trans_9 | Big Reveal Part 2

Entry tags:

Big Reveal Part 2 - Grief.

The conversation between the bridge crew, Stacy, and the Admiral is broadcasted where the rest of the crew is in the MedBay, and gathered right outside. Even in the bridge itself, the sound echoes over the monitors so that anyone resistant to psionics can hear Elfangor's side of the conversation.

They have now been told why they were brought to the ship.

Their worlds are gone, destroyed by the Ohm. They are refugees in an unforgiving Omniverse.

Transmigration 9 is an ark.

While Stacy is partially restored, including her core personality (which is far more personable), she is still severely damaged, and running on automatic somewhat. Until the ship can be repaired, podpops will keep occuring and they will be forced to go on missions to undo the damage the Ohm have wrought to the Omniverse. The threat of the being in Escherville is still a threat, one with no immediate solutions.

But they have allies out there, they have an AI watching over them, they have the smallest glinting traces of hope. Their loved ones are (hopefully) on board, and even beyond that, there is may be a chance, however small, of restoring their home universes.

Stacy broadcasts to the entire ship when it's all over, when all has been revealed.

||The bodies of the individuals that died today are being prepared for funeral services. A list of their names will be made available, though I can assure you that none are individuals any of you know. The funeral will be on Obs Deck in several days, and will be announced.||

||Those that wish to have their memories of their rescues restored, as proof their worlds are gone, will have a chance to request this after the services, but without grief counselors on board, I strongly recommend against it.||

||In the meantime, all of us must heal and recover from our ordeal. New areas of the ship have been made available, such as the Crew Lounge, and I have opened up the Crew Quarters for use, and cleared out the belongings of--||

Here she falters, sadness creeping into her voice.

||--of my original crew, so that all of you may sleep more comfortably. These quarters fit two people to a room, and have actual beds and sonic showers. Dining will still be provided in the Mess Hall, with periodic days of real food in the Lounge--they must be spaced out until my food stores are replenished with fresh food products.||

After a moment of thought she says: ||And because I think you've suffered enough, fornicative activities are now allowed--however, both parties must stop by the Medbay for a Contraceptive shot or this will not be allowed. These shots will provide protection for six months and do not protect against venereal disease, but all of you, barring several individuals with certain conditions--|| Like those, say, infected with zombie viruses, Steve ||--are currently disease-free.||

||The ship is now open, and the bridge team can relocate back to the Living Areas. The doors will remain open after they leave the bridge. I must now engage in heavy repairs. My AI will not be quite as available as usual. Please, take time to grieve, rest, and have your wounds treated. We will discuss more when everyone has recovered from this ordeal.||

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"They don't," Marco said, seeming not at all willing to elaborate. "Oh...no reason. Just...making sure Ax hasn't grown any unnecessary appendages."

So Elfangor was alive, Ax wasn't merged with some psycho alien monster, and Tobias's mom was...too young to have a kid? "Well, unless she's some other Loren, yeah," Marco said. "I don't remember her looking that young, though."

Selene frowned at that. "You are a horrible liar," she said flatly. "....promise not to tell him I knew about you from him and I won't tell him about your question." She was willing to stop. As long as she didn't get in trouble too.

"Maybe she was taken earlier or something," she said with another shrug. "But she seemed to be part of the group from Yeerk universe."

Marco narrowed his eyes. "You don't know anything about my question," Marco said. "Or what Ax would think about it. You're quick to assume you have a bargaining chip." Marco really wasn't that concerned about whether she said anything to Ax - he had no problems explaining about the One.

And it hasn't escaped his notice that she'd just given him a bargaining chip. Before, she'd only said that she got his name from Ax - not that she didn't have Ax's permission for this, or that she didn't want Ax to know.

"But hey, if you really don't want Ax to know about you...poking around in his head or whatever it is you do...then you should go on a date with me," he said, with a grin. Hey, the girl was hot.

"But you're hesitant about it, which means it's something questionable, though not necessarily bad, and makes you nervous. What I did isn't bad, but it makes things awkward," she said calmly and raised an eyebrow at him. "And besides, you're way too youn-" She paused for a moment and leaned closer to study him.

"Oh, my mistake. Looks like you're older than what I saw. Still close to jailbait age. And I'm not dating jailbait if you are even if I was inclined to do it."

Then she leaned back. "And besides, the only thing I want to avoid is awkwardness. Since I've already going to have to deal with it being outed for my abilities helping people get down to the pod caverns, including helping make sure you guys didn't get shot."

"Lady, I am the King of having weird and awkward conversations. I've had plenty of practice," Marco laughed. He didn't really intend to try and blackmail her, but hey, he was having fun getting a reaction.

"And...wait, jailbait? Jailbait?! Hey, I'm 19!" Marco scowled, which unfortunately ended up making him look more like a petulant teenager than he would have liked.

Too bad he wasn't getting much of a reaction. She was rather calm about it, actually. "Such as telling someone they have a mouth when they normally don't? That's interesting practice."

She smirked, giggling at the reaction. "Ah, but still act it, I see. You really should take it as a compliment. It means you look young. But, yeah, I'm five years older than you."

"Lady, I had a friend burp a crocodile once. We're used to weird,"

With that petulant expression still on his face - mostly because he couldn't help thinking that she must have assumed he was younger because he was short - Marco tried to convince her otherwise. "I'm plenty mature! And Cassie's boyfriend is six years older than her. Five years isn't that much."

"I do have to say, I never heard about burping up a crocodile. Bastion gets stuff out of his ring, but I don't think he dares put live things in there," Selene said thoughtfully.

"Don't make me retort with the jumping off a bridge argument," Selene said, looking amused. "Besides, I don't like dating people under twenty-one in general. It means they couldn't visit me at work. Apex bars are strict about that."

"See? I told you. Although, finding Elfangor alive on a tentacled-ship full of zombies when the universe has been destroyed as pretty much gotta take the cake for the weirdness factor..."

Marco grinned when she mentioned the "jump of a bridge" argument. After all, Marco probably could jump off a bridge and live. If he morphed fast enough. "I don't think you need to worry about work anymore. Not if those guys were telling the truth," he said, nodding towards the monitor.

"...not the weirdest I've heard, but I half my life is in things that don't seem real." Which weren't. Half her life now was in the dream realm.

She sighed. "Yes, I know, but I have hope to go back because I LIKE being normal, and it was really the only normal thing I had after I got my powers."

"You've heard weirder?" Marco said, raising an eyebrow. "That ought to be interesting.

"I get the feeling we won't be getting anywhere close to normal for a while now," Marco sighed. He was going to miss his mansion. And his cars. And his fans - definitely going to miss the fans.

He tried not to think about the fact that going back to the way things were would mean nearly-certain death, not being surrounded by a horde of his adoring fans.

"But you know, if you're not going to let me go on a date with you, can I at least know your name?" Marco said, grinning at her with a glint in his eye. After all...he can always try pestering her for a date later. "Hey, you know mine!"

"Oh, trust me. I've heard a lot of weird. Stacy was the THIRD organic ship I've been on," Selene said with a bit of a grin. "Though it was the same species for the first two times."

"Hey, I got my bar set up in the Sensorium. I can still pretend I'm normal, just like I did back home." Hey, it was true. Her life was freakish back home. She just played pretend. And that was enough for someone like her.

"Selene Jones. Or Dream Weaver as everyone will know as I don't want my friends finding out I lied from elsewhere. But I usually go by Selene."

"How do you even make an organic ship anyway? What is Stacy supposed to eat, space dust?"

"I didn't see any bar in the Sensorium," Marco said, giving her look that suggested she might just be a little weird. Okay, she was definitely weird. Who wasn't? But still, thinking there was a bar when there wasn't was kinda odd.

"Dream Weaver? What, is that some kind of title or code name?" Marco said with a smirk.

"I work as a barmaid. You ask E or Handy-Man how an organic space ship runs. For all I know, it eats our original clothes," Selene said with a frown. "No idea about the Kanshians."

"You have to activate the program. It's hardlight technology. You know, like Star Trek's holodeck," Selene said with a vague wave in the air. "...when did you have time to go to the sensorium? Everyone was busy killing zombies."

"I said powers before," Selene said and snapped her fingers and, hey look, there was that floating girl among the team that had come to kill the zombies and ended up saving the podpopped. "But since zombie invasions were not the time to be stingy with the powers," she said and the vision faded back to her normally, "and I don't know what happens to my body when I astrally project unless I'm in pain, I had to tell people what I could do to go astral and not wake up from a zombie biting me. Slapping from someone wanting to run is a better wake up call. You can look up what my powers are beyond that on the comms later since I might as well just explain it to everyone. And I have to do it for my team captain anyway."

"Wait...this place has a holodeck?! Are you serious? The Sensorium's a holodeck? We just went there to get away from the zombies. Mostly so that this girl could fix the comms."

Marco paused for a moment, to consider the possibilities of an actual holodeck. "That is...seriously awesome."

He wasn't able to keep pondering this seriously cool development for long, though. Because seeing the floating girl again was really distracting. "That was you?" he said, gaping.

"Ah, is that it. Well, I suppose that would explain it. But yes, the sensorium is like the holodeck. The only place where you could get anything that tasted like food before all this," Selene explained.

"I said I was down there and I assure you, I am not trained to fight anything more than a few rowdy drunks," Selene said with a grin. It was kind of fun to see that reaction, she had to admit. Though, she was speaking the truth. She was a squishy, NOT a combat goon.

"Dude, that is still really cool." Marco said, referring to her abilities. Sure, things like morphing were now commonplace to Marco - but astral projection? That was definitely new.

"What else can you do?" He asked, curious.

"Illusions, making people fall asleep, and dream walking. Sometimes dimensional jumping through the dream realm, but I've only managed to do it twice and it was with a dimensional unstable room. Well, more than that, but that was because of device that made my powers a hundred times stronger, or more than that," Selene said thoughtfully. The Potentializer did give her enough power to cause a chance in dreams world wide and put entire cities to sleep.

"Why would you even need to know how to fight, if you can just make everyone fall asleep?" Man, what Marco would have given to be able to just make Visser Three and and all the other Yeerks just fall over asleep...

...it certainly would have made trying to sneak into the Yeerk Pool a lot easier. Heck, they wouldn't even have needed to morph.

"How'd you find out who I was from Ax, though?" he said, frowning. "You didn't list mind reading as one of your powers..."

Powers! Marco resisted the sudden urge to giggle. It was like the effect of seeing all these other people with crazy abilities earlier was finally hitting home. Powers!

"Well, one, it takes a minute or two for me to make someone fall asleep. Two, I have to have contact with them. I can do it astrally and it's usually pretty effective unless there's a mentalist ready to knock me out. And third, it doesn't work on everything. Robots are a no go, so are mentalists usually, and there are those with some other weird power that makes it not work," Selene explained, ticking the reasons off her fingers. "Though it does have the advantage that I can take out an entire fleet of hive mind organic ships if I can get to the core." She saved the world that way. It was a proud, proud moment. Then she got kidnapped.

"Dream walking." She said and tapped her head. "I can't dream myself and when I sleep naturally, I automatically go into the dream realm. I try to keep from going into anyone's dreams whose awake on the ship, but because it's moving, it throws me off and I'll end up in one accidentally sometimes. He was one of the easier ones to remember of me doing that because the blue space centaur is kind of a hard thing to forget." And because she's been helping him sleep sometimes after the first time because he'd been having bad dreams he'd wake up in, but that was private information.

"Ah. Bummer."

Marco shuffled a little, when he considered the possibility of Selene ending up in one of his dreams. Sure, it wasn't so bad as when the war was on - but Marco still had nightmares, every now and then. Somehow he doubted they'd ever completely go away. "But...you don't generally stay in other people's dreams, right?"

He didn't think Selene would like it if she ended up in that one about the ants, or that time on the cliff with his Mom, or nearly being trapped as a giant flea...and Marco wasn't really a fan of her ending up in one of those either.

"Lovely when it works. Usually passed out if it doesn't," Selene said casually. Though it was a worry. It meant losing track of what was going on.

"Unless I'm searching something out, which I usually did when I was gathering information on super villains, I pretty much wander around and not pay attention. You know, let my mind relax like it's supposed too. Usually if it seems like an extremely personal thing and I realize it, I leave. If it's a nightmare, I can alter it to give people a good night's sleep and usually leave because people can notice me then depending on how much I did. Other than that, aimless wandering. I could be in a dream for ten seconds, or five hours, depending," Selene explained.

"Super villains?" Marco asked with a grin. Really, she talks like she's just walked out of a comic book...

He found the thought of her going around altering nightmares a little more unsettling, though. "Uh...are you sure changing dreams is a good idea? I mean...maybe people don't want you seeing all their freaky nightmares."

Great. Now every time he went to sleep he was going to wander if Selene was poking around in his dreams, changing the curtains and rearranging the furniture when he wasn't looking.

"Yes. I'm guessing Yeerk world has a lack of superheroes like from the comics. That's pretty much my world. I would be part of what's called...a B-listing superhero team at best," Selene said, frowning. "We mostly win by the sheer insanity of our plans." And she's quite serious about that.

"I don't go looking for nightmares. Unless I'm looking for Nightmare, but that's supervillain information gathering because he does worse than me wandering around. He actually summons in the Nightmare Beasts," Selene said. "And I don't usually watch for long. If the nightmare is important enough for the person to have that changes the course of their life, me altering the dreams once is not likely to stop it from coming the next night."

"Not the Yeerk world," Marco said, giving her a harsh look. "The Yeerks are gone."

Marco just laughs when she talks about superheroes. "You seriously call yourselves superheroes? Man, that's nuts." Marco was beginning to think that Selene was a little crazy. See, Marco had spend of lot of his time during the war wishing they could be like superheroes. But the read world just doesn't work that way.

Course, pretty much everything Marco knew had just been turned up on it's head. But he was trying to cling to whatever shred of normalcy he could here.

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions

Re: The Medbay -- Reactions