Rim Billiton is a barren land where rusted steel frames and mine shafts stretch on without end. For years now, a single aging transport had been crossing that wasteland.

Aboard this vehicle, besides the driver and passengers, were two people who had made it their permanent home. And today was this route's final run.

It would have been nice if it had ended without incident... but of all days, today is when this vehicle gets hijacked.

A Six-Star Chef Lives on This Transport

Pot Lid, the young Cautus who guards the kitchen, calls herself a 'six-star chef.' She's a kid who takes cooking so seriously she'll quietly reheat a cold stew with Originium Arts.

The driver, Alanna, is known as 'Alanna of the Wasteland.' She's full of bluster and pride, but she's also the guardian who has secretly raised this child aboard the vehicle for two years now.

Beneath Pot Lid's sleeve, black crystals have begun to sprout. This child is Infected. Even the bracelet Alanna fastened on her can't fully hide that glow.

Once the route is cut, this vehicle — this home — will disappear too. Even so, the child makes a point of smiling brightly.

Because Warmy has never once been gloomy.

— Pot Lid

'Warmy' is the name Pot Lid uses for herself. That claim of never being sad somehow sounds a little sad. Saying she's doing the final tidying up, Alanna sends the child off on an errand — to buy a safety valve and daily necessities, and to sell off their old household goods. The two of them called this 'division of labor.'

The Kid Runs an Errand — but No One Will Take Her Goods

Out on the streets for the first time in ages, Pot Lid loads a cart high with cargo and goes rolling down a slope, only barely coming to a stop thanks to a customer. It was a woman of few words who'd come to buy a Sandbeast, a crossbow in her arms.

The general store owner refuses to deal at first, accepting the goods only once he hears Alanna's name. At the government office the line is so long she's at her wits' end — until some spirited lady offers to submit the paperwork on her behalf and presses a business card into her hand.

With the errand done, the transport takes the returning child aboard and begins its final run. But then—

This transport has been commandeered. From this point on, this vehicle's destination is Greening Valley.

— Transport PA Announcement

The one holding the broadcast mic was that woman of few words from earlier in the day. In her other hand was a crossbow, its point trained on Alanna's head.

A Robber With a Crossbow to Your Head — yet the Conversation Keeps Flowing

The vehicle hijacker — this woman later called Ray — is oddly composed. She says no one will get hurt as long as they reach the destination, and that she'll even pay. Alanna keeps talking nonstop, watching for an opening.

But a checkpoint trips them up. With refugees flooding in after a recent mine accident, inspections to root out the Infected have begun.

Pot Lid's inspection device goes off. For the first time, Alanna bows her head and pleads, but the inspector remains coldly unmoved.

In that instant, Ray looses an arrow to hold the guards back and pulls Pot Lid out. Alanna rams straight through the gate, breaking through the checkpoint. Now everyone aboard this vehicle is an accomplice.

The reason Ray is willing to endure all this chaos to reach Greening Valley is—

I'm going to find a giant shadow. A shadow that glows in the fog, huge as a mountain. It can even speak.

— Ray

A Man Who Fled His Engagement — Only to Fall for the One He Fled

One more passenger had ended up stranded aboard by chance — Jerry, a timid Sarkaz insurance salesman. Pushed into an arranged engagement by his 36 siblings, he'd hated it and was in the middle of running away.

While on the run, Jerry met a woman named Keira who was play-acting at running away from home, and together they weathered a crisis. Then the two felt a connection forming between them... only to discover that they had, in fact, been each other's arranged fiancés all along.

Meanwhile, to learn the truth about the 'Behemoth,' Alanna pays a visit to travelogue writer Asbestos. Asbestos tells her the Sargonian word for that giant shadow, but admits that even he doesn't know what it actually is.

And out in this wasteland, there was also a girl who had returned to the hometown where she spent her childhood — Amiya of Rhodes Island, along with the Doctor and Savage.

A Child Who Used Arts to Cool the Heat — Collapses Because of Those Very Arts

The incident erupts with Pot Lid. Wanting to be useful, this child had secretly been using Arts to regulate the reactor's temperature. Then her Originium Arts run out of control, and her whole body turns into a ball of fire.

Alanna is frantic, even knowing folk remedies are useless. Knowing full well that Oripathy is incurable, there was nothing she could do but believe that she and the child would recover together.

That's when Savage — the owner of that business card — appears, along with Amiya and the Doctor. Amiya uses Arts to suppress the crystals' activity and saves the child. The truth behind that card: it was Rhodes Island, the ship that rescues the Infected.

That night, they all sit together out in the wasteland. Beside the Doctor gazing up at the stars, Savage quietly begins to share stories she'd long kept buried.

She Finally Meets the Light She'd Sought for So Long — but It Says It Isn't the One

Ray had originally been a prospector who checked the air in the mine shafts. The Sandbeast that had warned her of toxic gas through the color of its dorsal fin died in a recent gas accident. Before its empty cage, Ray resolved to once again seek out the 'light' that had saved her as a child.

Walking on in a daze, Ray discovers her own hand clutching the Doctor's hood, having mistaken it for her dead Sandbeast. As it turned out, the Rhodes Island group had been following behind them the whole time.

Where the group arrived was a rock fortress that shielded them from sandstorms — an oasis teeming with healthy Sandbeasts. Delighted, Pot Lid hands out carrot cookies to the Sandbeasts.

But then a Catastrophe rolls in. As everyone evacuates, Ray falls behind while trying to protect the remaining Sandbeasts. That's when the Sandbeasts, sounding a strange bone-flute cry, lead Ray into a cave deep underground.

There, a giant being had been trapped in darkness for hundreds of years, unable even to move.

'Behemoth'? The one I was looking for... was you?

— Ray

But the Behemoth speaks calmly. It asks how it could ever have saved her when it can't even move, and says none of its kind are here. It drives the point home: what you're looking for isn't here. Then it asks in return — so what was it that brought you all this way?

The Truth of the Light

In the end, the group never reaches Greening Valley, only gazing at it from afar before turning back. It's confirmed that what Ray was searching for isn't there. And yet, strangely, Ray didn't look disappointed.

Back at Rhodes Island, Ray joins as a prospector and, for the first time, receives an ID tag with her own number on it — because temporary prospectors weren't even given a number. And Ray asks the Doctor: what was that light, back then?

In that moment, a scene flashes before Amiya's eyes. The newly excavated Rhodes Island crossing an Originium wasteland, someone reaching out a hand to a band of stranded hunters. The 'light' that, over a decade ago, saved the young Ray among that pack of hunters — was this very ship, and that person aboard it.

Because I wanted everyone to have a home to return to.

— The Doctor

Pot Lid learns how to handle an Arts staff from Savage. She keeps fumbling and bursts into tears, but Alanna tells her she can cling to her sleeve and cry all she likes. Because at least at the end of this journey, the child wasn't empty-handed.

The two of them now head to Rhodes Island to search for a cure for Oripathy — for the sake of the day they'll one day reunite with the father they lost contact with in an accident two years ago.

The aging transport whose final run ended in a hijacking thus completed the longest, unplanned journey of all. Someone found a home to return to; someone else chose to become that home. And the child who made a point of smiling even in the dark was, this time, truly not empty-handed.