SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Leaf in the North (New)

Leaf in the North

The cardboard sign had Leaf Kelly scrawled on it in block letters and blue felt pen.

Rainbow held it up above her head as she stood on the concourse of the Skydock and watched a column of people flow out of the lounge, having just disembarked from the most recent airship to touch down.

“Do you see her yet?” Penny asked.

“We don’t actually know what she looks like, remember?” Rainbow reminded her.

“Sunset could have sent you a photograph,” Rarity declared. “If only for convenience’s sake.”

“Maybe she didn’t have one,” Rainbow replied. “I mean, it sounds like they haven’t known her for very long.” She paused for a moment. “Thanks for coming down here like this, by the way, and on your day off too.”

“Oh, think nothing of it, darling, nothing at all,” Rarity said lightly.

She was wearing a maroon trenchcoat that covered her up from the neck down to the knees, with only a little bit of a burgundy skirt and the black stockings that covered up the rest of her legs down to her high heels showing beneath it; a salmon-coloured belt clinched in the coat around her waist, and the pussy bow around her neck was of the exact same colour. Her face was overshadowed by the broad-brimmed burgundy hat she was wearing, with another salmon-coloured ribbon wrapped around it, tied into a bow at the back.

Rarity waved off Rainbow’s thanks with a black-gloved hand. “Anything for you, of course, not to mention that I’m always glad to help a newcomer settle in here amongst the clouds. Why, I remember when I first arrived in Atlas; if it hadn’t been for Twilight’s help, I would have ended up … well, one shudders to contemplate.”

“You arrived in Atlas?” Blake asked. “I thought you must have been born here.”

Rarity chuckled. “Well, that’s very kind of you to say, dear, but quite incorrect. I’m actually from Mantle by birth.”

“From Mantle?” Blake repeated, incredulousness filling every syllable. “You … from Mantle?”

It was difficult to be sure because of the way she was wearing her hat, but it definitely seemed to Rainbow as though Rarity was smiling.

“I’m so glad that you’re surprised, darling.”

“Why?” asked Penny. “Are you ashamed of coming from Mantle?”

“Yes,” Rarity said. “You must excuse the uncharacteristic bluntness, but there aren’t many ways to mince that particular word. Suffice it to say that if you were not our friend, Blake, and if Rainbow Dash did not vouch for you, Penny, I would certainly not admit the fact that I am not, in fact, a thoroughbred daughter of Atlas. I will not, for example, be admitting as much to young Miss Kelly when she graces us with her presence, and I trust that I can rely on your discretion on this point.”

“I’ll keep your secret, of course,” Blake said, “but—”

“But why are you ashamed?” asked Penny. “I mean … what’s wrong with Mantle?”

“You know how you think you’ll be happier at Beacon than at Atlas?” Rainbow asked. “Well, it’s like that Rarity; she thought she’d be happier in Atlas than in Mantle, and she has been. Sometimes, there’s nothing more to it than that.”

And sometimes, there is, but I don’t want to get into an argument right now; it would be a fine thing for this Leaf to show up and find Blake and Rarity having a row about the state of Mantle.

“Oh,” Penny said. “Right. I see. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s quite alright,” Rarity assured her. “We all have our own views, after all.”

Blake chuckled. “I suppose we are among the last two people to be lecturing about the evils of moving away in search of … anything really; fulfilment, a better life, the achievement of our goals.”

“If it were that bad, we wouldn’t be here in the first place,” Rainbow reminded them all. “Although to be honest, I’m still not sure why you two decided to come.”

“I want to meet another of Ruby and Sunset’s friends,” Penny declared.

“Although I’m still fairly new to Atlas myself,” Blake said, “that doesn’t mean that … well, perhaps it’s precisely because I’m still fairly new to Atlas that I want to help out a fellow newcomer if I can.”

“Where do you think she is?” Penny asked, standing up on her toes in order to see a little better over the crowd of people still spilling off the airship and into the Skydock. “What if she missed her flight?”

“I’m sure that if she’d missed her flight, Sunset would have called again to let us know,” Rainbow replied. “Don’t worry, Penny; she’ll be here. There are a lot of people who have to get off this flight, you know.”

A movement in the crowd caught Rainbow’s eye, or rather, a lack of movement; there was a girl who had broken away from the crowd just a little bit, standing and … yep, she was definitely staring right at them. Staring up at the sign that Rainbow was holding in her hands.

She stared, she looked around, and she looked at them.

She stared, and then she began to make her way towards them. She looked to be about Rainbow and Rarity’s age, maybe just a little older — and older than Sunset or Ruby, and definitely older than Penny, not that that was hard — with soft brown hair dyed a luminescent blue at the tips, and piercings in both her human ears and in the squirrel ears that poked up out of said soft brown hair.

Sunset hadn’t actually mentioned that Leaf was a faunus. Not that it was a big deal that she was, obviously.

She was dressed in a light brown puffer jacket, which was unzipped so that Rainbow could see the airy, gauzy orange dress that she was wearing over the black and grey plaid dress beneath; black tights covered the gap between her skirt and her steel toecapped boots, which went almost up to her knees.

There were also a couple of piercings in her nose. She walked with a slight hunch to her, like she didn’t want to be seen, like she was being furtive about something, or perhaps it was just the weight of the back that she had slung over one shoulder. Either way, she walked over to them, looking left and right as she did so as though she thought someone else might be coming over to them instead; she didn’t stop until she was pretty much standing right in front of them.

“So, um…” she began haltingly, hesitantly. “I, uh, I mean—”

“Are you Leaf Kelly?” Rainbow asked, lowering her handmade sign.

“Yeah,” Leaf confirmed. “But—”

“We’re friends of Ruby and Sunset too!” Penny proclaimed. “Salutations! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

Leaf blinked her brown eyes. “Ruby… Ruby Rose and Sunset Shimmer?”

“Uh huh,” Rainbow said. “Since you’re new here and all, they asked if we’d help you get settled in.”

“Oh,” Leaf said. “Oh, wow, that … that’s nice of them. I didn’t think that they … you know, I think that might be the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me. Or … maybe it’s this, since you guys don’t even really know me.”

“But we’d like to,” Penny said.

Leaf laughed softly. “Well…” She held out her hand, the one that she wasn’t using to hold onto her bag, and gestured to encompass herself. “I’m Leaf Kelly.”

“And I’m Penny Polendina.”

Leaf grinned and held out one balled fist. “Nice to meet you, Penny Polendina.”

Penny beamed and drew back her own fist.

“Penny!” Rainbow said urgently. She didn’t want to break Leaf’s hand or anything, after all.

“Oh, right,” Penny said, and she very slowly, very gently, brought her knuckles into contact with Leaf’s hand.

“I’m Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow said, before Leaf could start to wonder what was going on there.

“I’m Blake.”

“And I’m Rarity, darling; it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Leaf bumped fists with Rainbow and shook hands with Blake and Rarity. “So, if you know Sunset and Ruby, does that mean that you’re all Atlas students?”

“I am,” Rainbow said. “Blake is gonna be, Penny is but isn’t gonna be for much longer, and Rarity isn’t.”

Leaf nodded a couple of times, looking upwards as though she was committing it to memory. “Right, well,” she attempted to salute, although she got the angle of her hand completely wrong, presenting the flat of her palm to them instead of the edge.

“You really don’t need to do that,” Rainbow assured her. “In fact, it’s kind of disrespectful.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t—”

“I know, I know; I’m just saying that you don’t need to do it,” Rainbow told her. “Anyway: welcome to Atlas!”

Leaf grinned. “Thanks. You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“Oh, I think I might have an idea,” Rainbow replied.

“Do you think Atlas will be so much better than Vale?” Penny asked.

“I know it will be,” Leaf declared. “Isn’t it?”

“I think the most important thing that matters isn’t where you are,” Penny said, “but where your friends are and whether you’re surrounded by good people who care about you.”

“That … sounds nice, if a little bit sappy,” Leaf said. “But if you don’t have that where you are, and you don’t have that anywhere else either, then all that you can do is look at where you are and say … is this where I want to be? And if it isn’t, then you have to ask yourself where it is that you want to go instead. That’s what I did, and that’s why I—”

Her scroll began to buzz.

“Oh, for—!” she got the device out of the pocket of her puffer jacket, putting her bag down on the ground at her feet for a second as she did so, and opened it up.

“Stop calling me and stop sending me messages!” she snapped, swinging violently across the screen to delete the notifications.

“Who is it?” Blake asked.

Leaf sighed. “Who isn’t it?” she responded. “My mum, my stepdad, my ex. ‘Where are you? Call me back?’ No.”

“You’re just going to ignore them?” Rarity asked. “Without saying anything?”

“Yeah,” Leaf said. “I don’t want to … I can’t deal with mum right now, and I don’t … I don’t want to hear her screaming into my ear in the middle of the skydock, and I don’t think anyone else really wants that either.”

“I admit, that does sound like a good way to get security involved,” Rarity murmured.

You could send them a text, Rainbow thought. Not too long ago, she wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on when it came to this, but she had written to her parents since then — she wondered if they’d gotten her letter yet; how long did it take to get a boat to Menagerie these days? — and so, on that basis, she could say that Leaf was being a little bit of a jerk.

Well, so it seemed, at least. She didn’t know Leaf’s mother, or her stepdad, or her ex. They might have all been complete jackasses who deserved to get cut out of Leaf’s life. They might be the reason Leaf had run away to Atlas, to get away from them.

And so, not knowing exactly what the circumstances were like and not wanting to act like a jerk herself, Rainbow didn’t say anything.

Blake, on the other hand, reached out and placed a hand upon Leaf’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“What? Yeah,” Leaf said immediately. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“I … I don’t know,” Blake admitted. “I just … I guess I just wanted to make sure.”

“I’m not running away, if that’s what you think,” Leaf insisted. “I mean, I suppose I am running away, but I’m not running away from anything, I just … I’m running away to something, towards something, or at least, I hope I am. I’m not entirely sure what it is yet, but…”

“Well, if you need help finding it, that’s what we’re here for,” Rainbow said. “How was your flight?”

“Pretty good, when I wasn’t getting spammed with messages,” Leaf said. “They’re pretty comfortable, those airships, aren’t they? A bit more expensive than I thought; I can’t believe you have to pay for food on top of your ticket. Shouldn’t that stuff be all included in the price?”

“But then how would people who have more money get better food than everyone else?” Rarity asked dryly.

Leaf snorted. “I have to say, that hologram that ‘welcomed’ us all to Atlas … that’s kind of freaky.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Blake asked. “When I got here, it suggested that I find a place to stay, since I didn’t have one lined up.”

“Ah, I actually do have a place to stay lined up, so I got told that I should take a cab to a public elevator to get there,” Leaf said. “Although the flight cost more than I thought it would, so I’m going to need to find a job faster if I’m going to make the rent on this place.”

“Well, why don’t we take you down to this place you have lined up to drop your stuff off, and then afterwards, we can help you find a job or start looking for one?” Rainbow suggested. “Rarity, you can help with that, right?”

“Yes,” Rarity said. “Yes, I think so. Where is it that you’re staying, darling?”

“Um,” Leaf looked at her scroll, swiping more carefully across the screen, and with less sign of bad temper now. “I am staying at … right, apartment six-forty-five on Grey Seventeen.”

“Ah, yes, Grey Sector, I know it,” Rarity said. “The places there are often rather affordable. But there’s no need to get a cab, no. I’ll get you a travel pass — that’ll be on your scroll; you can top it up once you start earning — and we can take an elevator down to Blue sector, get the subway until we’re above the right zone of Grey sector, and then take the elevator from there down to Grey Seventeen.”

“Are you sure?” Leaf asked.

“I do know my way around the city,” Rarity observed.

“Right,” Leaf agreed, a slightly sheepish smile on her face. “Sorry. I … yeah. So … am I going to be living underground?”

Rarity glanced at Rainbow Dash. “Yes, yes, you will; was that not clear when you signed up for this place?”

“Probably,” Leaf admitted. “I … I was willing to take anything to be honest; I just wanted to be here and away from Vale.”

“I see,” Rarity murmured. “Well, speaking personally, although I wouldn’t object to having a place with windows — and I will have one, one day, I guarantee it — there’s nothing horrendous about living belowground. Living underground in Atlas is still living in Atlas, after all, and the elevators ensure that the surface is never far away. Now, shall we be going?”

“Sure,” Leaf said. She picked up her bag and once more slung it across her shoulder. “Hey … is this place as great as it looks in the pictures?”

“Oh, yes indeed, darling,” said Rarity.

“It’s better than the pictures,” Rainbow said.

“I … agree with Penny,” Blake murmured. “It’s the people that make a place what it is.” She smiled. “But, as I’m sure you’ll find out, the people can make this place very good indeed.”

“I think I might be finding that already,” Leaf said. “I’m honestly starting to wonder if I slipped and fell off the edge of the city getting off the airship, because there is no way that four complete strangers took the time out to help me get settled in here.”

“Well, it’s not like we had anything better to do,” Rainbow said.

Leaf snorted. “Seriously?”

“Seriously?” Rainbow asked. “Sunset and Ruby are good friends of ours, and when they asked us to help you out, we couldn’t say no, right? Now, come on, grab your stuff, and let’s get moving.”

Leaf had already grabbed her stuff, so it was just the matter of getting moving. Rarity led the way, her heels tapping upon the pristine white floor of the concourse — an army of those squeaky little mouse droids ran up and down, dodging around or even between the legs of people in order to keep it that way, vigorously scrubbing away even the slightest hint of a stain anywhere visible.

“You’ll get used to those,” Blake murmured as Leaf stared at one of the little droids that went rolling by.

“Are they everywhere?” Leaf asked.

“Robots are everywhere,” Blake replied. “This is Atlas, after all.”

Leaf smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “This is Atlas.” She raised her arms up in the air and raised her voice to shout. “This is Atlas!”

“We know it is; we live here!” someone yelled at her.

“Shut up!” Leaf shouted back.

Rainbow shook her head as Rarity led them out of the skydock, through a door which brought them not onto the car park but onto one of the streets running alongside the dock. The skies were clear; all the clouds had, for today, been banished from them. The air was crisp and even, but not too cool, even though it wasn’t warm by any means. A cruiser glided past overhead, with a couple of Skydarts flying escort on its flanks.

As they walked towards the nearest elevator, they passed by the robots working on the roadside; they passed beneath the shadows of the buildings rising up all around them, the sunlight gleaming off the glass and steel. They passed beneath the airships zipping to and fro overhead.

Leaf stopped for a moment, turning in place, arms out a little on either side of her.

“This,” she whispered, “this is going to be so brilliant.”

---

The fact of the matter was that it was kind of easier to move around Atlas underground than it was above it.

It wasn’t that overhead was completely devoid of public transport — there was the monorail that ran around the edge of the city, that cut through the centre of it as well to pass by Atlas Academy — but it was also a little bit limited in where it went, there were only so many stops, and there was a lot of Atlas that it didn’t service at all; also, it was elevated above the ground, so while it was quite literally ‘above ground,’ it wasn’t exactly on the surface.

Rainbow thought it was probably a question of space; if you wanted to put a good tram line or something like that on the surface of Atlas, you were going to have to clear up a lot of space that was already being used for homes, stores, stuff, labs, stuff like that. Whereas, in the Underground, there had been more room to say that public transport was going to be included as part of the package.

It probably didn’t hurt that it was inherently hard to move around underground on account of all the rock in the way, so you had to put something in there.

Whatever the exact reason, Atlas had a lot of subways. Layers and layers and layers of subways, more layers than a wedding cake of subways. There was one that ran close to the surface — the Nicholas Line — that was probably the most convenient way to get between one place on the surface and the other if you didn’t have a car, and then underneath that, there were all the lines serving the different levels dug into the rock of Atlas, all the way down to the half-completed Brown levels where they’d just sort of given up digging halfway through and left the whole thing unfinished. Nobody lived down there, but there were all kinds of urban legends about what you might find if you climbed down a disused elevator shaft all the way down to the abandoned layers of the city: ghosts, mutants, and a subway train rattling down the abandoned tunnels, carrying passengers who had climbed aboard but could never get off.

All of the levels and all of the lines — not the ghost line, obviously, the actual lines with actual subway trains running on them — were accessed via elevators going down from the surface, although they didn’t all go down all the way. So Rarity brought Rainbow, Blake, Penny, and Leaf to an elevator going down as far as the Blue levels, which were the second layer of the Underground — White being the first — and coincidentally the level on which Rarity lived.

“Although of course I live on the highest level of Blue, darling,” Rarity said. “I practically live in White, really.”

“Is that just a status thing, or does it actually matter?” Leaf asked.

Rarity hesitated. “I’m afraid it does matter somewhat, yes … you’ll see for yourself when we reach your apartment.”

The elevator was large, almost industrial in size, although it was meant for people; it’s just that it was meant for the large crowds of people who might want to come up to the surface on their commute to and from work on the surface; that was Rainbow’s best guess as to why the elevators only went to certain levels: to control the crowds at key times.

However, this wasn’t a key time, and the five of them pretty much had the elevator to themselves, with cavernous space as they got inside, each of them using their scrolls to scan in, paying the fee with the credit they’d already put there.

They could have spread out as much as they wanted, but there wouldn’t have been much point to that, so they stuck pretty close together anyway, just without needing to press close shoulder to shoulder like they would have in, say, the elevator leading up to the headmaster’s office at Beacon — or even in Atlas, for that matter.

“Blue Seven, please,” Rarity said, in a clear, crisp voice, and the great doors of the lift slid shut with a quiet that always surprised Rainbow Dash. The light in the elevator was a soft ambient blue as it began to move downwards.

“Is it alright if I smoke?” Leaf asked.

“Smoking is not permitted anywhere aboard Transport for Atlas vehicles or facilities,” said the mechanical voice of the elevator.

Leaf’s whole body jolted as though she’d been shocked; she nearly collided with Penny; her ears pricked all the way up and her eyes widened. “Did that … did it just hear me?”

“Yep,” Rainbow said. “The whole transport network is monitored by…” — she searched for the words — “responsive virtual intelligences.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means they’re always listening, and they respond,” Rainbow explained.

Leaf looked up at the ceiling of the lift. “So … if I, like, if I say anything good about the White Fang, are they gonna call the cops on me?”

Rainbow’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going to say anything good about the White Fang?”

“No,” Leaf said. “I’m not political. I just … I don’t like the idea of a bunch of computers spying on me.”

“It’s for everyone’s own good,” Rainbow said.

“That’s what my mum says,” Leaf muttered.

“They’re only here to help,” Rainbow insisted. “Like … How do I get to Blue North?”

“To reach the northern quadrant of the Blue Zone, disembark on level seven and take any north-bound Sinclair Line train headed for Morden.”

“See?” Rainbow said. “Helpful.”

“Mmm,” Leaf murmured wordlessly. “It’s not … it’s not everywhere, is it?”

“No,” Rainbow replied. “Only in the transport facilities, although other public buildings might have something like it.”

“But they’ll let me smoke in the corridors, right?”

“Yeah, sure, if you really want to.”

“Thank gods, because I’m going to start shaking,” Leaf muttered. “The only place I could smoke on the airship was on the open deck, which was also freezing.” She paused for a second. “Rarity … can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you dressed like Shadow Spade?”

Rarity gasped. “Why, thank you for noticing, darling! It’s nice to see someone who comprehends.” She glanced at Rainbow Dash. “Yes, I’ve come up with a little line in tribute to Remnant’s greatest detective; are you a fan?”

“I’ve read the books; I don’t know if I’d call myself a fan,” Leaf said. “I wouldn’t dress up as her, but she is pretty cool. I like the way she doesn’t take any crap, you know? Her pride is such that you’ll treat her like a proud woman—”

“Or you’ll regret you ever saw her,” Rarity finished for her. “Yes, I, too, admire her confidence. The confidence to confront the crooked head of a mining corporation armed with nothing but the truth — and a gun in her purse.”

“That’s not confidence; that’s courage,” Rainbow said.

“Doesn’t one follow from the other?” Rarity asked.

“Not necessarily, I think you can be brave without being confident,” Rainbow replied.

“Who is this Shadow Spade?” Penny asked.

“A detective,” Rarity explained. “The greatest detective, walking the mean streets of Mantle in the years after the Great War — that’s another thing that appealed to me; for all the problems of that era, those postwar fashions really were something, no?”

“I prefer the ones where they’re more straight up mysteries,” Leaf said. “Not so … dark, you know, less of the grim Mantle stuff. Like Crooked House, where she goes to Argus and has to work out who murdered the rich grandfather before he could cut off all his children and grandchildren, or Elephants Can Remember, where…” She chuckled. “Okay, maybe I am a fan.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Rarity assured her, “nothing at all. I see what you mean, by the way; our friend Fluttershy also prefers the cosier mysteries, but I find that they lack just a little of … sharp edges of the more socially conscious novels. I think it has something to do with the author becoming very successful and spending so much more time hobnobbing with other wealthy and successful people … but then, who could possibly begrudge her that?”

“Plus, you know, it makes sense,” Leaf said. “Throughout the books, Spade becomes more successful so it makes sense that eventually she’s able to get out of Mantle and start working for a better class of client.”

“Oh, I understand it perfectly well — it’s an explicit parallel with the rise of Atlas after the war — I’m just not so much of a fan of it,” Rarity said.

“Fair enough,” Leaf said.

“Who here understands what they’re talking about?” Blake asked.

“Not me,” Penny admitted.

“I do, kind of,” Rainbow said. “Rarity and Fluttershy tried to get me to read these books, and … I didn’t like them. They’re not fair.”

Leaf looked at her. “What do you mean 'they’re not fair'?”

“She means she couldn’t work out who did it,” Rarity said.

“You’re not supposed to be able to work it out,” Leaf said.

“Then what’s the point?” Rainbow demanded. “What is the point of a mystery story where you can’t solve the mystery yourself ahead of time?”

“Don’t listen to her, Leaf darling,” Rarity insisted.

“It’s okay, Rainbow Dash,” Penny said. “I’ve been trying to read The Mistraliad, but I’m not getting it either.”

“Really?” Blake asked. “That’s … very ambitious.”

“What’s The Mistraliad?” asked Leaf.

“It’s the foundational Mistralian epic,” Blake explained. “A tale of arms and passion.”

“It’s also Pyrrha’s favourite book,” Penny said. “I thought that if we read it, I could talk about it. But I’m afraid I’m not enjoying it very much; it’s hard to understand all the words, and everyone is so … so mean to one another.”

“You want my advice, Penny?” Rainbow said. “Try The Song of Olivia; it’s Ruby’s favourite, and it’s way easier to read, and the language is a lot simpler. I took a look at it for our essay we did for Doctor Oobleck, and it’s actually really good. She’s like a soldier in shining armour.”

“But isn’t that really hard to come by?” Penny said. “That’s why Dove’s gift meant so much.”

“In hard copy, sure,” Rainbow agreed, “but there’s an e-version that … okay, the pictures are placed right on top of the text sometimes, which is really unhelpful, but you can read eighty, ninety percent of it just fine, and depending on how you tab back and forth across the pages, you can reveal stuff from under the pictures as well — the placements change; I think it’s just really badly formatted. Anyway, the point is that you can read enough of it to talk about it with Ruby.”

“Okay, now I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Leaf said.

Rainbow laughed. “Sorry. So, anyway, what kind of job are you looking for here in Atlas?”

“I don’t know, really,” Leaf admitted. “Whatever I can get. What kind of job should I look for?”

“That depends,” Rarity said. “Do you have any skills that you could put to work?”

Leaf shrugged. “I can ride motorcycles pretty well, does that count?”

“It … is a skill, certainly, although I’m not certain that it’s an employable one.”

“You could be a delivery driver?” Rainbow suggested.

“Oh, no, that’s a terrible job,” Rarity declared.

“At least it is a job,” Rainbow countered.

“If you call having to be on-call at all hours to dash to and fro, collecting or dropping off, and all for a pittance a job, then yes, I suppose it is,” Rarity murmured.

“It would be an idea, except I don’t have a bike,” Leaf said. “I sold it for a little extra money to get here, and I don’t think I have enough to get another one right now.”

“Well, what do you like?” asked Blake.

“Motorcycle racing?” Leaf suggested.

“You have to be pretty good at that to do it professionally, and you still need a bike,” Rainbow said.

“But don’t worry,” Rarity said. “I’m sure that, with our help, you’ll come up with something.”

The elevator came to a halt, and the doors opened to let them out on the seventh level of the Blue Zone.

The Atlesian underground was nothing like Mountain Glenn; when they were constructing Atlas, nobody had had the idea to hollow out the whole rock and build a parallel city underneath with big towers and a lot of space overhead and just copy everything a normal city would have, just above ground. Here in Atlas, everything was corridors; tunnels had been dug through the rock and stone, but they were just that: tunnels. Everything in the Underground was one storey; there were no towers, no houses, there were just doors opening to reveal shops or apartments, none of which were any taller than the rest.

Which wasn’t to say that everything had just been left with the rock hanging out, no; all the tunnels had been finished with steel or stone, so that the edges were smoothed off, all the walls inside were proper walls like you’d get in any other building; if it wasn’t for the lack of natural light or windows, you wouldn’t be able to tell you were underground at all.

It was warm down here; it got warmer the further down you got, it got warmer, and it got a little louder too, as you could hear the thrumming of the immense dust engines that kept Atlas in the air. The corridors were illuminated with long tubes running along the edges of the ceiling, giving off a soft blue light.

Rarity led them to the nearest subway station on the Sinclair Line — the trains there were blue as well — and they got off one stop before changing onto the Sheridan Line heading west. They got off that train at one of the last stops, before getting another big elevator down to level seventeen of the Grey Zone.

They didn’t have this lift all to themselves, but it still wasn’t too crowded, and it emptied out as most of the people they were sharing the lift with got off before they reached Grey Seventeen. Honestly, the whole Underground was pretty quiet at this time of day; while there were some shops and businesses down beneath the surface — casual restaurants for the inhabitants, grocery stores, conveniences — most people worked up on the surface, in the towers of steel and glass, under the sun, returning underground only to sleep and possibly spend their off-work hours.

Rarity was one of those, after all: her boutique wasn’t underground; she just lived there.

In the Grey Zone, the lights were not grey, because that would have been too dingy and depressing to contemplate; in fact, it was brighter down here than it was in the Blue Zone. Brighter and warmer too, although not uncomfortably warm — well, not unless you had wrapped up for the surface, in which case, you might want to go home and change promptly before you sweated too much. The engines hummed down here in the deep, and the walls of the corridors seemed to vibrate with the humming.

There were a few people down here, and a few robots too, with claws at the end of one arm and bin bags clutched in their other hand, or else the ever-present mouse droids. At one point, they had to squeeze around one of those big walking batteries on legs as it waddled past, making little ‘gonk’ noises as it did so.

Still, collectively, they all kept the place clean; that was what Rainbow always appreciated about the Underground whenever she went down to visit Rarity: how clean it all was, how looked after; there wasn’t any graffiti on the walls; there wasn’t any mess. Now, the fact that there were robots taking care of the place meant that it didn’t say as much about the people who lived down here as it did about the folks who lived in Low Town, but she’d take it over the grime of Mantle any day.

“Does anyone else want a cigarette?” Leaf asked.

She was answered by a chorus in the negative.

“Sunset didn’t want one either,” Leaf pointed out. “Is this just a health thing, where you all have to keep fit to hunt grimm?”

“In my particular case, I’d rather not stink up my apartment,” Rarity said. “Something which you might bear in mind yourself, once we get there.”

They arrived outside of apartment 675, easily identifiable by the number on the grey metallic door, and although the doors on either side were pretty close, nobody commented upon what that might mean for Leaf.

Rather, as they approached, Rarity gestured towards the electronic reader on the wall.

“If you’ve made all the arrangements in advance, and nothing has gone wrong,” she said, “then you’ll be able to swipe your scroll here to get inside, and so long as you keep up with the rent, you’ll always be able to swipe your scroll to get inside.”

“What if something has gone wrong?” Leaf asked.

“Then we’ve wasted a bit of a trip, and we’ll have to take you to see whoever you rented the apartment from to get it all sorted out,” Rarity admitted.

“Right,” Leaf murmured. “I thought there might be someone here to … give me a key or something.”

“Oh no, no, no, darling,” Rarity said. “This is Atlas, after all.”

Leaf smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, it is, isn’t it.” She took a step forward and took her scroll out of the pocket of her puffer jacket, holding it up to the reader beside the door.

The door slid open, to reveal — sort of, the lights were off so it was kind of dark in there — a small room, about the size of an Atlas dorm room, maybe a little bit smaller, with a bed built into the wall on the left hand side and a door at the back leading into the en suite toilet and bathroom. On the right side of the room was a sink, with a small worksurface where you could put a microwave or a hotplate or something — although there wasn’t one there right at the moment. In fact, aside from the bed, there wasn’t a lot in the apartment at all. It clearly wasn’t somewhere that came fully furnished.

“It’s a box,” Penny said.

“It’s not that bad,” Blake said, not really sounding as though she believed it. “It’s … cosy.”

“It’s tiny!” Penny declared.

“Yeah,” Leaf said, “it is.” She stepped inside, and the lights flickered on, illuminating the smallness and the emptiness. “But you know what? It’s mine.” She turned to face them all, spreading her arms out wide as she dumped her bag on the floor. “It’s mine! This is my place! My space! And yeah, sure, there isn’t a lot of space to go around here, but all the same, it’s mine! No Mum coming in whenever she feels like it, no more having to follow anyone else’s rules. This is my place, and only mine.”

“That’s the spirit, darling,” Rarity said. “And remember: in Atlas, the only way is up.”

Leaf grinned. “I know that Sunset thought I was a complete moron doing this,” she said. “Coming to Atlas, running away, she thought that I should stay home and stick with my mum, play it safe, not take any risks. And I guess it must sound pretty stupid to you guys, coming here without a job and only a little money and … no idea what sort of job I should get, but … I’m not stupid. I’m not completely stupid. I knew that I wasn’t going to be moving into a palace when I got here. You get what you pay for, and I’m … not paying very much. But, you know, once I start making money, I’ll be able to leave this place behind for somewhere better.”

“That’s … still optimistic,” Blake murmured.

“But true, darling,” Rarity insisted. “Very true.”

“It’s why I left,” Leaf said. “I don’t want to live my whole life knowing that each day is just going to be more of the same dull nothing for no reason. That’s what my ex didn’t get, that’s why I had to … anyway, the point is that I’m glad to have something to work towards.”

Rarity smiled. “Why don’t we get something to eat and we can discuss what kind of job you could get?”

“Yeah, sure,” Leaf agreed. “Where are we going to go?”

“There was that burger place just around the corner that we passed on the way here,” Rainbow suggested.

Rarity gave her a little bit of stinkeye at that, but come on, they didn’t really want to make more elevator rides and subway journeys just to get to somewhere nice. They wanted … well, they wanted fast food, in every sense.

And so they went to the Snowburger around the corner, which was kind of small, like a lot of things in the Underground, and clearly more meant for stuff to be taken away than eaten there, but it did have two small tables, one on either side of the door in front of the counter, and since that was more than Leaf’s new apartment had, the five of them took one of the tables and put their plastic trays of burgers and fries down in the middle of it.

It was a little bit crowded, but it was better than all eating standing up or sitting on the bed.

Rainbow started to unwrap her burger from its paper wrapping; to Leaf, she said, “You sure that you don’t want more than that bag of nuggets? You don’t get a lot of them.”

“It’s fine,” Leaf assured her. “Smoking kind of kills my appetite anyway. I don’t feel like a lot.”

“Okay,” Rainbow said.

She took a bite out of her burger, and for a moment, there was quiet around the table as everyone chewed on theirs. These Snowburgers weren’t the best, and Rainbow honestly preferred Burger Bar because they didn’t put so much dressing on the burgers, but it filled your stomach, and it didn’t taste bad, so that was that.

Plus, the fries were the best you could get in a fast food joint in Atlas.

She swallowed. “So,” she said, “you ran away to Atlas to get away from your parents?”

Leaf swallowed a nugget. “From my mum,” she replied. “My dad … mum kicked Dad out a while back, moved in with Daniel afterwards. Daniel and his two kids. Now, I don’t want you to think that I hate them or anything, but … it’s Angie, you know, she’s so put together and talented, and it’s all ‘why can’t you be more like your stepsister?’ Because we don’t share the same genes, okay; she was born better than me, so can you just leave me alone?” Leaf sighed. “This probably makes me sound—”

“Nah, don’t worry about it; it’s fine,” Rainbow assured her. “I wanted to get away from my parents too.”

“Me three,” Blake murmured.

“And me,” Penny said.

Everyone looked at Rarity, who was rather fastidiously plucking a chip from out of the paper bag.

She looked around, blinking owlishly. “I don’t know what you’re all looking at me for; I get along with my parents,” she said. “They don’t understand me, it’s true, but they understand that I’m doing what I want and that I’m happy, and that’s all that matters for both of us.”

“Lucky you,” Leaf said. “Really, you’re really lucky, you get that, right?”

Rarity smiled. “I’m well aware, yes, but thank you for reminding me.”

The corners of Leaf’s mouth jerked upwards for a second. “What about the rest of you?”

“My father wanted me to do what he wanted,” Penny said.

“My parents and I … had a falling out,” Blake explained.

“My parents praised me too much.”

Leaf blinked. “Okay, one of those things is not like the others.”

“Yeah, I know; it makes me cringe looking back; I didn’t know how good I had it,” Rainbow admitted.

“But Rainbow isn’t the only one to look back and realise that, as much as we didn’t realise it at the time, our parents had our best interests at heart,” Blake said,

Leaf’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me this isn’t leading up to some kind of ‘call your mom because it’s not actually her fault’?”

“I wouldn’t presume to know your circumstances,” Blake said. “I suppose I’m just warning you that we might not understand them as well as you might have hoped.”

Leaf shrugged. “And what about you, Penny?”

“My father … my father cares about me, in his own way,” Penny admitted, “but that doesn’t mean that everything he did is suddenly okay, and it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to do what I think is best for me, not what he thinks is best for me.”

Leaf nodded. “Exactly, see? Penny gets it.” She popped another nugget into her mouth. “I know that my mum doesn’t hate me. I know that … she probably is worried about where I’ve gone, and I’m probably being a bit of a jerk by not answering any of her messages, but … she wants to control every part of my life. For my own good, she says, but what’s good about making me miserable? What’s good about making me do things that I don’t want to do, and that sounds childish, but it isn’t? I’m willing to work, I know that Atlas doesn’t owe me anything, but it’s my choice. I’ll choose what I do, without someone over my shoulder telling me that’s too dangerous or that’s not good enough or why couldn’t you have applied yourself in school so you could aim higher than that?” She paused. “Speaking of which, how many jobs are done by robots in this city? I mean it looks cool, but does that mean that there are no cleaning jobs or anything like that?”

“I’ve never seen any,” Rainbow admitted. “How about you, Rarity?”

“It is androids, I’m afraid,” Rarity murmured. “Or else people taking on the work as part of their other duties. Coco and I clean the boutique before closing, but that doesn’t create a job for anyone else. That being said, there are plenty of things that robots don’t or can’t do, even if we’re talking about entry level: shop assistant, waitress, that sort of thing.”

“What about the military?” Leaf asked. “I kind of always wanted to go to one of your academies and become a huntress, but I’m too old for that now, especially since I didn’t go to combat school or anything. But what about the regular military; you don’t need any qualifications for that, right?”

“It depends on which branch of the military you want to sign up for,” Rainbow said. “You want to be a pilot, you want to be aircrew, you want to do most of the jobs on a warship, then you need to have passed your sixteen plus exams. If you want to do certain jobs like cook, or if you want to serve in the infantry, then you don’t need any qualifications, but you do need to be able to read and write, and if you don’t have the exams, you’ll never be considered for officer training. Also, infantry service is longer than any other branch signing on for the first time.”

“How long?” Leaf asked.

“Eight years for the infantry compared to six years for pretty much anything else,” Rainbow said. “Of course, a lot of people sign on again after their initial term expires, especially officers, so it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.”

Leaf nodded. “Eight years,” she murmured. “That’s a lot of time for something that I might not like or be any good at.”

“It’s a worthy cause,” Rainbow told her. “But yeah, you’re right; eight years is a long time; there’s no getting around that.”

Rarity delicately ate another fry. “Do you have a CV?”

“Yeah,” Leaf said. “There’s not a lot on it, but I’ve got one.”

“And I think that I saw an employment agency a little way down the corridor as we were coming down from the elevator,” Rarity said. “Why don’t you see if you can get on their books, and maybe they’ll have a job for you, if only one you can take until you find something you prefer?”

The others couldn’t exactly go in with Leaf to what was essentially a sort of job interview, so they waited outside the Proactive Recruitment agency office while Leaf, having brought up her sparse CV upon her scroll, went in.

They waited quietly, at first at least, the silence broken only by the humming of the engines down below.

“Rarity?” Penny asked.

“Yes, darling?”

“How did you get your job?”

Rarity chuckled. “In a rather old-fashioned way, I must admit. We’re forever being told that you’re not supposed to just walk into a place and ask if they’re hiring anymore, but … that’s what I did: I walked into the boutique and asked if Prim Hemline could use an assistant. Of course, this was only after the last dozen places I’d tried had told me to get out, but nevertheless, I persisted. It wasn’t as though I had anything better to do.”

“Do you know why it worked that time and not before?” asked Blake.

“Luck?” suggested Rarity. “Perhaps Prim was simply feeling generous that day. She put me through my paces, asked me to arrange a display, tested my knowledge of fashion and technique. And then she agreed to let me start before she’d even checked my references. Believe me, I know how fortunate I am.”

“What would you have done if it hadn’t worked?” Penny asked. “If you hadn’t been able to find a job?”

“Well, I could always have applied for Atlas,” Rarity replied. “I am a graduate of Canterlot Combat School, after all.”

“Hmm,” Rainbow mumbled wordlessly but with clear disapproval.

Rarity chuckled. “Yes, I thought that might get a reaction out of you.”

“You know, people who didn’t know you might almost think that you don’t like the huntsman academies,” Blake observed.

“What?” Rainbow snapped. “What are you talking about? I go to a huntsman academy!”

“That you don’t want your friends to go to,” Blake pointed out.

“It’s not just her,” Rarity said. “It was actually Applejack who made the decision for me that I wasn’t going to go to Atlas.” Rarity’s voice slipped into a very bad impression of Applejack’s distinctive accent. “’Now listen up, Rarity, you ain’t got no call to be risking your neck out on the battlefield, you hear me? We both know you ain’t the type for it, and we both know that you don’t want to be the type for it neither.’” Rarity’s usual accent returned. “The irony, of course, being that Applejack doesn’t really want to be the type for it herself.”

“She isn’t?” Penny asked.

“Nah,” Rainbow acknowledged. “Applejack would much rather spend all her time on the family farm, pushing a plough or feeding the pigs.”

“But she doesn’t,” Blake murmured. “Why?”

“Courage?” Rarity suggested. “Duty?”

“But why is it a burden that she has to bear against her will, but you aren’t allowed to take up even if you wanted to?” Blake clarified.

“Because Applejack’s strong,” Rainbow declared. “The strongest person we know, and not just physically either. Maybe she doesn’t enjoy the huntress life or the military life, she doesn’t love the fight, but … but she’s got a talent for it, and so … so she puts that talent to work. For her sister, for her family, for all of us.”

“Because if somebody has to, it might as well be her,” Rarity said softly.

“Because that’s who Applejack is,” Rainbow added. “Someone who takes the burden on her shoulders.”

“Like you?”

“Well,” Rainbow said, looking away, “I try to be.”

Blake smiled out of one corner of her mouth, before she looked at Rarity once more and asked, “And you … you seriously considered it, becoming a huntress?”

“I did,” Rarity confirmed. “There are times … there are times when the world seems very safe and secure, and then there are other times when it seems as though Atlas has need of every sword that can be laid at its feet, and at those times, I think, well … why not mine? The former times have been predominant over the latter recently, but … I still have my sword, and I’m not out of practice in how to use it, if need be.”

Blake grinned. “And so, feeling that way, it didn’t bother you that Rainbow and Applejack took it upon themselves to make that choice for you?”

“They wanted what was best for me,” Rarity said, “and while I can appreciate Leaf’s desire for freedom, the fact that my friends wanted to give me the benefit of their, admittedly heavy-handed, wisdom and advice didn’t offend me. The truth is that it would be rather hypocritical of me to take offence at their not wanting me to go to war; I feel the same way about Twilight. We’re none of us very good at minding our own business. Of course it … it does leave me in the position of waiting.”

“'Waiting'?” Penny repeated.

“Waiting to see if my friends will come home hale and hearty or in body bags,” Rarity said. “In that sense, I envy you, Blake: you get to die alongside your friends, rather than live without them.”

Blake shook her head. “No.”

Rarity’s eyebrows rose. “No?”

“No,” Blake said again, putting one hand on Rainbow’s shoulder. “I get to make sure my friends come back.”

“Hey hey hey, I saved your life in Mountain Glenn, remember?” Rainbow reminded her.

“And you do the same for me,” Blake added.

“That’s right, I do,” Rainbow muttered.

Rarity smiled. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I suppose you do.”

Just at that moment, Leaf emerged, beaming.

“Great news!” she cried.

“Did you get a job already?” asked Penny.

“No,” Leaf admitted. “The agency said that they didn’t have anything for me, but after she’d talked to me, the woman said that there was another agency, a specialist agency, that would like to talk to me, so she set me up with an interview with them tomorrow.”

---

“And they found you a job?” Rainbow asked. “Already?”

“I know, it’s great, isn’t it?” Leaf replied.

It was tomorrow — it was the next day — and Rainbow sat on Leaf’s bed, the foam mattress crinkling beneath her; it was just the two of them; Rainbow had swung by to check up on Leaf that evening before heading back to Atlas in time for curfew.

“Yeah, that’s really good,” Rainbow agreed. “I don’t know whether to say lucky you or good on you, but either way, congratulations. So, what’s the job?”

“I’m going to be working for the SDC,” Leaf said.

“Really?” Rainbow murmured, some of the enthusiasm deflating out of her.

Leaf frowned. “What’s wrong with the SDC?”

The memory of Adam’s branded face flashed in front of Rainbow’s eyes. That doesn’t follow; I’m sure they don’t recruit the people they’re going to brand like cattle through recruitment agencies. “Nothing, I just … they don’t always have the best record for treating their employees that well, and … faunus—”

“I need something,” Leaf reminded her, “and they can’t be that bad. I mean, they employ people all over Remnant; who’d work for them if they were that terrible?”

People who didn’t have any other choice. People like you. “People who need jobs?”

“Okay, that’s fair, but I read the contract … some of it,” Leaf said. “It’s six months' work; maybe it won’t be great fun, but if it’s really that bad, I’ll quit and come back here.”

“'Come back'?” Rainbow asked. “Where are you going?”

“Out to the mines … somewhere,” Leaf said. “They did say where, but I … it’s not Mantle, it’s … I didn’t recognise it. It must be somewhere out in Solitas. The point is that I’m going to be living out there for the six months, accommodation provided. That comes out of my paycheque, but … there’s not much alternative, is there?”

“I guess not,” Rainbow agreed. “So you’re going to be a miner?”

“Not necessarily; the lady at the agency said that they need all kinds of people,” Leaf said. “Not just miners, but clerks, cooks, porters. I thought robots could have done that, but it seems they need people to carry stuff and load it onto trains.”

“Sometimes people are easier to direct than robots,” Rainbow said.

Six months. It’s only six months.

Six months in the middle of nowhere controlled by the SDC.

The SDC that…

This wouldn’t be bothering her if it wasn’t for that brand. Six months? Six months was nothing. So the SDC owned her — okay, that was a really unfortunate turn of phrase — for six months; Atlas owned Rainbow for four years, and more than that if she then signed on as a specialist. Atlas would own Blake once she transferred. There was nothing evil or wrong about letting someone else, or an institution, have power over you, provided it was your choice and you felt as though you got something out of it, even if that something was money.

You could argue that any job involved letting someone else have control over you, if only during work hours.

This wouldn’t be bothering her if it wasn’t for that brand.

But she had seen the brand. She didn’t know how common it was, she didn’t know how rare it was, she didn’t know … she didn’t know anything; she only knew that she had seen it with her own eyes, she knew that it went on, she knew all the leads that might have revealed more had been severed, and she knew that it made her skin crawl at the thought of someone working for the SDC.

She had agreed to look after Leaf, on Sunset’s behalf. It would be a pretty poor way of doing that if she let her get branded by the SDC, but on the other hand, how likely was it that they recruited people to be brutalised like that in the way that Leaf had been recruited? A lot of people worked for the SDC, and they didn’t have their faces branded. It just didn’t happen for them.

It was, she supposed, rare enough that it wasn’t public knowledge that it was going on. Which was … comforting, she supposed.

And it was Leaf’s choice. If she wanted to take what was, to all appearances, a perfectly legitimate job offer, then who was Rainbow to stand in her way?

Especially considering that Leaf really didn’t like people telling her what she could and couldn’t do.

“Listen, good luck out there,” Rainbow said. “But will you do me a favour?”

“Sure, what?”

“Give me a call when you get there, and every so often, let me know how you’re doing,” Rainbow said. “That way I can tell Sunset and Ruby that you’re okay, maybe even that you’re thriving, and that I’m keeping an eye on you like I said I would, and Sunset won’t get mad at me.”

Leaf laughed. “I wouldn’t want to get you into any trouble with Sunset; she seems like she can be a bit of a pain. Sure, I’ll call you, and you can call them, and I’m sure that we’ll both have nothing but good news to report. I mean, everything’s turned out great for me so far, right?”

Comments

[Snowdrifter]

“I’m going to be working for the SDC,” Leaf said.

This can only end well...

[Kiue Jin]

I mean, everything’s turned out great for me so far, right?

Leaf's gonna be tortured to death, isn't she?

[Lancerguy]

11466523
Don't be silly...death would be a welcomed escape and we can't have that now can we?

[Mister Morden]

Leaf, you really need to learn about tempting fate with that last sentence.

Also, all the Babylon 5 references put a smile on my face

[Snowdrifter]

She was wearing a maroon trenchcoat that covered her up from the neck down to the knees, with only a little bit of a burgundy skirt and the black stockings that covered up the rest of her legs down to her high heels showing beneath it;

The same color family! The horror!

Not sure if intentional shout out to Legend of Everfree or not. Still well played.

[DeathKorptrooper1278903]

Mouse droids, gonk droids I swear if the next robot says Roger Roger I will pull a thermal detonator.

[Luviere]

Leaf laughed. “I wouldn’t want to get you into any trouble with Sunset; she seems like she can be a bit of a pain. Sure, I’ll call you, and you can call them, and I’m sure that we’ll both have nothing but good news to report. I mean, everything’s turned out great for me so far, right?”

The red flags are....Numerous indeed.