trans_9 | [open] show and tell: a ghostly presentation of the first podpopped crew's final confrontation

The two women had waited until a good number of people had gathered in the sensorium next to where the Tapestry was kept. Sakura glanced toward Howard, wanting a visual reassurance that he was there with a recording device. He was someone she could count on for the paranoid sensibilities that she sometimes put aside in favor of other practicalities. With everyone gathered, they turned toward each other, and the sensorium came alive.

Loud pops suddenly rang out through the air. Noises that were clearly gunshots. A panel set into the flesh of a wall nearby exploded and yet at the same time...it didn't.

Far off, there were yells and screams, orders being shouted, the sound of things exploding.

Over it all, there was a voice that rang through the hallway, firm and commanding, and yet frayed around the edges, desperate. It was a woman's voice. Occasionally it dipped too low for certain words or names to be heard.

"Give mwurmur covering fire! Fall back! Fall back! We're almost to the escape vessel!"

Several shadows shapes moved through the hall, shapes that looked vaguely humanoid, but then, just like the noises and the yelling voices, they disappeared without a trace.

Tthe world suddenly shifted again, like they were passing through panes of colored glass. Shapes shifted around them, half in tune with reality, half out. Words were blurred, especially names, as if something had tried to erase those names from existence itself so they'd be lost to time.

"Where's Zuko? Where is he?"

The same woman that had called out orders earlier said, "He's in the vents. He'll catch up. He might've even beaten us there."

At first they could only catch fleeting glimpses of sharp green eyes, and of a face with harsh features when they looked at her. Though they couldn't see it in the woman's features, they likely got the sense that she was lying, as if the story being woven around them had more truths to it than just the ones that could be seen and heard.

There was a voice that could be felt rather than heard that chimed in next: Reckon this my time to shine then. You lot go on ahead. I'll buy you some time.

Then there was a sound like a record scratching and suddenly the scene jumped ahead, and they saw the women firing at something down the hallway, others of various species around her firing weapons and shooting weapons at a blurry, unknown enemy.

A machine man that looked like his design specs had been based on a Cheetah lunged at one of the blurry shapes, fill with fury over a fallen friend nearby, another robot with its chest ripped open and its insides still sparking.

Electricity arced, there was a scream, and a girl that looked like she was made of silver dissolved into a liquid, metallic puddle on the floor.

A man threw a razor-sharp boomerang that sliced the heads off of the invading, blurry creatures, whatever they were, and yelled into a comm device, "Harper! Come in! What's our status on the escape pods, we're getting murdered out here!"

"Uuuuuh, not so good, boss!" came a high and panicked nasally voice over the comms, in a Bostonian accent. It could barely be heard over the crackle of gunfire and pulse blasts in the background "We're taking heavy fire down here and they have the Hub barricaded. Wash is hurt real bad, and something's blocking Will's ability to talk to machines. I know I'm a techie god-made-flesh and all but even I need water to make into wine--I need more time!"

"We don't have time, Harper, we're losing people up here!"

"I'm workin' I'm workin', but I have to lay it to ya' straight, Mercer," the man said, his voice unsteady and shaking, "I don't think we're gonna make it. That's not just the fatalist in me talking either. Our only chance is if you can get a team down through the access vents, we need someone to cover our a--EDEN! NOOOO! Get away from her!"

The explosions on the comm grew louder and were accompanied by screams. Then the comm went silent and only relayed static.

"Harper! Harper, can you read? Harper! Evac team, can anyone on the evac team read?" The man cursed and tossed another boomerang that exploded once it hit one of the machines that was walking through the hallway among the opposing troops. "Cybs, we've lost contact with the Evac team! The evac team's down! I repeat: the evac team's down!"

The record skipped again. There was a barricade up, a forcefield, but cracks were appearing all along it, glowing. It wouldn't last long.

There was an explosion behind it and a young man shot through the barricade with such speed that he slammed into a wall, now forced to stay solid. His hair was white, and he was wearing a strange black jumpsuit. He was hurt badly, glowing green blood oozing from multiple wounds.

"Daniel!" An older man with white hair was quickly at his side. He was injured too, his arm in a makeshift sling.

"Is he still breathing?!" asked the woman named Cybil, the same green-eyed woman from the earlier visions that had been leading this beleaguered group. She looked like she could barely walk now, and limped over to the older man and the fallen teenage boy.

Behind her lay the fallen. Most of them were still alive. Some were dead, but most were still alive. Barely. It was hard to tell yet if that was a good thing. A few were weeping, from the pain of their wounds, or because they were quietly grieving over their lost friends and loved ones. Some were weeping over losing something greater than any one of them.

"He's alive. He's still in his ghost form--he should heal faster that way," said the old man, who was patiently, if awkwardly, tending to the boy.

"You need to leave, Vlad."

The man named Vlad looked up, his gaze hard. "And what do you mean by that?"

"We're done," said Cybil. "We're finished. And don't even pretend for a second that we're not. You're a pragmatist."

"Comes with the territory of being a villain, I suppose," mused Vlad. "So does losing."

"Don't pretend for a second you're a villain, either. None of us are what we used to be before, not after everything we've been through."

"I am, as you said, a pragmatist, which means that I plan to cut and run anyway, to save my own skin," said Vlad. "So why tell me to?"

"We have no idea what they're going to do to us. They might kill us. They might brainwash us. Someone has to stay on the outside."

"If you think I'm going to manage to single-handedly rescue you all, or that I'll even try, you're more deluded than I thought."

"Not a chance," said Cybil. "I'm not an idiot. You're still you."

"Then what do you have in mind?"

"You can phase. You can hide. Because of that stunt you pulled where you tried to take over the ship, before you started playing by the rules, I know that you know where all Stacy's sensor blindspots are. You know how to mess with the AIs. You understand how the tech works." Cybil went on, "Do you remember what they told us about the Tapestry? Down on that planet? That we were the wrong group, the wrong ones. That someone was coming after. Someone from the same ship."

"That others would wake up after us."

"Exactly. And if they do wake up, maybe they'll have more luck than us. You can hide and help them as best as you can, to give them that chance."

"I won't do anything directly. I'm not risking my neck for anyone."

"You won't have to. Free the AIs--Cortana and Rommie can do what they can. Find ways to sneak them some answers."

"I could feed them clues through one of the AIs. Maybe question mark-question mark. Having an AI that's just responsible for intellectual exercises is near useless--I could make him into something else."

"Exactly. Maybe if they are the right ones that Tapestry thing can help them out, I don't know. All I know is they deserve at least a fighting chance. It's less than we had. Someone's got to see this through to the end."

"I don't think I'll get that far, Cybil."

"You can make sure anyone that comes after us at least gets a leg up."

"I can possibly help any new wakers at the start, Cybil, but I won't be able to keep doing it for long, especially once they get back in contact with them."

"Then the rest will be up to them. We just have to hope..."

"What about Stacy? It's all pointless if Stacy turns on them, too."

"That wasn't her fault. They made her do it just like they've been yanking us around since they came in contact with us. She didn't want to. She almost fought it off for us. Maybe if they're more subtle than we were about freeing her from their control, she'll be able to help them. She wanted to help us."

"I'll need a diversion to get away, when the shield's down. I'll barely be able to transform as is."

"We can give you that. We can give them that. The ones that come after us."

Vlad gently patted the teenage boy--Daniel's--hand and stood up. "Don't let them kill the boy, Cybil. Do you understand me? Whatever happens..."

"I can't make any promises. You know that."

"I promised his mother, before she..."

"I know, Vlad."

Vlad rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "Butter biscuits! I think I preferred the villainy to all this caring-about-my-enemy-like-he's-my-son selfless heroic teamwork nonsense. At least back then, when I inevitably lost, it was well-deserved and nothing but my own pride was hanging in the balance."

Two rings of light flashed over Vlad's body, changing him to a rather nasty-looking creature with green skin, red eyes, black hair, and a strange white suit.

Cybil stood up to face all the others.

"Everyone, listen up!" she called out in the same commanding voice she'd been using earlier. "We only have one chance at all to make sure that we didn't fight for nothing today. We have to make sure at least one of us gets away to give anyone else that wakes up after us an edge against them. Vlad's volunteered to do that. We have to make sure they never get a chance to stop him from slipping away."

There was only silence and hopelessness in response.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't get us through this like I promised. This is my fault. We pushed too hard and too fast, and that was on my orders. Open rebellion wasn't the way. I screwed up and I let you all down." She went on, "But I need to ask you to pick yourselves up one last time. I need you to follow one last order, and it's a very, very simple one."

All eyes were on her.

"Fight to the last."

There was no rallying cry. There were no cheers. There were only hopeless faces staring back at her.

But along with those despondent gazes, there were people wiping the tears from their faces, dragging themselves off the ground to shaky stances, helping the injured off to the side out of the way. There were hands balling into fists and tightening around the hilts of weapons.

The barricade started to fall apart, and then all hell broke loose. They fought, as ordered, and they were beaten, as expected. Amidst pulse fire and bullets and energy blasts, Vlad Masters phased and disappeared through the floor, completely unnoticed, as planned.

After the fighting died down, after the last body had fallen to the floor, stunned, a humanoid being stepped through the bodies, its segmented body probably somewhat familiar to anyone that had met the Daligig or seen footage of them. Its face was in shadow.

A young man's quiet laughter filled the emptiness of the room, and the Daligig stepped through the bodies to where Daniel Fenton lay on the floor, propped against the wall, where Vlad and Cybil had left him.

"You've all lost," hissed the Daligig. "All this death, all these lives wasted, for nothing. So little was expected of you, and you threw away the relative safety that was provided to you for nothing, for the sheer delusion of freedom. Why are you laughing?"

"You're the one that ordered the rebellion be put down, right? You're the one that did this to us? Do you even care?"

"Your actions could have destroyed the entire war effort. I have no regrets for choosing to stop you."

"That's what I thought. And that's why you're going to lose this war." The teenager took in a shaky breath to steady his nerves. "Anyway, I just wanted your attention. I needed to get you closer."

His glowing green eyes were bright with rage, and tears were streaming down his face, as he said, "This is for Sam."

Then he screamed a horrible ghostly scream that tore the faceless one's carapace apart like wet tissue paper and shredded the bodies of the soldiers around him.

One of the other soldiers in the room managed to shoot him with a stunner and then he was out like the others, rings of light passing up and down his body, leaving him back in his normal human form.

The fight was over.

And so was the vision. The grisly scene faded, the bodies on the floor disappearing one by one...

... leaving everyone standing in the sensorium's blank interface as the mental replay shut down.

[ ooc: Feel free to make your own threads and discuss as your characters are want to do! You are absolutely not required to respond to either Barbara or Sakura's question threads. That is optional! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Atom watched the video in quiet silence, his body stiff. Small, buried in the fabric of his customary hoodie.

When the video ended, he remained where he'd been sitting, looking fixedly down at the floor. It was happening all over again.

Fuu took off her glasses, blotting at her eyes with the absorbent cuff of her plantsuit and bowed her head as the walls returned to blank. Such cruelty on the part of the people who had brought them here and the brave way in which the original crew had sacrificed themselves, the practicality in which the captain and Vlad had spent their last moments; it was impossible for her to remain unmoved.

She could hear Windam stirring with unease, but he spoke no words yet. Looking up, Fuu spotted Atom, clearly distressed as well. She walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder. It was a difficult scene for anyone to watch. For a child who had cheerfully risked his life to protect people every day, it had to be even worse.

Atom didn't say anything at all. But he did see her blotting at her eyes and, eyes tearing a little, gave her a hug.

She looked like she could use one.

Atom was quite right.

Fuu hugged him back, taking a deep breath to steady herself. She had wanted to know more, to find the truth of this war so that she could save Earth and Cephiro. Now she did. She needed to figure out how to proceed.

"I suspected it would be like this," she said after a time. "But that doesn't make seeing it any easier."

"No," he agreed, "It doesn't." And it probably never would.

"I wish I could have been there to help. Maybe..." But wishing that now might just be pointless. "What do you think the Daligig are going to do now? I mean, they gotta know what we know, right?"

Fuu nodded, although privately she was glad that Atom hadn't been. She knew Hikaru would have felt the same way, too, but as powerful as they were in their own right, there were some odds that couldn't be beaten.

"I'm not sure," she said. She wished she could give a better answer, but all she knew about the Daligig was from second-hand sources, and only in this one had she seen them at least somewhat in the flesh. "But they must know that most of us didn't like them before, either, and they haven't punished us for that. They might only act if they detect an immediate threat from us."

Atom would have understood, even if Fuu had voiced her concerns. It was just that... well, he didn't like being all safe when someone else was hurting.

"Yeah, I guess so. Maybe they're counting on us to be too scared to do anything?"

"That, and the Ohm. As long as we follow the ship's mission to fight them and visit planets to help the war effort, we're obeying them--actual loyalty is probably secondary to that." Certainly the Daligig were very powerful. They might feel secure enough that they didn't need any loyalty.

"And they probably think that they're strong enough to crush a second rebellion," she added, building on that thought. "There are millions of pods. They could simply repeat the process of awakening another crew."

Atom scuffed the ground a little with his boot. "Yeah. Although it sounded like they didn't even want us. Guess we know why now."

They were, essentially, a liability for the Daligig. "But this is a big clue. It means that the war isn't what the Daligig say it is." Well, Atom had suspected that all along, but here was proof.

Fuu nodded. "Yes--if this is accurate, the general mistrust in them is entirely justified."

An unfortunate thought occurred to her: it was the Daligig who'd said that the Ohm knew how to undo the destruction of universes. Now it seemed probable that this was just a lie to keep them fighting. She swallowed--she wasn't sure how much trust she had put in that since she had decided to accept the likelihood of her family's death. But the prospect of restoring it had been important. Windam relied on it too, probably more than she did. What would he do if there was no way to restore Cephiro...?

And that wasn't all there was to the Ohm, she remembered. "They certainly haven't said all there is to know about the Ohm," she said, knowing that she didn't want to dwell on the prospect of worlds being irrevocably gone.

Atom nodded. "Have you ever fought them? They're supposed to be like big bugs, right? What if the Daligig stomped on their ant hill or something, and that's why they're so mad? It seemed from the video like they didn't want the real truth to get out."

He wasn't sure how he felt about the possibility of their worlds being forever gone, either. It wasn't like he'd entirely believed there was a way to reclaim entire universes, but...

"I've never fought them myself, only seen video of battles with them." She touched her fingers to her lips. "But I think you're right. I found a channel post describing how a crew member and a Councilor were able to contact the Ohm during the battle at NiSaris."

In light of what they had seen here, that report made Atom's thought even more plausible. "The Councilor said that the Ohm seemed to be sad, because of something we had done. I wonder--I wonder if we've been deceived into committing something just as terrible? What if the Daligig are responsible for destroying their universe?"

Atom looked at the ground, frowning. "Nothing ever comes of hatred. But a lot of the time, it's the only thing people feel they can turn to... Destroying the ones they hold responsible for hurting them."

Then he looked up. "If we did something to them, or if the Daligig did, we should find out what it is. Maybe we can convince them to stop."

Fuu nodded, clasping her hands tightly in front of her. "When what we love is destroyed, it can feel as though revenge is the only thing in our power." She had seen that too clearly in Cephiro. "I think we have to find out what happened, too. If we contacted the Ohm once, it can be done again... we need to find a way to talk to them without being rejected."

Atom nodded thoughtfully. "I guess the question is how we can get through to them, especially if they're really different in the way they communicate. It'd be a lot easier if they were willing to talk to us more..."

"It could be that they're so different from any of us that communication seems impossible. I don't know how they were contacted in that battle, though..." Maybe she ought to speak to Councilor Athos or Setsuna to learn more. "We should find out."

Atom nodded. "Yeah. Let's go and ask them. Even if they want to keep it a secret, we might still be able to find out something from their answers."

[open] show and tell: a ghostly presentation of the first podpopped crew's final confrontation

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject