trans_9 | Meat n' Greet

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Meat n' Greet

The rest of the crew assembled on the Observation Deck to meet the latest editions to their numbers. After the revelation that their worlds are gone, many of them are even more eager to see people they knew from home.

Several people are set up near the doors to provide the new people with omnicoms and comm rings. New crew-mates might see a tall man in green armor and snake girl among their number. There are also several authoritative-looking figures ready to introduce themselves.

There's a lot to tell the new people. It's going to be a lot to take in.

[ooc: Only new characters and Command Staff can start new threads for introductions, to limit the number of threads. Everyone else, just tag in and have your guys greet the newbies.]

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How is she supposed to to keep her eyes dry after that?

"Just like I told you." Quietly, head hanging low. Then it's like a dam bursting and she can't bring herself to hold back any more. Her arms are around Feldt's shoulders in an instant, hiding her face against her neck whilst tears start to dampen her clothes. It's too hard to speak.

The name 'Lockon' hasn't quite registered with her yet.

For now all Feldt can do is hold her friend close as they both cried. It was hard enough to keep from crying when she first saw the other bridge crew member, and she couldn't keep herself composed for too long. The haro was forgotten for now. Feldt didn't know if it had rolled off to get the others or was just keeping quiet for them. Either way, she was glad. She had missed Christina for so long.

After a little too long to be convincing, and with a lot of effort Christina loosened her grip on Feldt's shoulders so she could wrap her arms around her instead. If she could turn this around, she could start to feel more in control of herself, convince herself it wasn't such of a big deal.

"Hey, come on now!" She was fine, really! "I'm right here, okay."

It took Feldt a minute to calm down and get her act together. Once she was able to speak again, she nodded. "The Meisters and Gundams are here too. So far we're the only ones from the bridge that have woken up so far."

She still hoped that Lasse and Sumeragi would still wake up sometime.

She started at that, before she willed herself to get her act together. She was fine, it was time to accept that.

A little too quick and upbeat. "That's great! I guess we lucked out there, then, huh?" Christina could've sworn she was done for, she recalled those painful last moments among the debris, and resisted the urge to check her back any damage. She felt disconcertingly fine, physically.

"When you say "woken up"... does that means they're definitely here already?" The answer had to be yes. She didn't know what she'd do with herself if it wasn't.

It'd taken Allelujah a bit of time, weaving through the sea of hopeful faces and countless reunions, to catch sight of the familiar splash of pink. Feldt had gone ahead with Haro and he'd promised to catch up with his own steely hopes gathered like lead in his stomach—and with good reason. What he didn't expect when he came upon Feldt was the presence, the unmistakable voice, of another one of the Ptolemy's crew.

One that Setsuna had told him didn't survive the UN's final attack.

But she looked exactly as Allelujah remembered her, untouched by age as Setsuna, Feldt, and himself had been. And she was alive. Dumbly, he couldn't help but blurt out a rather graceless:

"Christina—?"

"There are a lot of pods that are still unopened. The rest of the crew could be in them," she said looking up at Christina. Then another voice caught her attention and she looked up to see Allelujah.

"Allelujah Haptism!" she said, surprised as the Meister showed up. She had forgotten that he had walked here with her. She hadn't been able to find Setsuna, Lockon, or Tieria.

"Gotcha! Well, if it got the rest of us, it'd be silly to just leave people behind." It wouldn't make sense, not at all. It was a nice hope she could cling to.

She was about to ask about the state of the Ptolemaios, before she heard her name being called.

"Allelujah—" She didn't like that look on his face, not at all. Disentangling herself from Feldt — she's a strong girl, she's sure she'll be okay — Christina offered him a smile. "Hey, come on. You don't have to look so shocked."

He wanted to say a lot of things, most of which were not well thought out in the slightest, and it had always been fairly obvious when he was chewing over his own words, thinking better of them after all. The shock that had rattled through him subsided as she smiled, and he found himself finally returning the gesture in his own demure way.

"No, I suppose I don't." Lockon, Allelujah reminded himself. "It's good to see you, Chris."

It's been a long time.

For me, anyway.

She straightened up as Christina let her go. She wiped at her eyes again and gave them both a small smile. The Haro had rolled away somewhere, but she knew that it would be back. There was always the chance that it went to the hangar where the Gundams were.

"Allelujah, have you seen Setsuna or the others?" She asked. She knew that they had to be around the ship somewhere. If they weren't in the hangar, they might be somewhere else in the ship, but she doubted it.

"That's more like it!" She kept her voice cheerful, though really she felt almost numb. Everything had happened so quickly, it was probably less than an hour ago that she sent Feldt away from the control room. At least here, after seeing her and Allelujah alive and well, she started to feel relief settle in. With any luck, she was well on her way to forgetting things like the taste of her own blood in her mouth.

She suppressed a shiver, and regarded Feldt's question after a pause. The others.

"Hey, Feldt. Could you tell me again who's here?"

"Setsuna F. Seiei, Lockon Stratos, and Tieria Erde have all woken up from the pods. Ian Vashti, Mileina Vashti, Sumeragi Lee Noriaga, Lasse Aeon and Lichtendahl Tsery have yet to be woken up from the pods," she said, looking at Christina. "We also have access to the Gundams Virtue, Seravee, Arios, Kyrios, Dynames, Exia and 00 Raiser."

She knew that was a lot of information to process, but she was sure that her friend would be able to handle it. She didn't plan on leaving Christina for a long time.

Haro had found him, the small robot informing him that Feldt had been crying. Setsuna had sent it to go find Lockon (since, frankly, he was thousands of times better at dealing with that sort of thing) but he still felt compelled to investigate.

Though, finally locating the pink haired girl, he ended up approaching her and Allelujah and some other girl.

"Feldt Gra--" his voice suddenly got caught in his throat once he saw who that other girl was. His normally stoic expression was shattered, replaced by a look of sheer surprised confusion. He made an odd noise as he tried to get his mouth to work again, as if the remainder of Feldt's name had come out in a jumbled mess. It took him a moment as he finally his voice again.

"...Christina Sierra?"

Lockon Stratos.

So she hadn't been hearing things. It... wasn't impossible, if she was here too. But now she was faced with the reality that yes, she had died. And now she knew to look for it, they both looked different. Older. How long must it have been? When the realisation really started to hit her with enough force

"R-right. Just — give me a sec, okay?" She said, turning away. It was so strange to think about, but she couldn't deny it. She could remember what had happened anyway. It had barely been any time at all, since she saw any of them, even Lockon. That coupled with what must still have been shock made it too hard for her to get her head around that the last time they saw her — it must have been years.

It was lucky, then, that Setsuna's arrival and surprise knocked her out of her spiralling thoughts.

It had been years, over four, nearly five now since their deaths. She thought that she had been over it, that was until she had seen them alive again. It had brought back a lot of memories, but it had to be a lot worse for the others. She looked up at Setsuna when he came walking up. It was a surprise to hear him be so...surprised. Not much made the meister do something like that.

She nodded to Christina as she looked between the two Meisters and the other CIC officer. They just needed a few more crew members and they would have the full crew of the Ptolemy back. She hoped that they were still asleep in the pods.

Allelujah hadn't gotten the chance to answer Feldt before Setsuna finally emerged from the crowd, making Lockon and Tieria the only other two who were unaccounted for during this reunion. But maybe that was for the best at this exact moment, or at least Allelujah couldn't help but feel that way as he regarded Christina's turned back. None of them had even had to say anything, circumstance in itself was making it both difficult and a lot to take it all at once.

He couldn't even fathom what it must have been like for someone like her to react this way. Even if he was doing his best to keep his surprise checked, he'd only just come to terms with what Setsuna had told him about Celestial Being's tragic losses after years of simply not knowing.

At least for now, Allelujah knew that if anything, he was grateful.

"Chris," he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Setsuna was the kind of guy who went through hundreds of internal processes. Once the surprise wore off, his mind tried to wrap around what he just saw. His expression shifted back to his usual stoic face while he evaluated the situation.

Eventually, he came to a conclusion, making a thoughtful noise as he did. Whatever one he came to caused his face to shift into another expression he never normally wears.

...was he... smiling? He just might be. If you look closely.

"Christina Sierra..." It was all in the inflection, but that was about as close to Hey, welcome back, I've missed you and I'm glad you're ~~not dead anymore~~ alive, ~~again,~~ as he was ever going to say out loud.

~~ignore that like half my last tag is missing :/~~

She froze, at first, her mind still trying to understand what she was seeing. What to say, what to say. What do you say in this situation? Any awkward situation was draining, but now she was starting to feel close to collapsing.

The hand on her shoulder was comforting, though, and she brought one hand up to meet it, and the tone of Setsuna's voice was sobering.

"I'm — glad you're all okay." Well, if they all looked older, they must have survived. Maybe that last situation hadn't been as bad as it seemed, then.

Edited 2011-07-06 06:41 (UTC)

She was older, and she had a different hairstyle than what Chris had last seen on her. She gave her friend a smile before looking around. She hadn't been able to spot any of the other Celestial Being members. She was sure that they were in the pods, but she had no clue when they would be waking up.

"We're doing the best we can," she said. It was the truth. They were surviving in this place and they were doing the best they could to continue Celestial Being's goals.

Allelujah wasn't stupid enough to think that Chris didn't know, with the way she was continuing to look so stricken and shaken up, despite the difference in what they all remembered last before arriving on the ship. Even the feel of her hand was a little surreal, but he was glad for it all the same.

"It's like Feldt said," Allelujah agreed. He was uncomfortable with mentioning too much among so many people, but he figured their presence wasn't much of a secret as it was.

"Celestial Being is still here."

They still had a home.

"And we have a lot of work to do," Setsuna followed up. Leave it to him to barrel past any emotional stuff and get to business as soon as possible.

"Read this," he told her, handing her his omnicomm. "It should answer most of your questions.

"We'll show you where the Gundams are momentarily." So, yeah, ~~seven~~ five years older, ten times sexier, far more bossier, but still every bit the Setsuna F. Seiei she remembered. 'The more things change...' as they say.

She almost smiled, "Most of it." Despite their best efforts, with those final moments replaying over and over in her head against her will, Lichty's tragically hopeful last words, the glass still seemed half empty. Even if logically, this meant that more than half of the team had survived. That meant something, right?

—Oh. Trust Setsuna to be insensitive indeed. She blinked in surprise, eyes wide, but took what he passed her automatically. "Right now?" She wasn't normally one to avoid work, but it had barely been five minutes, she thought with suppressed — was that irritation? That may well have been a step forward.

"You don't have to read it now. I can take you to the hangar sometime soon and show you the successors to some of the Gundams," she said. Sadly the 00 Raiser was in no condition to fight, but Seravee and Kyrios were ready to go and she could give her some information on them.

Either that or she could just leave her best friend alone and let her adjust to what was going on.

"I agree with Feldt," Allelujah interjected, gently. Concern still gripped his features, remained in his slight frown, but he knew better than to try and justify it to Setsuna. Instead, Allelujah cast a glance around them, eyes briefly searching the faces within immediate distance for any trace of familiarity.

"For the time being, it may be better to keep looking for anyone else we know."

Though it was an honest suggestion, it would give Chris a little more time too.

Setsuna was somewhat slow with people, but not completely oblivious. "Read it as soon as you can," he conceded, not bothering to push things at this juncture.

"I'll start looking for anyone else."

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