We're Not In Kansas Anymore...

[meat_mooks]

They might have been trying to get to the City, or another level, or anywhere else in the explored parts of Stacy. But when some crewmembers stepped into the transport tubes, they were going to find that where they ended up was not where they were trying to go.

The first sign that something was wrong was the strange electric jolt they get just after stepping into the tubes. The second sign was the unusually long time it took for them to get to their destination. And the third and final sign was the fact that when they arrived, it was in a place they would have never seen before.

To all appearances, it looked like a smaller replica of the crew quarters. If they ventured out a little further, they would find smaller versions of the mess hall, sleeping halls, and bathrooms as well. But there was one important difference.

They were completely and utterly empty.

And with any attempt to go back into the transport tubes failing, they appeared to be stuck here. What were they going to do?

[ooc: ICly this post happens over the course of a day, so not everyone arrives at the same time. If you tag into the post later, you can just assume that your character arrived later in the day. Also, your characters will not find that their omnicomms and communication rings don't work!

If you have a question about anything, you can ask on this ooc post.

Oh, and for this post threadjacking is welcome :P]

Comments

[livestoannoy]

This? This was not the City.

...Why the hell wasn't he in the City?!

Marco stomped around for a bit, eying all the empty rooms as if he expected something to jump out and try to eat him. Which he was expecting for real, actually, considering the ship's past record. Suddenly ending up in a part of the ship he'd never seen before when he had actually been trying to get somewhere else?

No way could this be a good thing.

And since being here all alone was seriously creepy, Marco soon decided that going back to the transport tubes and getting the hell out of here would be a good idea. Unfortunately when he tried, he found himself spat back out again (with much accompanying cursing).

[lionesschampion]

Alanna walked slowly with her hand around the hilt of her sword, although she hadn't yet drawn her weapon, eying her new surroundings with suspicion. Why... was she here? Where was here? Admittedly, she didn't know the whole ship by sight, but she did know that she didn't recognize anything about this place.

The sound of someone filling the air with choice curses caught her attention and she quickly followed the noise, trying to seek out the source. After all, this person could be in danger or a possible ally which could be of great help given that she suspected that she might need that help if she expected to get back to where she should have been.

When she reached the source of the voice, she saw that it was a young man and one that she didn't know. He carried no weapons and the ember stone around her neck revealed that he had no magic, that she could see anyway, but she still approached cautiously. After all, danger could come from the most unexpected place.

"Have you discovered anything?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco spins around, half ready to start morphing if need be. He wasn't quite sure what he was expecting - some kind of horrible monster, half of the Yeerk army, Visser Three on the rampage, who knows - but some chick wasn't it.

...Some chick who apparently had a sword, which didn't necessarily mean she was a threat, but certainly wasn't something to dismiss either. He eyed her and the sword warily.

"Well, other than the fact that we're definitely not in Kansas anymore, no. Now who the hell are you? How did you get here?"

[[ooc: excuse me while I shamelessly steal the log title for a joke...]]

[lionesschampion]

"Kansas. What is Kansas?" she asked irritably, her own nerves more than a little frayed and not much caring for the stranger's tone, especially if he was going to babble about things that made no sense. Glaring at him, she added, "I'm a knight of Tortall and those strange transport devices brought me here. Now your turn. Who are you and how did you come here?"

She took a step back, her eyes never leaving this stranger although she didn't reach for her weapon. Not yet anyway. This young man did not appear a threat, but she'd seen all manner of weird things since coming aboard Stacy and she wasn't about to start underestimating people now, so she maintained her guard.

(OOC: Alanna will make you pay for it. :P)

[windwitch]

Well... this wasn't as planned, no. Maxine hadn't meant to end up here at all.

Wherever 'here' was.

Drifting slightly, the red head's eyes darted around a little as she tried to figure it out. It all looked familiar-- just like the parts of the ship they knew!-- but there was no one there.

And that? That was concerning.

"Hello?" Maxine tried, nervously. A little quiet, but could you blame her. She tried a little louder, then, "Is anyone there? Punchy? Cedric? Clef? ... Toto?"

[encourage]

Sadly, Toto didn't come running up to Maxine with his tiny tail wagging to offer her a sense of some kind of normalcy. Punchy didn't cut in with some of his mad rhymes, Cedric didn't wizard about, and goodness knew that if Clef was stolen into this far reach of Stacy's possible bowels, they were still remarkably unseen.

Sakura, however, was about to intrude on Maxine's solitude. At top speed.

Top speed breaking away from the tentacle-tubes that had brought her here, flying backward and thudding with an audible smack into Stacy's deliciously fleshy walls.

"Oof!" Air evacuated her lungs with the force of impact, and the severely tired, incredibly self-overworked, almost entirely healed medic slumped down until she was in a crouch on the floor, barely breathing.

Her first word?

"Ouch." Her second, third, and fourth followed not long after. "That's it! I'm done with this. It's all walking, all the time. I'll rappeldown levels if I damn well have to."

Most the impact of this statement was lost due to the fact she was gasp-whispering it, but damn it, her face was at least fierce!

[windwitch]

Maxine let out a startled noise when suddenly the pink haired girl toppled into the wall nearby. A hand clapped over her mouth and she jumped literally off the floor. She even stayed there for a moment before she landed again and rushed over to the other girl who was now quite angrily cursing the ship, it seemed. Not that Maxine exactly blamed her.

"Are you okay?" Maxine said, worry edging her possibly slightly-too-loud voice.

[encourage]

"Fine," Sakura wheezed. "I'm fine!" She looked up at Maxine and smiled.

And wheezed.

And slowly stood, using the wall as a bracer. See? Sakura was totally fine, if still disgruntled through that smile. Slowly the pleasant, polite expression wins out, if her eyes still seem to be carrying threats against Stacy, the Warden, the multiverse, or all three.

"So, uh... where are we? Who are you again?"

[thechozonone]

There was something wrong about where Glados had spit her about. Absolutely wrong. She had gone back and forth out of the mazes her fair share of times, but never had she ended up in a transport tube when she was done. She was startled by finding herself in them, and the shock almost knocked her off her feet. And her destination... well that was whole other ordeal. It was so empty.

How long had she been gone? And... where the hell was she? Few things could put the hunter on edge, but this may do it.

[livestoannoy]

By now, Marco had been stuck here for some time. He'd been trying to get his omnicomm working so that he could get a message back to the others, but so far the stupid thing still wasn't working.

When he heard the sound of someone else coming through the tubes, he gave the omnicomm one last glare before going over to see who else had gotten stuck here. When he saw who it was, he blinked.

"Samus?!" he said, incredulous. She'd been back in the pods for ages!

Not to mention the last time she'd seen him, he hadn't been deaged by the Melting Clock yet and had still been nineteen.

[thechozonone]

"Marco?" She was, uh, well a little confused. She definitely didn't remember him being this young. What the hell was happening?

"What happened to you? And where the hell are we..." Clearly she had missed a few major events jumping in between the mazes, the ship, the pods, and getting stuck in every other part of the ship. She guessed this whole new area was just gonna be another one of those "adventures."

[livestoannoy]

"We discovered the fountain of youth," Marco said promptly. "We're now in the gazillionth century and have discovered the meaning of life. Unfortunately, turns out that the meaning of life is that is it insane."

[skyboundmisfit]

This was not exactly what he'd had in mind at all. He'd been trying to get to hydroponics and instead found himself. . .somewhere else. Clumsily flapping and hopping about and cursing the lack of real thermals, Tobias managed to explore some of this area. The crew quarters in miniature. Great. And the tube wasn't working.

< Hello? >

[first_of_steel]

"What in blazes- hello?"

That wasn't the sort of response signal Roger had been expecting. At all.


[OOC: I'm not as familiar with Animorphs canon as I should be. I'm assuming that was a general hail to anyone in the area, and would've been 'heard' as a kind of voice in the head? If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll delete the tag.]

[skyboundmisfit]

< Down here. > Tobias replies with an annoyed ruffle of wings. If Roger looks down there's a very annoyed looking red-tailed hawk trying to navigate without the benefit of real airflow.

< Yeah, I know. Talking bird. Long story. >

_{[OOC: It's telepathy, so that's exactly how it works. If he's "whispering" to one specific person, I'll note it in a post, so just assume anyone can hear it.]}

[first_of_steel]

Huh.

"For a minute there I was wondering if it was the ship again," Roger says. "Are you as lost as I am?"

[first_of_steel]

Roger had been on his way to Hydroponics, or at least he thought he'd been on his way to Hydroponics, to suss out the area and get a feel for what somewhere living and green was like when it wasn't arbitrarily generated from his imagination by the Sensoriums. Where he wound up? Was even more weirdly cramped than where he'd left- and, more disturbingly, empty.

Great, just great.

Well. Time to send up an omnicomm signal with his general location- assuming he could get the blasted thing to do it, he was still getting used to its controls- and then start familiarizing himself with the area. It was one thing to stay in one spot and wait for rescue if you were lost and you knew the area. It was something else again in an alien, living ship where anything might well happen.

[encourage]

Anything including finding fellow crewmates when they wandered back around to the transport area, frowned at what wasn't working, then finally noticed someone else there. (Or finally reacted. Harder to say when, and if, Sakura noticed anyone before she had a good frown in.)

"Still only operating one way?" she called out, almost conversational. Really, by now this might as well be the status quo. Bad stuff happens, you shrug and deal.

Looking more sleep deprived as time went on, but that was life for you, wasn't it? No rest until you're dead, and then some.

[first_of_steel]

"Seems like it," Roger answered cautiously. "Can't get the tubes to open up and take me back, at least."

He poked irritably at one of the walls, not that he expected it to do any good. It didn't.

"Haven't seen anything hostile yet, at least."

[lillylivered]

Mark had seen plenty of weird things. After all, he did live in New York. But he had to say, he’d never woken up decidedly not in his bedroom, naked, covered in slime, and with some voice whispering in his ear about how he was chosen for a great purpose. He had experienced all of this at some point but not all at once.

But his adventure did not end there. Almost as soon as he'd been clothed in this weird pulsing suit. he was whisked away by some computer thing that called herself GLaDoS. And now here he was in the middle of who knew where.

"Er- hello?" Mark called.

[first_of_steel]

"I hear you."

Well, it sounded like a reasonably human and American voice, albeit one processed through a radio or a filter or something like that. Nothing all that unusual for anyone who'd ever ordered at a restaurant's drive-up window. Probably just Mark's luck that when the speaker came into sight somewhere down the corridor, he happened to be wearing more armor than your average Star Wars extra and carrying a ridiculously boxy rifle. "Hey there," he said with a wave of one hand. "You got lost too, huh?"

[lillylivered]

"Yes, uh..." Mark held up one finger, as if telling the man to wait a moment while he processed this (which he probably was).

"So... what's with the- you know, I'm not even gonna ask. Did you just wake up too?"

[first_in_time]

Not that Barbara had spent a lot of time in the transport tubes, but something hadn't quite felt right about that particular journey. There was a tingling sensation and then a strange jolt in her movement, which pushed her forward at a faster pace, sending her tumbling out an opening. Eventually.

Barbara looked around. An inward groan and she turned to have a closer look at the tube. She had just been in the crew's quarters, and not the silly thing had brought her back! Only, there wasn't quite something right with the scene around her. She'd been in the quarters rather a lot since landing here, just trying to get her head around the place, but she remembered it being more...full...than this. Maybe there were two quarters? But no one had told her of the second. And as far as she could see, she was the only person around.

With a sigh, she decided to walk until she found someone she could talk to about this. Even if they weren't the right person, they could point her in the correct direction. Or show her how to use the thing-a-majig that was supposed to work like a type of telephone device. Or something like that. But that required actually finding someone which was proving a little difficult.

[encourage]

Sakura was on her way back from the mess hall, checking in to see who had shown up in there so far. Getting a rough headcount of people dragged into this crew quarters in miniature was a good focus for her tired brain, and kept her moving.

Spotting someone else in the hall, she pulled her lips up into a smile and lifted her hand to wave. "Hello? Looks like you've been pulled over here too. My name's Sakura, and I've been trying to direct people into stopping in at the mess hall we've got here so we can get a rough idea of how many of us there are."

Which cut a lot to the chase, but she was in favor of the blunter approach. "Your omnicomm doesn't happen to be getting through to anyone?"

[first_in_time]

"Oh, er - yes," Barbara responded and took a few cautious steps toward the woman. She seemed so very sure of herself that Barbara felt compelled to simply follow.

But omnicomm was a word she had to remember.

"This thing?" she held it up to confirm that they were talking of the same device, "I'm not even sure how to use it but you can check if you'd like."