trans_9 | The more things change... [OPEN]

It had been an interesting couple of days. Whatever she had been expecting upon finding herself on an alien spaceship, the chance to meet a good friend she had mourned - alive and relatively well, if also kidnapped by aliens - hadn't been it. Seeing Grace alive, that had been a pleasant shock.

It almost made up for the fact that her Samson would have to be given up for lost until the next time they landed on a planet... if they landed on a planet. The crew had made it sound like that kind of thing didn't happen very often.

Still, it wasn't every day you got to sit down and talk with someone whose funeral you had attended. So Trudy had taken it upon herself to find Grace - and she knew exactly where to look for her. Anything with 'lab' in the title was probably where she would find the scientist. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same after all.

True to her initial thoughts, medical hadn't been very hard to find. And with the help of the directions she'd gotten on the omnicomm, she was able to find the lab relatively easily. Trudy walked in with her hands stuffed into the pockets of her plantsuit, her service rifle still slung over her shoulder. "Hello? Anyone home?"

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"Blaze of glory...Yeah, I thought about that," He mused, and rolled his lips in, pressing teeth to thin them until it hurt. Pain was good, it forced you to concentrate, but Robert let it go and shook his head, almost smirking at Trudy's disapproving tone.

"Naw, see...you got it all wrong. See, this here, this is an ark," Robert pointed out with a raised finger. He nodded briefly to himself, "Those children are here because if they weren't, they'd be dead. More I see of 'em, the better."

That made Trudy fall silent for a minute, thinking. "I'd feel better if the kids were still in stasis, you know?" she said finally. "From what the crew says, this could get pretty ugly - kind of don't want them to get caught in the middle of it."

She reached up almost unconsciously to brush her fingers over the raised lettering on the dog tags. "People like us, we see something ugly and we have to look it in the face and kick its ass. The kids? Need to be able to be kids."

Robert had to snort at that and gave her a long, solemn look beforeshaking his head and turning back to his screen.

"Half these people still don't really believe the world's ended," He replied, low but audible, "They might fight to save their skins, but they won't do shit beyond the minimum otherwise. I see it every damn time— you get a bunch of people jus'...just trying to live through a crisis, they get so damn selfish. But kids make 'em think."

He paused a moment, swallowed, then opened his mouth again, thought better of it, then closed it again. Something on the screen drew his attention for a couple of mouseclicks, "Doesn't make it right."

Trudy's mouth twisted in a frown. "No, it doesn't make it right," she said. "And I've just about had it with moral compromise. I'm still not sure I really believe that the universe has been destroyed myself... except that as far as I can see the ship's got no reason for us to be here. She doesn't need us to fly, she doesn't really need us to repair her - why bother supporting a crew that doesn't do anything besides use up the oxygen and eat the food if what she says isn't true...?"

She shook her head. "Not even sure how much of it I believe 'cause I want to trust her for saving my ass."

Robert chewed on his lip, staring uselessly at a scrolling progress bar, "You have to draw your own conclusions. And I don't know about you, but I have seen the end of the world. It's over."

Neville had a way of saying things that fell from his mouth like a heavy stone into a deep pool. He said them, and he was so certain, so thought-out and fought against that when he laid it out it was with the same bone-deep certainty that drove more faithful men to praise God's name even as they burned to death at the hands of His worshipers.

"Everyone is dead."

"Ay," Trudy said softly, taken aback at the deadness in his tone. A thought ran through the back of her mind - that this man had seen far too much, and it might have been a kinder mercy to leave him in stasis. "But if that's the way it is - well, just gotta make sure we keep our heads and don't do anything too damn stupid. Revenge isn't the best motivator." She said the last bitterly - too much revenge on both sides of the Pandoran conflict had... well, it had cost a lot to too many people.

Robert had no reply to that, just a slight tilt of his head in thought. Kinder yes, but was 'kindness' really the deciding factor? It was necessity. These people needed someone used to the world ending, someone used to surviving in all that. It spoke a grim tale to include Robert's experience in guerrilla, after-the-fact version of "worldsaving" along with the likes of Captain Kirk.

Robert Neville didn't do vengeance. It wasn't in him.

"Yeah, well...we just try not to die," He proscribed, eventually, "See how it goes."

Trudy grinned. "That's what I'm used to," she said. "Go in, kick ass, try not to die, get out. All in a day's work."

She didn't know what this man had been through, but she had to lighten up the mood in here or she'd just end up dwelling on... things. And getting depressed. When she got depressed, she got cranky, and when she got cranky it was probably best to turn around and go the other way.

Besides, she had a training regimen to keep to. "At least they've got a use for pilots around here. Good to be needed."

The more things change... [OPEN]

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