likely to get into red state soon.

Which is approximately why Yvette didn't originally want anything to do with it. Ugh. This feels very much like crawling back to a bad boss when one's plan for going independent fell through. Probably because, in essence, it is. She needed Jeneora Rock to work, and now it's a pile of misery and rubble. On top she's going to have an uphill battle proving that she's who she is. They are going to think her certifications are false, because that's honestly the only reasonable thing to think when a plant engineer shows up out of a little nothing mining town with a car and a lot of nerve. She will have to painstakingly prove that she is not a grifter here to con safe passage, which will be long and arduous and painful, for the privilege of accepting a job offer that she turned down. For significantly less money than she could have gotten if these negotiations had happened in December instead of in Terminal.

She is about to have an unpleasant time. In fact, she's vaguely wondering if instead she could fling herself into the nearest worm for immediate digestion. Maybe that big one that tried to eat her had her best interests at heart. Terrible.

But she can at the very least make an entrance.

Her car pulls up to the port, absolutely in the way of approximately everyone. Out steps a brilliant and gorgeous redhead in sparkling white clothes, looking down her nose at every single one of the dirty people from this dirty town. The keys to her car are handed off to her 'help' (that being Zash), with the austere and vague instruction to, "Park it somewhere a bit less dirty than the rest of this place."

And then she marches right up to the available guards like she owns the place, certification and credit chit out, and announces that she would like to book passage on their ship. There is no realistic way a credit chit can be verified out here. Nonetheless, it'll help her sell the character she's playing.

... okay, cool. Maybe this will actually work. Uh, as her bodyguard that means Morgan will be following her. Bye, 'the help,' see you in a bit, she guesses.

...he stares at her for a couple of seconds after the sudden complete shift in demeanour and tries not to think "that was kind of hot" and only vaguely succeeds but then yeah, sure, he'll, uh, do the thing, uh, over there, and. Stuff. Right. Yes.

Unfortunately his job being the help means that he doesn't get to see all of Yvette negotiating passage for the three of them on this gigantic ship that many people spend their lifetimes trying to get aboard. But it happens, and: yes, it is extremely painful. She hates this ship, and furthermore everyone on it, and especially herself. Fortunately, this makes the convincing condescension necessary for literally anyone to believe she is who she says she is much easier to pull off. She is terribly inconvenienced by the horrific tragedy of Jeneora Rock losing its entire basis for existence. Real human emotions like empathy and compassion are for poor people. She's just annoyed that her job fell through and she had to make a road trip across the desert in a shitty car.

After quite a lot of verifying of her certifications by various means, reading over the job offer she has, and then actually radioing the people who offered her the job to have them physically come down and recognize her, she does actually manage to negotiate passage and payment. They will pay her to be aboard this dirty dusty ship, fixing their plant and saving them hundreds of thousands of double dollars, thank you very much. Yes, yes, not as much money as they would have if she'd accepted in December, fine, but everyone here can benefit from the horrible misfortune of others and turn this into a victory, yes? Good. They will all be given excellent accommodations aboard this vessel, and she will in fact look at its plant and is contractually obligated to extract this percentage of improved resource output from it, and if she happens to feel dead inside by the end of it all, oh well.

Welcome to the club, he guesses.

(He started hearing the plant since before they got to the town. She's not... as badly off as a red plant, in most ways, but she was so incredibly lonely and in an inordinate amount of stress. And she knows she's going to die soon, but she's proud of the work she's done. She's helped so many people. Zash's heart is breaking several times over while he listens to her chattering about all the people she's helped. She's not expecting to really make it to Julai, which is the final destination of the current trip of this ship, but that's okay. Zash thinks it's really, really not, but he'll be with her. Soon he'll actually be with her, in the plant room, and she's even more delighted by that.)

He doesn't tell Yvette about this immediately, because they are in public, but next time they're near each other he can send her a minor pulse of emotion. Not... really enough to communicate much, but... a bit. He's worried, and he's sad, but he's hopeful. He didn't tell the plant that last bit, didn't want to give her hope if it might be in vain. Still.

Yeah. Yeah, she knows. She gives him a little sad smile, and then it's back to being an insufferable spoiled bitch.

There is paperwork, because of course there is. Why wouldn't there be. Her car will be coming along, in the cargo hold of the ship, and that needs its own forms signed and an inspection done. And the work contract itself, and this waiver and acceptance of a penalty payment if her quotas aren't met, and...

"Our suite's on level 5, number... 528," she says, sliding over a passkey to Morgan and Zash. "You might as well go and get settled." Implication also being they get to handle the luggage, but honestly, between paperwork and luggage she'd much rather take the luggage. It's just she is the only one that can do the paperwork, so. Yay for her.

Yeah unfortunately he's just the help. On the bright side between him and Morgan they could haul the whole car if they needed to. Probably either of them would be enough, actually, but the upside is that they will most certainly not have any trouble with the luggage.

The suite is nice. More than nice, actually, it's big and fancy and has enough space for five even though they're only three. It's clean, which Zash most certainly isn't, and it's, it's...

...

...man he's really uncomfortable in here. He's not a luxury guy. He's a dust and bullet holes guy.

He wants to go talk to the plant. Well, he's talking to the plant right now, in the back of his mind, but he wants to go visit her. See her. Share a bit more of his mind with her.

If he's honest, which honestly he never is, he's also kind of lonely.

Morgan has literally never seen anything this luxurious in her life.

".... Dibs on the shower," she says, after a long pause to take in the rooms.

"Am I allowed to shower? Won't that ruin my smelly disguise?"

"Oh I packed extra gunk for reapplication, you're good. ... But yeah you might not be allowed to shower. Dunno. Maybe we can get, like, actual paint here?? Who knows." She wanders around, and picks up a little complimentary paper situated next to the intercom.

"We have fucking room service???"

He sidles up to her and looks at the paper. "Huh. So we do. I should probably stay out of the way if you get any, though, the disguise is good but there's no need to push our luck."

"Tempting, but mmm. Not right now. It's probably on boss-lady's dime or rich person trapped or something. And I am a good and loyal bodyguard who is not going to blow all of her money eating expensive food when my rich person guide is absent."

There's a couch over there!! She can just lounge on it. So soft and luxurious.

"Do you think they do laundry? I bet they do, I don't know how to get in on that action. Why did they have to steal our nerd for paperwork, now I'm totally lost."

"We'll have several weeks here, you'll have plenty of time to get used to the luxury."

"True!" Flop. "Man I'm going to be sooooo bored."

He grins and shrugs, walking over to a wall. Leaning against it. Folding his arms.

"So. What's your endgame, here?"

"Hm? For what? Because my end game for being on the fancy ship is get nice stuff."

"Being with us at all. Hanging out, following us, helping us out. What's your angle?"

Despite his words, he doesn't sound... mad or irritated or anything. Curious, mostly, the kind of interested one can be when one might be poking something dangerous but one is exceptional amounts of immortal. There's no edge to his voice.

"Oh! Oh, I want to make my old boss dead. And, like, I dunno, have fun in the time I've got. My thing about the healing coming from lifespan was sorta poetic, but also not inaccurate, so."

"So you decided to start hanging out with the biggest pacifist you found who is against killing even people who are actively trying to kill him and his loved ones, as your means to the goal of killing your old boss?"

"Well I wasn't going to make you kill him because I'm not an asshole but, uh, yeah, you see a lot of people hitting in our weight class?"

"Way, way more than I wish I did, honestly," he sighs.