trans_9 | Talk About Timing...

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Talk About Timing...

While chaos was going on in the city, a level below the Living Areas, the rest of the ship was functioning normally. Stacy, apparently oblivious to goings on in the city, likely do to her malfunctioning sensors there, carried on with ship business.

||Pod Release Protocols Initating,|| Stacy's familiar voice sounded out to the upper levels, though no one was there to hear her. They were all downstairs, fighting for their lives against giant cockroaches.

In the Pod Caverns, there were the sounds of: Pop. Pop pop pop. Poppuhpoppoppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiiiissssss.

The usual condensation and mist sprayed out from cracks in the pods, they ripped open and the people inside slid out onto the floors, covered in slime. One of them, due to his mechanical nature, slid out covered in a sort of oil mixture, in a smaller body than he'd once had.

Pop. Poppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiissss.

There was no one already freed from the ship to greet them, only Stacy herself, and the empty silence of a ship caught in the middle of a crisis.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Brainy shifts so his lower body is behind a pod because he's, um, kinda naked, too, and immediately closes his eyes and clamps a hand over them.

"My profuse apologies. When I heard a noise, I was expecting to find my captors, not--not--"

A naked hot chick apparently in the same situation as him.

"Yeah, because clearly you're the only person who was kidnapped for whatever nefarious deal we've...both been kidnapped for." She frowned. "Or something." She pauses and softens. "Umm. I'm sorry."

"The likelihood of encountering our captors now that we're free is just as likely as encountering other people kidnapped. The only reason we're free from whatever form of stasis this is might simply be because of some sort of malfunction--meaning whoever put us here could be coming for us any second to put us back," is said back somewhat snootily, despite her apology.

So there.

"You're assuming - pretty snottily, I wanna add - that we were kidnapped just to be preserved in slime to be used as, like, jam or something. Don't be stupid. For all we know, we've been kidnapped to be, like, drag queens or something." She looked down at his legs. "You certainly have the gams for it, and the bitchy attitude to boot."

"...What?"

His voice is a little shrill and he retreats farther behind the pod, so she can't look at his "gams," especially since while he thinks that's a 20th century term for 'legs,' he's not entirely sure--and thus isn't sure exactly what part of him she's looking at.

"Are you brain damaged? Because your manner of speaking and vacuous logic certainly suggest it. If you are, that's quite all right. Where I come from, society is socially advanced and we're taught to be rather tolerant; I'd be more than happy to find you a protective helmet and explain things very slowly."

Of course, he's proving her right about the bitchy attitude thing...

"I'm invulnerable. I'm about as much in need of a helmet as you are of any more bleach on your hair," she snapped. She looked him up and down. "And trust me, cabbage-butt, where I come from, we're pretty damn advanced socially and scientifically too." Or at least, they were...before they were destroyed. But she wanted to win this argument dammit, without any pity points.

Argh, she keeps peeking around and looking at him--but then the only reason he knows this is because he keeps peeking through his hand. He retreats even farther behind the pod so she can't see his (apparently) cabbage-colored behind.

Hmm, she has invulnerability. Daxamite?

"First of all, my hair color is natural and quite common among my species. Secondly, stop looking at me enough to note the color of my--my gluteal region, when I'm trying to pay you the same courtesy--I'm sure there are many physical attributes I could notice about you if I decided to be less polite. Thirdly, this bickering is tiresome and getting us nowhere."

Never mind that he kinda started it.

"We need to find out more about our current predicament. What's your name?"

"Looking at - I am not! looking at you! Just because you're blandly, vaguely cute does not mean I'm suddenly going to be going all ga-ga over you."

Did...did she just say that?

Oh hell.

"Besides, the glimpse I did get was mostly green. I assumed your bottom would be too, or are you built like a baboon? Is it purple back there?"

A beat.

"You started it, Snot Boy. I'm Kara. Who're you?"

"You think I'm--" Even 'vaguely cute' is... well, it leads to an odd burst of giddiness, despite the previous snarking. For a moment, in his head, he's a schoolgirl, wide-eyed, perplexed, and faintly flushing on the other side of the pod--though that moment quickly passes, and the feeling is buried.

...And then she calls him Snot Boy and he frowns.

"I am not built like a baboon--and would you just stop? Stop talking about...my coloring. In general. New subject now."

The intellectual in him knows that nudity taboos are stupid, and the situation is a drastic one, so he shouldn't bother worrying about being naked when there are other things to worry about.

The teenage boy in him, however, finds it painfully difficult to interact with people socially--and that's when he's not naked near a total hottie. He's feeling self-conscious.

Then she says her name and he's lost for a moment. Kara. That name tugs on something somewhere in his subconscious, like the name in a song that's all about a girl that you heard once but have long since forgotten. Oddly familiar, despite hearing it for the first time.

"I," he says, "am Brainiac Five." He rarely uses his real name. "Now, Kara, we're going to need to look around, and separating isn't wise in our current situation, so we're going to need to deal with the fact that we're both--"

"Who?!" Kara's head snaps up and she bounds over to the green-skinned boy. She pushes the hair on his forehead back and sees... Jeebus! Rao! $#%+! "No, the first thing that we're going to deal with is why the hell you're putting up this...this charade...of not knowing what's going on! What, are you pulling a Noah's Arc?! Are you collecting species? Is Kal here?! Are there Thanagarians here? Daxamites? Rannians?!"

Whoa whoa, angry blonde--strong angry blonde, but if she's a Daxamite, she wouldn't be touching him, xenophobes that they are.

A Kryptonian maybe? Is that possible? He has no idea where or when these people in the pods are taken from--after all, he'd been plucked out of the timestream.

...He really wishes he had omnicom and scanners.

It's rather easy to deduce the cause of her reaction though. He winces.

"I see you've heard of my predecessor..."

"Heard? Heard?! He stole Kandor! My hometown! He stole it! I haven't just heard of him, high IQ boy, I know him." She grabs him by this throat and lifts him. It won't hurt him, she's just lifting him. No force. "And what, you're Brainiac Vista? Nice. Nice. Let. Me. Go. Home!" Her eyes start to glow a very scary red.

"Gckt!"

It just had to be a Kryptonian. And it had to be one from Kandor. Grife.

He puts up a forcefield around himself, and it should cause him to slip out of her hand. It stays up.

"Note the addition of the numeral five," he says in an acidic tone. "As in, I am the fifth Brainiac, and the fifth in the Dox line, descended from Brainiac's clone. His admittedly ruthless and Machiavellian clone, but his clone regardless. Brainiac is--well, I suppose I can't say it's an honorrific, but it's a title. I am the fifth of the Brainiac line, bred from the fourth, created and groomed to dedicate my inherited twelfth-level intellect to the well-being and advancement of my planet, Colu. Instead, I wound up joining the Legion of Superheroes. Also note here: the word 'superheroes.'"

He stares her down.

"Unlike my predecessors--" Pretty much all of them. "--I'm not a supervillain, sociopath, or psychotic. I also have no idea what brought us here--that isn't an act."

Kara watched as Brainiac slipped out of her hand. He stayed up and she floated up to his level, no longer really caring if she was nude.

"Right. Five. Five times as deadly, five times as duplicitous, and five times as dastardly. Tell me, does your Legion have a history of traitors like the Titans do, because if they don't, I'm sure you'll be the first fallen Legionairre."

"It's been a thousand years since Brainiac wreaked havoc on civilized life. A thousand years is a very long time."

He crosses his arms, also not caring that he's naked. He's too busy being right to care.

"And if you knew anything at all about the Titans, you'd know from Superboy---you'd know from all the rest of them--that I fought to protect the United Planets alongside them and my fellow Legionnaires. With my fellow Legionnaires, I fell, when we were torn loose from time and space defeating the Fatal Five Hundred. Wherever this ship pulled us from, the last thing I remember is floating with them in the void."

He frowns at her. "We gave up everything. I gave up everything alongside them to do what had to be done."

Brainy's annoyed that his loyalties have been called into question. He is prickly, he is arrogant, at times he is even mean and unplesant, but the one thing he is above all else is loyal to the Legion.

"If the rest of the Legion isn't on this ship in stasis like you and I were, I'm going to use this ship to find wherever they are now, and save them."

So sprock you, lady!

"I'm going to pull them from the void and free all the people imprisoned here. Either you can come with me--we can find clothes--and you help me find out who's captured us, or you can continue accusing me of things I haven't done. The only thing I suggest you don't do is get in the way of my trying to get us all home."

She's treated to the sight of his cabbage-colored butt walking away from her.

She's partially tempted to use her arctic breath on his cabbage-butt and then attack it with her heat vision.

Instead, grumbling, she follows him.

There's a tense and awkward silence for a while as they move along. Brainy sees the spiral walkway and despite not being directed to go that way, he deduces that it may be a way out of the caverns.

He tries to ignore the fact that Kara has a completely unobstructed view of his rear.

After a few moments of walking, he says, "I would imagine you're from the 20th or 21st century, if you remember Kandor and the original Brainiac, yes? That and the fact that I was brought here opens up the alarming possibility that this ship is capable of abducting individuals from different places in the timestream."

Kara followed Brainy, keeping as far away from him as possible.

The boy was completely naked and there was no telling what kind of weird gaseous emissions a Coluan made.

"You're talking like you're from the future or something."

He doesn't make weird gaseous emissions!

"That's because I am. I'm from the 31st century."

"Oh." She runs a hand through her hair in a failed attempt to get some slime out. "How keen."

He's still walking, arms crossed, looking surly.

"'Keen'?" he asks. "Are you sure you don't need that helmet?"

"I'm sorry, would you rather I squeed and asked you what the future is like, because oh-em-gee isn't that like the coolest thing ever and jumped up and down so you would turn around and see what was going on just to get a show? I don't think so, nerd boy."

"I'd rather you stop using strange colloquialisms such as 'squeed' and 'oh-em-gee'--whatever that means--as that's what's making it sound as if you need a helmet."

"Oh that's it, tight-ass. Somebody hold my non-existant gold, coz I'm about to come up there and blast your bits off with heat vision."

~~Lyle, hold my weave!~~

He rounds on her. "That's it. You're walking in front, so I can have my turn making discomfiting comments about your rear end."

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