trans_9 | Helpless flailing, your table is ready

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Helpless flailing, your table is ready

Starbuck let the words and the sounds of the others wash over her as she leaned up against the nearest available wall, slowly sinking to the ground. She let her gun dangle from her hand - it was still warm from being fired. She'd fired on what had turned out to be just another frakked-up civilian in this frakked-up place no matter how frakking insane and threatening they'd looked. And...there had been no consequences? She supposed it was just the crazy of the moment, and she wasn't the only one who'd fired...

Still, it was interesting information to file away under Things That Might Be Useful to Think About Later.

And then, just moments after their "Captain" had told them all not to go it alone, people of course started to do exactly that. That Sam guy took off like a shot, and the odd little guy with the accent that reminded her of Baltar slipped away, and Naked Guy had hightailed it out of there as well. Had she been in charge she would have assigned squads, but she had less than no interest in being in charge. She was finally starting to feel just a little bit free from having the fate of all of humanity that was left resting on her frakking shoulders, and now they were in some bizarre living ship that wanted them to save everything, everywhere from who even knew what, and they had to go along with it like it or not.

Her mind drifted briefly to who might be trapped in the pods still that she might know, and then sighed - a short, harsh sound. Better to leave them asleep than dealing with this frakking mess ~~no matter how much she wanted to see the~~

She felt useless compared to so many of the freaks here with magic sparklepowers and supertech suits. Put her at the helm of something she could fly, anything, and she'd take some frakking names, but for now...

She leaned her head back against the wall, staring dully forward. She would have prayed, but she didn't think the Gods could hear her in this frakked-up place.

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"How you holding up?" She was keeping an eye on people, had got MOST of them to stick together by talking to them.

Kara rolled a hand idly...her gun holding hand. "I've...been better," she said with a firm nod, pressing her lips together. "Just waiting for some other crazy frakking thing to jump out and have it turn out to be just another person, I suppose."

"Or turn out not to be a person and something we should shoot," said Cybil, crouching down so she was at eye level. "I'm right there with you. None of this makes sense."

"The problem is, with this group, how do we tell the difference?" She tossed her hands in the air helplessly...once again, her gun still loosely in her grip. "I have seen some frakked up stuff in my time, but never...magic lights? Blue bug things? And have we even seen the half of it yet?"

Little did she know, her definition of "Frakked Up Things" was likely quite, quite pale in comparison to Cybil's.

"Best I can figure is if something attacks, we attack. If it says 'Stop shooting,' we give it the benefit of a doubt. For half a second. Earlier, with that kid, it was a touch call, and it wasn't so much that he looked strange, but looked like he was attacking, even if he was trying to help. It was bad that it got out of hand, but he didn't help and I think he knew it."

She nodded with a sigh, running her hands through her hair in exasperation before she finally holstered her weapon. "Yeah...yeah. I guess..." She said, glancing up in the direction that Sam had wandered off in. "Hey...a bunch of people took off by themselves, you should probably know...Captain," she said with a small smirk.

"I know. I'm gonna be busting their asses as soon as I find them. Think it's relatively safe, but for groups, at the very least."

A pause. "And don't call me Captain. I have no fucking clue why I got listed as it, and there's got to be someone other than me that's better for it."

Admittedly though, other than a few stragglers, most of them were listening to her.

Weird.

Kara grinned slightly. "You know, back in my days in the Academy when the nuggets used to get assigned to their first flight partners, if people were having problems sticking and working together we'd just hook 'em together with some standard-issue cuffs. Maybe you could line everyone up in a big parade, have 'em hold hands or else they'd get hooked up for a while."

She smirked. "Unfortunately, I've only got one set of cuffs..."

Starbuck quirked an eyebrow, gesturing to the ceiling with her chin. "I bet the Voice in the Sky can work up something if you ask. Maybe attach everyone's creepy skinsuits together at the hip. Wouldn't THAT be fun?"

Cybil just started laughing. "Then we get some new people in, see a monster made of thirty people attached together, and they're shooting at us."

She looked up.

"Don't even fucking joke. She might go and do it."

Kara laughed, probably harder than she should have considering the situation, with just a touch of hysteria in her voice. "Oh Gods, I'm sure you're right..."

After a moment, panting, she wiped the corners of her eyes and looked around. "So...what's the plan now? Round up the stragglers or let 'em buddy around and decompress for a while? Fraaaak I need a smoke or a drink, or maybe both..." She groaned, rolling her shoulder.

"A little of both. Roughing up, but also decompressing. Tallying together who we have--in case someone goes missing, so we notice--and what they can do--in case we have to fight something. Getting a good sense of everything in the place, assigning watch while people sleep, seeing into that whole Mess Hall thing, making sure we're good for food, and then we need to start looking for a way into places whoever's driving this thing might be."

Kara pushed off against the wall, getting to her feet again. She could only take sitting on the throbbing ground for so long. "Now, is that a real good idea? Going and poking into places this thing doesn't want us? It seems to me like if we just keep our heads down and do whatever the frak it wants us to do, it'll let us and the people we might know down in Podland go...right?"

She couldn't help her voice turning just a bit worried at the end there.

"Or hold 'em however long it takes for us to get us to do what they want us to do and we have no guarantee of their release. For all we know, whoever's doing this intends to use us and then throw us all away when our work for them is done. We need to get answers somehow," Cybil said, standing up again. "I don't think we should bust down any doors and start spraying bullets, but maybe we can negotiate for the release of people's loved ones if they're in there--if we can actually talk to who took us."

Starbuck frowned as if this hadn't occurred to her before. "You don't think the voice is the one who nabbed us in the first place? Who else would be running all this crazy business if not her?...It? Whatever it is?"

She lowered her voice, looking around with slightly narrowed eyes. "Also, it's probably safe to assume that every word we're saying is being listened in on, so I'm not sure how effective making plans like that will be in the long term..."

"I think it's running it. But if Stacy's the ship, who built her? Or grew her?" Cybil pointed out. "And as far as plans go...we're going to need to figure out a way to communicate that she can't listen in on. Don't know what yet, but we need to."

"Well...that's a good point..." Kara said with a sigh, pushing a hand through her hair. Her fingers snagged in remnants of dried unnameable podgoo and she grimaced. "I wonder if she can read things that people write down...the problem with any kind of code is that it'd have to be explained and then she'd know..." She peered suspiciously up at the ceiling.

Sam, fresh from his and Leela's little encounter with the art hall, headed back to the Obs Deck with his quest to find Dean's pod an interrupted failure and any attempts at trying to understand what exactly Stacy *was*--not to mention what she wanted--leaving him with more questions than answers.

Despite the dedicated expression on his face and his purposeful stance, Sam was already beginning to feel useless. Like the proverbial fish out of water, this whole abducted by aliens thing was completely out of Sam's ballpark. He had no experience with the extra-terrestrial. All the strange things the Winchester family had dealt with in the past were all supernatural related. It was like Sam's whole rule-book had been thrown out and the new one hidden from him, secreted away so that he was left with no other choice but to make it up as he went along...and hope he didn't get himself, or anyone else, killed in the process.

Sam was still trying to wrap his mind around the strange obelisk in the art hall--coupled with all the other bizarre pieces of 'art'--when he came upon Starbuck and the cop that Rommie had identified as their 'captain' standing in the hallway.

"Anyone else have better luck tryin' to figure this place out?" he asked, stepping up to the two blonds.

Starbuck shook her hand with a light, perplexed scowl, looking it over. "Not so much...we were talking about how we're gonna have to come up with a way of talking to each other without you-know-who listening in, though..."

"What'd you come up with?" Sam asked, intrigued. He was glad someone else had realized that mounting any kind of rescue/escape plan would be difficult if Stacy could just eavesdrop on their plans. Starbuck was right, they needed to find some way to communicate with each other without Stacy knowing.

"Nothing."

A pause.

"She said something about Missions, though, right? They can't all be on the ship."

"As far as we know. Then again, for all we know we're going to be rigged up with things to..." She eyed her living suit with growing suspicion. "...things that can watch and listen to us even if we DO leave the ship."

"...or worse," Sam added, glancing down at Kara, then over to Cybil. "After what I just saw, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that she's reading out thoughts."

"What'd you see?"

"Fraaaaaak..." Kara added with a scowl, unhelpfully.

"There's this...thing...down in the 'art' hall," Sam answered. "This black obelisk, Leela and I were looking around and we got close to it and, I don't know, it changed."

He paused, remembering the bizarre black statue.

"It's like it ripped the memories right out of our heads and...made sculptures of them."

"Oh...oh, that's...that's just great..." Kara muttered with a deep frown. "See, this is like I said in the first place - maybe we should just go along with what the nice ship wants. If we do, maybe we can all get out of this alive, and with all the people we care about that the ship might be taking veeery good care of..."

She spoke a bit louder than was strictly necessary, addressing the walls and the ceiling.

"As much as I hate to admit it, you're probably right," Sam said with a reluctant nod. "But I think we should still have a fall-back plan just in case the ship doesn't turn out to be so 'nice.' I don't know about you, but I don't wanna bet all my hopes on her just letting us go after this is all over--whatever *this* is--only for her to turn around and make this whole thing permanent."

"Or to throw us away after. Kill us. We have no idea how expendable we are."

"With a million replacements sleeping downstairs, I'd say we're pretty damn expendable," Sam replied, folding his arms across his chest." He paused to think for a moment before continuing.

"Didn't Andromeda say there were places on the ship where Stacy can't spy on us?"

Starbuck quirked an eyebrow, frowning. She honestly hadn't been paying much attention to all that, what with the panic and the despair and all. Now she wished she had.

"Did she?"

"Yeah. She said...there were places on the ship the sensors were weak or something. If we can find them..."

They could be sure their conversations wouldn't be monitored...

"...then we might have a chance at figuring out a way out of here," Sam finished. His eyebrows knitted together into an expression of deep thought. "The only problem is that neither of Andromeda nor the other A.I. have access those areas, which just sort of leaves us..."

Just then, Sam's expression lifted, as if he were hit with some kind of divine revelation. "I've got an idea..." he said and walked into the Observation Deck.

"Andromeda?" he called out, hoping that--despite the fact that Sam had 'shot' her earlier--she might be able to help them.

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Helpless flailing, your table is ready

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