Overall? Today was a good day.

Barring the Adria mix up, he'd been having a pretty good time since the mission to go save Christmas, really. Getting out, stretching his legs and making a difference? It'd felt good. And even with the eeriness of the woman, Inara, and the sobering fact that Adria could be in those pods somewhere, the fact was Adria wasn't awakened.

As long as Cam kept moving, he didn't need to think about the possibility that his world was gone, either. So far, he seemed to be doing pretty well. Lately, when he had slept, his dreams had been full of death raining from the sky, of the Ori and Adria and feeling the universe unravel around him (how, he could only explain when his head was clouded with sleep).

Today, his dream had been good. Maybe he was on the right path after all. Cam Mitchell Therapy 101.

But he wasn't about to dwell on that right now. He was feeling good. Good enough that the Sensorium didn't even creep him out when he set up something home-y. Mind, nothing that would compromise homeworld security, but home-y all the same.

After going to that mission, his desire to just see Earth was somewhat quenched--although it certainly was not his own. But familiar still sounded nice, it brought back to his mind thoughts of his dream. Not that he was one to dwell on dreams, but still. Familiar faces.

He didn't program anyone he knew--that would have been a bit creepy--but the familiar trill of a bird he had no idea what was echoed through the spring air, and it was...nice. He meandered over to a makeshift wooden seat, and grabbed up a power bar from his pocket. It was sort of...pathetically simple, really. He'd almost programmed in a village over the hill, but...he found he liked the silence. There was always some sort of humming sound or people on the ship.

Not that the sound of critters or the brook running a few feet ahead of him really counted as silence, but it was...cleaner. More like home.

Cam gave a sudden laugh, and shook his head. "Still not a nature guy." It was just refreshing next to a living alien spaceship.

Being from (Ar)Rakis, Sheeana's first thoughts on the dark dreams that had been afflicting her fellow crewmates had more to do with hurricanes and sandstorms than clouds. The metaphor was the same though.

That was her thought as she sat in the lotus position in front of Arha's door (she would not leave her if she had another such dream, but would not tempt herself into sleep by joining her either). Sandstorms. She missed them so, the beating, suffocating, gritty howl of them. Real weather, to rasp at the skin, to shape both person and landscape. Sand or rock crunching underfoot, screaming winds, danger that could be understood and grasped by human hands. I am a desert creature. I need the environment I was born for.

She longed for them as for the touch of a lover.

Well, it had been long enough since Fletcher had woken up; it was about time he got to know the ship a little better. He was finally getting accustomed enough to his surroundings that he could go beyond the top level without Russel, so he decided that today, he was going to look around the city. It was a bizarre place, he could tell that much just from setting foot in the place. He knew the sky was fake, somehow, but it definitely looked real; he spent a while just staring at it.

It was probably the same technology that made the Sensoriums work, he guessed, eventually giving up on figuring it out. Just looking up wasn't going to help him learn his way around. So it was that he set to wandering about the city.

Eventually he came to a strange-looking building covered in glyphs and symbols that he had no hope of understanding; some of them were similar to those he knew from alchemy, but given how big the multiverse was, it was probably due to coincidence. The door was open, and he was curious about the building, so he poked his head in and looked around. Was there anyone in here? He didn't want to intrude... "Hello?"

Despite how uneasy the City had initially made Kang feel, he'd gone down there to explore at least every other day, and had gotten somewhat used to the lack of scent and sound that permeated it. The sun was setting for the third time in as many hours, throwing off his sense of time and casting shadows everywhere. He'd just finished traversing the Labyrinth, cheating by climbing atop the walls to find his way out, and jumping down to the ground, he took a moment to briefly place his hand on the trunk of the Garibah tree; he'd never been much of a nature person, but seeing and smelling a physical tree on a ship that was so alien helped to calm him somewhat.

Out of the corner of his eye, the draconian saw a small alley cutting between two stone buildings. Curiosity made him go down it, the darkness not bothering him one bit; he could see perfectly fine. There was a wooden building that looked oddly familiar on the right, and as Kang approached it, he began to smile.

It was the Drunken Dragon.

Everything looked to be in perfect condition, even the dragon replica hanging above the door. The door was closed, but a gentle push opened it, revealing the tables and chairs, with a few scattered tankards lying on them, and the raised stage in the center, all covered with a thin layer of dust. The colors of the mural hadn't faded one bit, the gold of the dragon and the metallic sheen of the draconians' scales and armor as bright as the day they'd originally been painted. Mak really had done a good job.

A particular scent hitting his nose caught Kang's attention, and hoping it wasn't a phantom, he made his way into the storage room; when he saw that it was, in fact, really there, he couldn't help himself. He began to laugh.

Most of the ship was asleep. He could hear them, tucked away and snoring loudly in their individual compartments, disturbingly comfortable in their meaty prisons. But this was no time to be hypocritical.

Just a few minutes earlier, Dustin had narrowly escaped Yoshimi’s room after falling asleep there, successful only because he happened to wake up while she was out. Perhaps she got bored of watching him. Perhaps she finally decided to call Shitface Kirk on him while he was recovering to take him to the brig—or worse, she could’ve contacted the Major. The Major was a downright scary woman, one that Dustin planned on avoiding even if he was forced to work for her.

Whatever the reason (and whatever the consequences), he was feeling a lot better now that he’d had food and rest and a new goal to accomplish. Said goal was something that he’d noticed when he first visited the Armory to get his primary tools; the genetic identification system not only picked out his personal items, but it also found a certain vehicle down in the hangar that was of extreme interest to its owner. Though Dustin had no intention of going down there until he found Codi, he was starting to…think differently, now that the initial shock had passed. This can be explained later.

He first made a stop at the Weapons and Possessions Locker, rooting around some of the unclaimed items further back. The large, silver thermos that Dustin happened upon surely wouldn’t be missed. With his prize, he then headed up to the Mess Hall, where he received his usual water shot and a tray full of slop. Dustin scooped the pile into his thermos, pocketed the utensil he was given, and crumbled up his crunchy plate into the mixture.

And then he left for the hangar.

A while later (after a brief stop in the City), Dustin was wandering around the huge space and fiddling with his phone. Without proper tools he wouldn’t be able to completely repair it, but for now he’d managed to reprogram and edit the genetic signature grid, which at least allowed for him to detect people that he’d already contacted intimately enough to receive some DNA from. This program was actually something of a prototype; it sounded good when Dustin first thought of it, but upon activation he realized that people spread their DNA around everywhere, either through shed hair or skin flecks or other such biological shavings; therefore it was hardly useful for distinguishing a single person from, say, their hairbrush.

This new program instead concentrated on densities of DNA samples instead of individual flecks, and with a slightly modified interface allowed for a completely different view of objects. It still wouldn’t work in the Pod Caverns because of whatever Stacy had set up in there, but it would work well enough in the hangar for finding the special item in general.

It came up clear as day on the scanner—Dustin’s sweat and blood might as well be essential parts to this machine, after all—and, shortly thereafter, he’d found it.

It was a wireframe skeleton, roughly the size of a large apartment but much more sleekly designed, patched with a rough layer of specialized insulation and plating in areas; everywhere else was coated in a thick sheet of wires. Compartments here and there bulged with tools and materials, thankfully spared from being taken away with the rest of his possessions. Even Dustin’s makeshift work surface remained untouched, surrounded on all sides by clamped wires and a hastily placed welding set.

He was taken aback, unable to do much else but stare for right now. Observers might notice that his dark green eyes are eerily glinting in ways that they probably shouldn’t be.

( Simulation Loading... )

Zombies were probably a common worry on the ship after the whole bridge incident, so a little practice wasting them couldn't be a bad thing. Besides... if the nightmare guy was going to target Steve, there was no doubt about it that he'd conjure up some form of Rockfort Island-- hence the locale. And if zombies and Umbrella monsters became so routine they were like targets at a shooting gallery, then they wouldn't be a problem showing up in his nightmares. Just like the weird sneaky bald kid said. Steve wasn't leaving until he stopped jumping, stop shaking and started expecting the sudden crashes, glass breaking and the scent of rotten flesh and blood.

He wasn't expecting anybody to come in.

Gwen hadn't slept much at all since waking up on the ship. Two days straight was enough, or Stacy had told her, though the red head could have kept right on sleeping if the ship hadn't kept waking her. Not that it made much of a difference now that she kept herself from trying to sleep much at all. Nightmares still came regardless of when she closed her eyes. The previous nights hadn't been the best of the worst either- images of being stuck in the Alliance prisoner of war camp filtered in mixed with battles that would have been fit for a horror movie. So packing up her pistol belt the woman made her way up to the observation deck knowing the tables were big enough for what she had in mind.

Which was why the Browncoat had one fully assembled pistol sitting to her left, her KA-Bar beside of it, and one pistol in front of her disassembled down to the very last spring and screw. It had been a while since she had cleaned the things let alone taken them entirely apart and checking every little piece for signs of rust. Maybe she was being a little to over the top with the cleaning and how detailed oriented she was being but, well, someone had to be right?

Squinting down at the piece in her hand the woman didn't even seem to notice she even had her tongue sticking out as she scrubbed away at the piece with an oiled rag. By the time she finished with the pistol, it was probably going to be the cleanest if not the shiniest weapon on the ship.

[[Takes place right after this thread.]]

The rooms in the crew quarters were a vast improvement over the cubbies that Stacy had told them to use when Paco had first popped. Mostly because they weren't cubbies. They didn't really have all that much personality to them though -- two beds and some storage compartments that could double as bedside tables in a pinch. Brenda's room wasn't much different from the one that Paco nad Jaime shared, except for the second bed in hers looked more like a papasan chair.

Which was, of course, the biggest thing that Paco could comment on.

"Holy crap, that thing's huge."