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

[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."

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"Again. Helmet? Coz, seriously, I'm not the chosen psycho-loon here."

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"For the last time: I am not a psychotic. I'm merely descended from one."

A pause.

"Or two. Several."

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"That's sad, really. I mean, you're so cute. It's criminal that you're from a line of intergalactic psychopaths. There could have been such hope for you." She turned her head to wink at him, still following the snot-lights.

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

There it is again.

She called him cute. And this time not even with the word 'vaguely' in front of it.

"I--uh..."

All twelve tracks of his consciousness can't think of anything to say to this girl, who he can barely keep himself from oggling, telling him he's cute.

He opens his mouth to say something, then snaps it shut.

Then they reach the clothing room and he opens it again, as he pulls a face and says:

"What the sprock is this?"

He's not one for cursing either. Only special occasions. And tentacles hanging from the ceiling associated with "clothing" is one of them.

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"I...ew. That's....they don't want us to wear that do we? Coz...that's a little too covered up for me."

[cityship]

||Please step into the center of the room.||

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

"And this will clothe us?"

[cityship]

||Yes.||

[cabbage-butt.livejournal.com]

Brainy just looks at Kara, as if to say 'Well...?'

[girl-of-steel.livejournal.com]

"Wuss." She stepped into the chamber and took a deep breath.

"Clothe me up, Stacy."