trans_9 | Hail the Conquering Heroes

Things can happen without Stacy knowing, that much is apparent now. The damage to her sensors is significant. But the fighting clued her in.

After it's all over, after those captured have been rescued, after the injured have been tended to, only the nest is left, and Stacy takes care of it.

||Infestation of Cluster 42, Level 4, Sector 7, Sublevel 12, Zone 37 has been detected. Triggering internal defenses. Decontamination commencing.||

There is a pause.

||Decontamination complete.||

Simple as that, once she knows the problem was there. Her internal sensors are damaged, especially in the city, and so are some of the systems monitoring them. You have to know what's broken to know to fix it.

Such a simple thing and it only took one man dying to make it happen. (His body is gone, by the way, ripped to shreds and eaten. There's not even a spot of blood on the floor. That's the bugs' doing. The bugs' bodies are gone too--that's Stacy's doing).

||Any injured personnel that still have not received medical attention, report to the nearest lift, and you will be transported to the MedBay. Any uninjured personnel, report to the Living Area, to the restroom facilities to undergo decontamination of xenobiological material. Then report to the Obs Deck to meet your new crew-mates.||

Said crew-mates--and the Doctor, who'd skipped out and miraculously ducked and weaved his way to the lift when he'd realized the Master was there--are there and waiting, and just a tad confused.

[ooc: read this first]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No way that he couldn't laugh back when she giggled. For all that he hated the ship, Jono was a lot more relaxed here, away from Paige and Warren and the rest of the X-Men.

He tilted his head at her question. Human. A mutant, though. Got a weird gene what some call the X gene. Ten's t' go active in teenagers, givin' 'em weird powers. Some of 'em are pretty awesome. Me class seemed t' mostly get the short end of the power stick.

Gwen hoped she didn't look at him like a gaping idiot. Mutants? X-Men? How did Torchwood not know any of this? What other things had they been missing? She was relaxed with her thoughts now, not differentiating anymore between what she was saying to Jono and what he would simply hear.

But she felt relaxed with him, and couldn't doubt what he was telling her. With everything she had seen today - with everything she had seen since her life changed and Torchwood came along - she didn't think she could doubt anything, anymore.

"Short end? What kind of powers could you - could anyone - possibly have?"

He caught the end of it, holding up his hand. Sorry. Gotten ahead of meself somewhere. Should've mentioned that this ship? 'Parently Stacy's been pullin' people from all over the place. Like, other dimensions an' parallel universes. 'At sorta thing.

Dunno 'bout Torchwood, though. Ain't ever heard of it. Since he was from before the show started in his world. Could be 'at we don' exist in yer world. I mean, if we did, I promise, you'd've heard 'bout mutants. Everybody knows 'bout 'em these days.

The powers question was going to come up. He knew it would. It always did. Jono's sigh brushed her mind, then he reached up and pulled down a bit of the cowling so that some of the flame spilled out over his face. 'At's the rest of mine. Psionic flames what take up the entirety of me chest cavity. Burned out everythin' else. An' no, I don' know how I survived. Jus' that I did. Me best mate turned grey an' ended up with six feet of extra skin.

Every question, every concern, everything Gwen could have or wanted to say just washed from her mind completely as she watched the flames dance across his face.

She wasn't a doctor, but she didn't know what, for whatever reason, could have dealt such a seemingly gentle man such a lot in life. She reached out, as if she would dare to touch the flame, to prove to her muddled and confused mind that it could be real. Instead of such foolery, her hand timidly brushed the side of his arm; a comforting, almost automatic gesture, filled with pity and awe.

"You're right, if you were from my world, we would have heard of you." What was she doing here? With aliens and mutant humans with unimaginable powers, why could someone so normal in comparison be needed? Why did they want with her?

She thought vaguely of the Rift that ran through her city, dumping aliens and beings from other worlds and times and maybe even universes, and she couldn't help but wonder if it could be related. But they knew the Rift was random, this seemed to calculated.

She stared at Jono, filled with questions she knew he didn't have the answers to.

He was slightly nicer here than he was back home. Partly because nobody had any notions about what he should be like here. It made things a little easier.

Jono slid the cowling back into place, smoothing it down so that the flames wouldn't escape. I dunno, he said after a moment, reaching over with his other hand to pat hers. Why does she want any of us 'ere? You ain't 'sactly the only normal 'round 'ere. He pointed out a few more, mostly the ones who had been kidnapped by the bugs. I'm sure there mus' be somethin' what brought you to 'er attention. Maybe more 'an you think.

She slid her hand away, blushing a little from her automatic action.

"My job is the only interesting thing about me," she offered. But at least I'm not the only regular person here. But that just makes it all the more confusing, coming up with a pattern. "What is Stacy using us for?"

Like I said, dunno. We're apparently the crew of the ship, whatever that entails. So far, seems to entail killin' oversized bugs what attack us. He gave her a quick look at what they'd been dealing with earlier, though little of the actual fighting. Nobody needed to deal with that if they hadn't been there. So we need t' keep our eyes open 'round 'ere, too.

Gwen gasped as the images of their recent experience flipped through her mind. She felt that Jono was holding back, a little though, but in kindness rather than trying to mislead her. She gestured to the side arm she had picked up at the weapons locker. "That's why they let us be armed, then?"

There were few reasons why Jono would hold back and possibly fewer who would call him kind. But he had no reason not to be kind at the moment, at least.

Probably, Jono agreed. We got a lot of people what have powers an' stuff, yeah, but it's good t' be able t' defend yerself, roight? There was no telling if she'd get caught alone and have to use the gun. Better that she be able to do it.

Gwen nodded curtly. "To those of us with now powers, it's pretty much all we have, yeah?" Every day it seems like I'm more thankful Jack convinced me to use one of these bloody things. Her mind flashed fondly through the memories of her first days with Torchwood, and Jack teaching her to use her weapon. At first she had been hesitant to handle a gun, but now she felt a certain fear of ever having to be without it.

Hail the Conquering Heroes

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