Talk About Timing...

[cityship]

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.

Comments

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"He'd prefer a much stronger sedative. Boy needs to be put down for a few hours," Kara snarked.

Truth was, the rush of feeling had overwhelmed her, but she was feeling too snarky to really deal with them right now.

When she was alone...if she ever got alone time [really, did she even want alone time?], then she'd give in.

"Umm. So, you never told us why we're here."

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

As the needle arms dart for him, he steps back and puts up his forcefield. "I do not require sedatives! Stop trying to dose me and answer her questions."

[cityship]

The needle-arm disappeared back into the walls of the ship.

||You are both here because you have been Chosen for a great duty,|| Stacy explained. If they were hoping for more than that, they were out of luck though.

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"Chosen? Seriously?" She raises an eyebrow. "I'm not killing anything. Just an FYI." A beat. And then. "He was chosen to be the entertainment though, right? Jester hat and all?"

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

He frowns at her. "Chosen for what kind of duty?"

[cityship]

||A great one.|| Stacy answered. She is just so helpful, isn't she?

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"Please clarify on the exact responsibilities and obligations we've been chosen to fulfill and why we, specifically, were chosen to do this."

[cityship]

||That information is classified.||

Nyah nyah.

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"Let me make sure I've properly collated all the information you've provided us--you've taken us from our proper places in the timeline for the express purpose of fulfilling some sort of purpose or obligation you refuse to tell us the nature of, and any and all questions of ours will be met by you telling us that information is classified, correct? I'd also imagine you or whoever is responsible for your existence or assignment to your task of communicating with us are responsible for my memory being altered."

His fists clench at his sides.

"You infernally fatuous disembodied nitwit! If there is some sort of task or mission we must fulfill, do you honestly believe we'll go through with it without more information first? Did you really think I wouldn't notice your memory tampering? I have a twelfth-level intelligence, and complete mental control! Why should we trust you?"

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"...Ignore him. He suffers from total social dysfunction. Now, about those baths..."

These things can be figured out later. Once they've eaten, been cleaned up, and gotten dressed.

[cityship]

The needle arms cometh.

||Are you sure that you do not want a mild sedative, Querl Dox?||

A line of pustules at their feet began to glow, leading upwards through the cavern. ||Please follow the lights.||

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

Kara looked down. "Ew." Looking up at Brainiac, she said, "Descendants of evil first. Superheroes bringing up the rear."

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"I'm very sure I don't want unidentified alien substances injected into my body, yes," he says to Stacy, and Kara gets another glare after she says that, but otherwise he ignores her.

He follows the lights.

"Are you a person or an artificial intelligence?" he asks Stacy.

[cityship]

||That information is also classified.||

The walls twitch a little, ready to proffer the needle again.

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"Stop trying to hit on the ship and keep walking, skuzzbucket. Jeez, seriously? Are you a person or AI? Worse pick-up line ever since 'Nice cape, wanna f-word'?"

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"I'm trying to ascertain who captured us, and gain enough information to possibly deduce why," he argues, annoyed. "It wasn't as if I asked it what it was wearing."

[cityship]

||I am not wearing anything.||

Thanks Mom Stacy.

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"There? You happy, Brainiac? Now you know. I suppose you're going to want to have some happy fun private time now, so if you'll just let me push on ahead..."

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"I...usually have no compunctions with uncovering new data, but for once, that was too much information."

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"TMI for a Brainiac? Never thought it'd happen," Kara snarked, stalking ahead of him. "She's probably the ship itself, Brainiac. While they might make clothes for dogs, I don't think they make clothes for ships yet. Unless they do in your bizarro time."

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"I'd deduced that as well," he says, with a 'duh' in his voice. "Her answers are too automatic. This Stacy sounds like an AI, and as this ship is organic construct, she is likely its consciousness."

They started walking up a long winding walkway that gave them a good view of the rest of the caverns. The pods, all filled with sleeping forms of people of all different species spiraled out into the miles of open caves, levels and levels of them glowing faintly in the murk.

"This...this is unbelievable. Life support systems keeping this many people in stasis. There must be millions..."

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"Let's get some clothes on. You're getting a little too excited there and I don't much want to watch."

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"I am not excited."

He pauses. "Well, the prospect of a ship even capable of sustaining this, biological engineering on such a grand scale is--"

He cuts off there, because he's sounding excited.

"However, this is also mildly horrifying. There are very few uses for this many people that aren't something barbarous like slavery."

He adds, "Or consumption."

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"...are you sure you're not the one who needs a helmet?"

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"Just because I'm not evil like many of my predecessors doesn't mean I'm not intelligent enough to see how some things can be employed for sinister purposes. That's part of why I'm so skilled at helping to stop such things from happening."