Aesthetics
The steamboat came into view long before it actually reached them, and Arista sat up slowly, squinting against the sun, genuinely uncertain for a moment whether they were looking at the right vessel at all.
It bore almost no resemblance to the sturdy, practical hull that had once carried Nettle's guild to First Pioneer status. The basic frame was still recognizably the same ship, but everything built on top of it had clearly received considerable, enthusiastic attention in the time since, ornate brass fittings along the railings, an elaborate figurehead carved into something that might have been a stylized bird, banners bearing the Low-Key guild's fly emblem snapping cheerfully in the wind.
And, unmistakably, rising from the aft deck, a small wooden platform holding a wide, spiraled screw device mounted vertically on a central pole, a rough, spindly approximation of an old aerial screw design, wooden vanes carved in a slow, deliberate helix.
"...Is that," Arista said slowly, "a helicopter pad."
"Looks like it," Claire said, equally baffled.
"It doesn't even fly," Bram added, squinting at the contraption. "I don't think it's meant to. There's no engine mount, no drive shaft, nothing connecting it to anything that could actually turn it."
The ship pulled alongside them a few minutes later, and Nettle, who'd been standing quietly beside them, finally broke into a smug, satisfied grin. 'Like the upgrades?
"...Nettle." Arista stared up at the ornate railings, the banners, the entirely non-functional wooden helicopter perched absurdly on the aft deck. "What happened to your ship?"
"Guild's been busy," Nettle said, clearly delighted with herself. "We won first pioneer, we've got merch sales funding basically everything now, and someone in the guild had a sketch of an old flying-screw design lying around from one of Colm's reference books. Figured it'd look striking."
"It doesn't do anything, though."
"It doesn't need to do anything," Nettle said, entirely unbothered, gesturing at the whole absurd assembly with genuine pride. "Aesthetics."
Bram stared at the motionless wooden screw, still slowly creaking in the breeze without ever actually rotating with purpose. "...You built a non-functional decorative helicopter. On a boat."
"I built a conversation piece," Nettle corrected. "Every ship needs a silhouette people recognize from a distance. Ours has one now."
Arista climbed aboard, still shaking her head, though the corner of her mouth had already crept into a tired, fond grin. "...I nearly died three separate times today, and I come back to find your ship's gotten a facelift."
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"I nearly died with you three separate times today," Nettle pointed out, helping haul the rest of the crew up onto the deck. "I think I've earned the right to enjoy some pointless decorative flair in between crises."
"...Fair," Arista admitted, glancing back at the small, motionless helicopter one final time as the crew settled onto the considerably more ornate deck. "Just promise me it's not going to fall on anyone."
"It's very sturdily built," Nettle said, entirely unconvincing. "Mostly."
"Nettle."
"It's fine! Probably! Come on, let's get you all somewhere with food and no immediate danger of drowning."
The two-hour ride back to shore passed in a state of exhausted, grateful comfort, proper seating, actual sunlight without the anxiety of a viewport between them and the open sky, the gentle, steady rock of a surface vessel instead of the tense, cramped confines of the submarine's crew compartment.
"...This is so much better," Bram said, sprawled across a padded bench near the stern, eyes closed, thoroughly unbothered by the ridiculous, non-functional helicopter creaking gently overhead. "No sonar readings. No emergency ballast. Just wind and sun and the distinct, luxurious absence of anything trying to kill us."
"Don't get used to it," Arista said, though she was equally sprawled, equally unwilling to move from her own comfortable spot on the deck. "We're building a better hull material before we go back out."
"I said don't get used to it eventually. Right now, in this exact moment, I am allowed to enjoy not being in a metal tube."
Nobody argued with that.
The submarine sat in dry dock for a full week once they reached shore, the actual repair work considerably more tedious than anyone had anticipated, not because the hull damage itself was extensive, but because the swollen, expanded cloud material lining had to be removed entirely, section by section, before anything else could even be assessed properly.
It did not want to come out easily.
"...It's stuck to itself," Claire reported, three days into the process, wrestling with a particularly stubborn section of corridor lining that had fused unevenly against its own expanded folds. "The expansion wasn't uniform. Some sections ballooned more than others, and where it touched itself, it's bonded, near as I can tell, permanently."
"Cut it," Arista said, already exhausted by day three of what had promised to be a quick strip-and-replace job. "Don't try to peel it clean. Just section it out in pieces and haul the pieces free."
It took the rest of the week regardless, the crew working in shifts, cutting and hauling foot after foot of ruined, swollen lining out of the hull's interior, until finally, on the seventh day, the corridor stood bare and empty again, steel walls exposed, ready for whatever replacement material Arista eventually settled on.
"...That," Bram said, surveying the empty, gutted interior with the specific, weary satisfaction of a genuinely finished job, "was considerably less exciting than almost dying, and somehow almost as exhausting."
"Welcome to the unglamorous half of engineering," Claire said, wiping her hands. "The part nobody screenshots for forum threads."
Arista stood in the center of the empty corridor, notebook already out, staring at the bare steel walls with the same restless, patient focus she brought to every new problem.
"...Okay," she said finally. "Fresh cloud material lining, properly sealed this time, tighter tolerances so it can't balloon and fuse against itself again. We're not going anywhere near three hundred meters with this thing, so it'll hold up fine for everything we've actually got planned."
"Sourcing and installing can wait until morning," Claire reminded her, gently but firmly. "You've earned a full night's sleep first"
Arista managed a tired grin, closing the notebook for now. "...Yeah. Fair. Tomorrow, then."