trans_9 | Obligatory "not in Kansas anymore" subject line [ Open ]

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Obligatory "not in Kansas anymore" subject line [ Open ]

If it had been any other person, it would have been reasonable to conclude that they might have panicked. It wasn't normal - and hell, certain people had a broad definition of what normal meant - to wake up in a strange and far too humid cavernous room with a hypnotically pulsing greenish glow, to only see that for a few moments before there was sudden nothingness. It wasn't normal to suddenly be somewhere else in what felt like a lifetime and a heartbeat later, staring out at what looked like the Black as it sped by.

Thankfully, Zoe wasn't most people.

That didn't stop her from frowning and cursing beneath her breath. First things first - mentally run through what she did know (which was pathetically little in this case) and then backtrack as best she could. She assessed the area with a trained eye - definitely wasn't Alliance standard by the looks of it. Too crude and organic, mo min chi mao. Not Reavers either.

Small favors, at least.

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Hmm... another new face? Zouichi raised a hand in greeting as he made his way toward Zoe, figuring she was just lost. It was a big ship, after all -- he was surprised more people didn't end up missing and stuck in a transport tube somewhere.

"Hi. Need help finding something?"

Zoe turned at the voice, taking in this stranger's appearance quickly - friend or foe, soldier or civilian? She was still holding the short stick when it came to know what the hell was going on, something that hardly sat well with her.

"Answers'd be nice," she finally admitted when she concluded there was nothing immediately dangerous about him.

He frowned a little. "You didn't just come out of the pods, did you?" Because a pod release had just happened, and no others had been announced as far as he knew. "Er... what's the last thing you remember?"

The pods? She gave him a flat, unimpressed look. "Don't reckon that I have, seein' as how I don't know what you're talking about."

Insert blunt questioning, get blunt response. "You're aboard a living ship traveling between dimensions. Everyone here was rescued right before giant alien space bugs destroyed their universes, and you are now in the middle of a massive, multiversal war against said space bugs."

Well.

That just about explained it.

No surprise crossed her face or outright disbelief. Instead, she just crossed her arms and evenly replied, "Oh. That it?"

Utterly blank expression and tone.

"Yep."

"Well, long as you're bein' hospitable, mind telling me where I could find my crew?"

She didn't know why, but she had the persistent feeling that they were also on this huge ship...somewhere.

"I'm sure I'd be happy to oblige... if you'd given me a single piece of information about who you are or where you came from. I'm not psychic, you know."

Duh.

"You didn't ask," shrugged Zoe, unbothered by the edge of sarcasm in the man's voice. "But if you want to know - Reynolds. I'm looking for Captain Malcolm Reynolds."

Of all the crew, the captain was most likely to have already ended up in a heap of trouble.

He shrugged. He had asked about her origins... she just hadn't bothered to answer. Which meant that this was officially someone else's problem.

"Good luck, I guess." With that, he headed down the far hall, where a series of transport tubes awaited.

She watched him go, impassive. Hell of a thing.

This was turning out to be a very interesting day.

Howard's decided to go back to people-watching, now that he's spent some time away from the meet and greet, but unfortunately it seems the observation deck has mostly emptied out since the podpop.

He does notice the confident-looking woman examining her surroundings. She looks capable. Formidable, even.

"Hey. How are you liking your first day on the Snotpod Express?"

One eyebrow slowly lifted at the drawl, and she glanced back to see man casually relaxing nearby and watching her in something akin to amusement. Then, she let her gaze sweep across the room. "All this?" she asked, her hands feeling strangely empty without the familiar weight of her gun. "Not my idea of a pleasant wake-up call."

If she could remember how she woke up there in the first place, it'd be a start.

"Then wait 'til you see how the ship did your bedroom's interior decorating. You want my advice, snag an unclaimed building in the city before people take all the good ones." His voice cracks a little with puberty. His cheeks flush a bit as he tries to get that under control.

"I'm Howard." He doesn't extend a hand, but he's friendly enough with his greeting. "Who're you?"

"This really a ship?" Zoe asked, looking around. She saw the Black out there, but this had to be one of the largest ships she had ever been on - she was getting the feeling this wasn't the only part of it and the mention of a city didn't help matters. This room could probably swallow Serenity whole.

Her calculating demeanor warmed slightly when his voice cracked - hell of a thing being a teenager. "Corporal Zoe Washburne."

"Really really. It's kind of more like a planet than a ship, though. The City's bigger than some states from my home." When Zoe looks around, Howard unconsciously mimics her, as if reminded again how big the observation deck really is.

"That sounds military. You military?"

A planet that passed as a ship - no, that probably had to be the strangest thing she had ever heard. Planting her hands on her hips, she gave the room one more cautious look. There had to be a good gorram reason why this thing existed, and a straightforward answers just didn't have all the details she needed.

"Long time ago," she replied to his question. "War's over."

"Then why do you still call yourself Corporal?" He tilts his head to the side curiously, and then in a bit more of a serious voice, "and which war are you talking about here? Since we just ended up in a brand new one."

"Old habits, I guess," she replied with a faint smile.

Of course, they wound up in the middle of another war. Somehow, she suspected the captain had something to do with that, what with never being able to keep them out of trouble anyhow. She sighed - she had to find the crew and figure out what was going on and how much the Alliance had messed up this time.

"Ta ma daoh." Pinching the bridge of her nose, she shook her head at the boy. "Méiguanxì. Everything's shiny."

He nods a bit sagely. He knows all about dragging habits away from their origins.

And then she starts talking in what might as well be ancient Greek to Howard. "Gesundheit? I only speak English, Pig Latin and Normal Conversation."

Edited 2011-10-13 03:30 (UTC)

Zoe had long since stopped shelving the odd things in her life next to improbable dreams and nightmares. When Howard admitted the languages he spoke, she only gave him a cursory look and stored that bit of information to figure out later. There was a story behind all of this, and there were too many details lacking to make it any good.

"There any way to get in contact with other folks around here?" she asked. Even it wasn't allowed, she was finding the crew.

He points at her comm. "There's that. If they can figure out a computer, they probably follow the channel, or will once they're finished being dazed and confused. As for people off the ship..."

Howard shrugs. "It's touch and go. And there's no roster for who's still sleeping."

Zoe frowned as she looked down the comm and absently began to examine it, seeing if it was any sort of tech she had encountered before. Didn't look too crude or Alliance-made - chalk that up to another of the odd, unexplainable things she'd run into so far.

"'Still sleeping?'" she echoed, glancing back at up him briefly. Folks would be a bit humped if they had passengers sleeping aboard a ship that they didn't know about. "Stowaways, you mean?"

"No, I mean, you know how you kind of just woke up here? Everyone who hasn't woken up yet is sleeping in some sort of snot pod. And we have no way to tell who else is in there until they come out." He shrugs. "Not that there aren't stowaways. I mean, we got monsters and ghosts and these cannibal reaver guys and all."

Zoe was approached by a young man in very old-fashioned clothing. He was wearing a tunic and leggings, though one legging was rolled up so that a mechanical leg was visible--he'd lost the entire thing from below the knee down.

"I know that dazed and bewildered look. Did you miss the big meeting somehow where everything was explained?"

There had been punch and pie even!

Only not.

The man that approached her now - well, she wasn't sure what to think of him. She had seen strange things around the 'Verse, but his clothing would be up there with the strangest. And his breezy manner made him seem like a chai neow. But that didn't mean he wasn't dangerous - people wore a lot of masks to hide their talents.

"Expect you'll be here doing the explaining now."

That breezy manner changed a little when he got confirmation that she hadn't gotten the grand explanation.

"You might want to sit down--or otherwise assume whatever position you prefer to be in when getting bad news?" Hiccup said softly.

She crossed her arms and gave him an even look that only a soldier who had received a lot of bad news possessed.

"Go on."

"Your world is gone," Hiccup said first. "This ship saved refugees from worlds that were destroyed."

He decided to let that one sink in first, before going on softly, "We're supposed to fight a war against the monsters that are responsible for destroying whole worlds."

The Obs deck had cleared fairly quickly as people found their friends and family and carted them off to explore Stacy. Kaylee herself had been about to leave, to head back to Serenity and the excited crew that would be waiting. A figure caught her eye, though, and Kaylee hesitated only a moment before darting back into the room, toward the now-emerging woman.

"Zoe!!"

Wash was ready to leave himself. In fact, he made it all the way out the door without even seeing Zoe appear. But Kaylee's shout spun him around like it was a physical force. His feet started moving before he knew what was happening. He stumbled when he hit the doorway and caught himself. He couldn't even speak at first, just stared.

"Zoe."

The explanations she had received from the few people straggling about in the room had been enough to convince Zoe that she needed to somehow find the rest of Serenity's crew, see what they made of all this. She wasn't bothered at all by the description of the ship's size - city or not, with that comm, there had to be a way to get in touch with all of them. She did frown at the idea that maybe they were still "sleeping" as that one boy had said.

She shook her head, lips pressed into a firm line. She'd deal with that if she came across it.

That was, until a very voice from across the room broke any eventual plan she'd have about finding them.

Glancing back, she saw Kaylee rushing towards her, waving wildly as if the room itself were packed instead of near empty. She smiled, glad to see a face that she knew. "I reckon you're a mite loud for the room, Kaylee." She looked over the girl's shoulder and saw someone else too, intimately familiar, and something more than relief spread through her as her smile became a touch softer.

"See you brought my husband too."

Kaylee was really too excited to watch her volume, and loud or not she was still running toward Zoe with all the excitement of a five-year-old who had just found her long lost puppy.

That slowed as Zoe spotted Wash, though. Kaylee contained herself enough to stop and step back, out of their way in case Wash decided he wanted to gallop back into the room too. The mechanic beamed up at Zoe and waited for Wash to join them.

"Been a terrible handful without you, keepin' him in line. Wouldn't believe some of the antics he's been gettin' up to here."

Kaylee's playful teasing went entirely unnoticed. Wash had been on this ship far too long without knowing whether Zoe was alive, and now there she was standing in front of him.

He crossed the room, threw his arms around her and kissed her. "You slept in," he said. "I've been waiting for you."

Perhaps it was several decades of absolutely abysmal luck finally starting to get paid off, but Zoe wouldn't be lost on her own for too long, because as fate would have it the man who'd shared most of that bad luck with her happened to be in the area, and stepped through one of the bizarre heart valve doorways just in time to come face to face with probably the only true friend he had left in the world.

Course, Mal being Mal, he ended up staring and blinking at her for a moment before giving out a rather underwhelming. "Huh." This was then followed by a slightly more hopeful, "Zoe, if that's you I'd appreciate some assurance. Been a long few weeks and I got no need to be goin' crazy right now."

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Obligatory "not in Kansas anymore" subject line [ Open ]

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Hope you don't mind if I threadjack

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