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When Marco stumbled across the media library, he concluded that this had to be the best day so far on this freaky meatship.

Music. Massive screens. A giant, alien entertainment centre. And, most importantly - video games.

Marco was immediately drawn to the tall white box with the strange looking controllers. He snorted when he saw the name "Wii" (who though that was a good idea? The puns where almost too easy) but hey, this was clearly gaming of the future. Or gaming of a strange and bizarre alien race - it was hard to tell. Either way, it was cool, and Marco was so going to try it out.

He fished around for a vaguely interesting looking game, bypassing all the ones that looked boring (Wii Fit? Cricket? Imagine: Fashion Idol?! pfft), eventually settling on Escape from Bug Island.

Marco had been a bug before. Waaaaay too many times. Now he could squish them in safe video game fun.

But as Marco began to play, his good mood rapidly diminished. Who thought up this whole "swinging around the controller" thing? What the hell was going on with that animation?

"What the hell is with this?!" He yelled, as he tried to get the control to do what he wanted dammit. "This is nuts! GAMING OF THE FUTURE IS CRAP!"

[[ooc: For reference, this is the extraodinarily bad game Marco is playing.]]

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Craaaaap dammit this stuff was so much easier when he was back home and everyone knew he was an Animorph and famous and saved the world.

In an attempt to dig himself out of this hole, Marco threw up his hands in a pleading gesture and started blabbering.

"Hey, I didn't say anyone has to see you naked! I'm...just saying that I'm sure you'd look pretty good naked. Not that you don't look good when you're not-naked! And obviously you don't have to go around naked if you don't want to, and I could totally beat away and old guys you didn't want seeing you...err..."

Marco blinked once, then twice. Crap crap crap. "...You know, how about we err...just forget I ever said anything on the topic at all?"

Wow, that's about all Claudia could think for a moment. She seriously wasn't sure if she should be flattered or completely irked what Marco had just said. It was like... Wow.

"Yeah, dude," Claudia agreed eyeing him like he'd just grown a third head. "That would probably be a good idea... 'Cause really? That was way to friggin much."

"Yeah," Marco said, looking glum. Way to be real smooth, Marco. You meat an awesome and very hot chick and you end up blabbering about what she'd look like naked.

"Chill dude! We're like forgetting you ate your foot, right? So stop lookin like someone ran over your dog like a zillion times." Claudia suggested.

There was an awkward silence for a few moments and Claudia sighed. "Soooooo... I saw Worf from Star Trek here too," she offered, trying to lighten the mood again.

"Okay," Marco said meekly.

The awkward silence. It burned.

"R...really? Star Trek? That's awesome," Marco said, sounding somewhat less enthusiastic than he had before. Even though normally the thought of meeting anyone from Star Trek would induce bouts of extreme glee. "Um...I talked to Sonic before. The hedgehog."

OK conversation had taken a turn and was heading straight toward sucktastic-ville. She turned to face him, pushing aside what he'd just said about Sonic the Hedgehog - which in her opinion was way weirder than knowing there was a Lex Luthor onboard.

"Look dude, so you ate your foot. No biggie, I do stuff like that all the time. And... I also have a knack of getting myself stuck to things. So are we cool or what?"

Okay, now the were edging into the oh-so-dangerous territory where they might end up "talking about their feelings". And Marco definitely did not want that. "Yeah, we're cool," he said, trying to put on an unaffected manner.

And taking a leaf out of Claudia's book, he turned to the game and tried to change the subject. "So. How do we play?"

Shrugging, Claudia decides to go with the flow of things and just focus on the game. "So like you have to start a new game..." she waited for him to do so, "And then there will be a bit of blah blah blah, AND then you get to actually set up what your character will look like and pick a name for them and stuf.."

She motioned for him to get on with it. "So go ahead dude."

"Hey, I'm not from that far in the past. I know how to start a new game," Marco said. Just for fun, he decided to name his character "Tree-hugger". The rest of the character creation was a bit different, though.

"Okay. Why is she a baby?"

"Hey man, you never know... You are like basically from the stone-age afterall. " She flashed him a cheeky grin before turning her attention back to the game.

"Wel it's like a story. You don't stay a baby. That's like.. Just the first five minutes, if even. It gets better. I promise."

"You are a cruel, cruel woman. You mock me and my lack of modern technological skills," Marco said, with a mock pout.

"That's good to know. Because while using baby poop as a projective weapon would be hilarious, it would also be really weird." He quickly assigned some attributes to Tree-hugger, giving her high perception, agility, and luck, average charisma and endurance, and low strength.

Luckily, Cassie wasn't around to wonder why Marco was basing video-game character off her. Or see that he'd given her low strength - but it wasn't that Cassie wasn't strong. Marco knew she was tough. But she was never the one to go for the high-firepower morphs. That was Rachel's job.

After assigning Tea-hugger some Cassie-related skills, Marco was done.

"I'm alotta things, but cruel isn't one of them. Smart, awesome, kickass, groovy even, but cruel?" She waved a hand in a dismissing type of motion. "Naw, dude." She chuckled though, she supposed she was picking on him.

Her nose wrinkled and she looked at him. "Baby poop? That's kinda nasty...Eww." She looked back to the game. "Wow, low strength? She's not gonna be able to carry a lot around," she observed.

"AND I'm surprised you made a chick... Most dude's make dude characters."

"But your grooviness. It wounds me." Marco didn't mind the teasing. He teased everyone, so he appreciated the ability of those who could dish it right back at him.

"See, that is why babies should not be game protagonists," Marco said. "And I'll figure out something about the low strength. Or give up and make a new character later."

"Hey, chicks are awesome too. And besides, I named her after Cassie, so making her a dude would just be weird."

"Well then, you shall eat cake," Claudia said putting on a fake high society/some sort of royal accent, and waved her hand around a little like a beauty queen. She should have been an actress!!

"Dude you can't just... Give up and start over! You gotta stick things through with your low strength chick! Ya gotta build her up... Or learn all the cheat codes." She said, quite seriously. Though, cheat codes? She knew them, but she wouldn't like share them unless he asked really, really nicely.

"Duh, I know chicks are awesome! Namely 'cause I'm one." She began, pointing her thumb toward herself. "Whoa, you named her after someone you knew? Tree hugger is this Cassies person? Man, is that even right? I mean, if you had named your character after me and then gave it some nick name like that? I woulda... I dunno what, but I woulda done something."

If only Marco was back home. He could offer to pull some strings and get her a job.

"Cheat codes? Cheat codes?" Marco snorted. "I have more self respect than that. Cheat codes are for after I've completely mastered a game."

He was a little surprised at her indignation at giving Cassie-character a nickname. "Come on, chill! It's no big deal. I just tease everyone. And Cassie's cool, she knows I don't mean anything by it."

"That's if you do," Claudia smirked before settling back into the squishiness of the couch. "I beat the whole thing in less than a week without the cheats..." She announced looking rather proud of herself.

"Hey man," Claudia said, holding her hands up in surrender. "That's cool. Just come up with something better than tree hugger for me."

"That a challenge?" Marco said, sending back a smirk of his own. "If it is, you're on."

"Sure. Next time she can be Skunk-girl."

"Well only if you're up to losing," Claudia smirked. "We'll have to come up with some stakes to put on this wager." She announced, her eyebrows raising a little in more challege.

"Wow, dude. You come up with interesting nicknames." She eyed him. "OK, I'm curious... What would you call me?"

Marco grinned back. "Such as?"

"You just don't know Cassie. She's seriously into the whole 'saving animals' thing. Even baby skunks. She even pretended to be their mother. Hence, skunk girl. Then she went and roped the rest of us into helping too."

Course, Marco left out the part about Cassie - and Marco and the other Animorphs - actually becoming mama-skunk.

Marco shrugged. "I don't know. Just met you. Geez, I don't even know your actual name yet."

"She a member of PETA or something?" Claudia asked. Her nose wrinkled a little. "You all played skunk mamas?! Oh man, you all must have stunk sooooo bad." She chuckled a little.

"Seriously? Oh well, I'm Claudia Donovan, tech wiz extraordinaire," she offered, glashing him a warm smile and held her hand out to him. Hey! She knew how to be polite and stuff!

"Dude, PETA? Come on. Cassie can get a little crazy about trees and animals, yeah, but no way is she that crazy," he said, rolling his eyes. "And the baby skunks can't do the spray-thing yet. I think." Marco paused a little. Now that he thought about it, he didn't actually know if baby skunks could spray. "Well, they didn't spray us anyway. Now, Jake's dog Homer on the other hand...he got sprayed by Mama-skunk."

Well. Not Mama-skunk, really. Just Cassie-skunk.

"Marco," he said, taking her hand with one of his while still holding the controller with his other hand.

"OK, ok, I was just askin! You never know with animal lovers and stuff. Just... Had to check." And well you didn't. PETA people were crazy and Claudia seriously didn't want to have to worry about coming across any graphic forms of protest on the ship. So it was good to know that Cassie wasn't one.

"So Marco, what do ya think of this place? I mean... It's all squishy and fleshy and kinda ew, right? Though totally has kickass stuff, like the multitude of gaming stuff and... stuff." ~~Oh and fuzzy furballs with sharp teeth.~~

"Hmm, true. You never know when they might suddenly want to save a whole litter of baby skunks," he said with a grin. "You didn't have to ask though. Cassie's not here." But if what those aliens had said was true, then Cassie was certainly in one of those pods.

"Yeah, there's kickass stuff. Doesn't change the fact that we've got no control, we don't know whether anything we're being told is true, and there are freaking tentacles everywhere."

"Oh," Claudia flashed him an apologetic look. "Is there like anyone you know from your world here? I mean, I saw there were some people or whatever who like knew others, ya know?" She shrugged and looked back at the game, frowning slightly and hoping that Myka and Pete and Artie were in one of those pods.

"Ew, I know right? That just gross on so many levels. I almost completely freaked when they grabbed me and dressed me in this..." she motioned to the plant suit. "I just want some jeans, a t-shirt and my converse shoes. Is that a lot to ask for?"

"Yeah, there's a few people. Ax. Tobias," he paused for a moment. "Tobias's mom and dad. I'm guessing everyone else is in the pods, though. If we're here, Cassie definitely will be. Jake too."

He paused at that thought, though. It had been niggling him for a while, ever since he'd seen Elfangor alive. They took people from different times. They took people like Elfangor, who should be dead. And so far, it looked like they'd been building themselves a nice little collection of Animorphs.

Then what about Rachel? If they nabbed Elfangor, then why wouldn't they nab her?

But that was still just one very big 'maybe'. "What about you, huh? And yeah, you'd think people this this kinda technology could make some jeans."