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The ridiculous part in finally being free from the psychotic program that ran and maintained the mazes Esplin had been running through with this soft human body for who knew how long was the fact he couldn't stop moving once he was out of them. Semi-familiar noises caught by these less than optimal ears would have him spinning around, looking for the origin. He was tense, taking stock of side-areas and nooks to shoot into or duck within, depending on what ludicrous thing was after him now.

Restless, plantsuit clad feet eventually found the long walkway that led into Hydroponics, pausing at the start. It was a lot of straight, inescapable space to wander, and he had no illusions over what this body could do. Other than fall, roll, and stand up again. Repeated far too often for his personal tastes, as he learned his mindless, human body was less well balanced (if more even gaited) than the Gedd through which he'd first discovered what it meant to see.

He still considered Hydroponics a gigantic waste of space, nothing like the memories he'd borrowed of what his homeworld was like, harsh and grating and the height of survival of what moves fastest and moves first. Anything Aldrea might feel, instinctual, was a curious memory to turn over and examine. Andalites prized their concepts of carrying some home with them where-ever they went. That he could identify, in the loosest sense appreciate, what that meant left him with the beginning of a sneer on his face. Or perhaps he was suffering from indigestion. None of his expressions read correctly on a human face. Gedds, Hork-Bajir, and Andalites all lacked the complete, soft, helpless moldability of the human form.

Disgusting.

"Hydroponics." Tasting the sounds, talking out loud to himself in the way he'd started to when running mazes, getting used to the feeling of this form of vocalization. It was far less effort than enunciating with the Hork-Bajir's hard mouth and reluctant tongue. "I want the Media Library."

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Clef was just leaving Hydroponics as Esplin approached it, and caught the muttered words just as he looked up and noted the odd expression on what he thought was a woman's face. It took him a beat and a step to register and process what it all meant.

"Back down the hall, take a right," he said without even turning around as he walked away.

Esplin stared at the -- person -- who had decided to answer his not-question. His female voice was starting to grate on his own ears, if he pitched it lower simply to not hear what he perceived as a whine there. "Your directions are lacking."

Soren watched Esplin fall over with some small amusement.

"The Media Library? Are you sure you don't want the Medical Bay? Perhaps they could teach you how to walk without tumbling over every tree root."

Esplin stood without too much difficulty, face contorted into a grimace of disgust as he brushed his palms against each other. Dirt fell off them, if he could tell they were going to be a bit sensitive.

Human bodies were so stupidly sensitive.

"It's a side effect of being held captive by that program for too long." His lips, that feminine face, looked displeased, in a muted, subdued way. It was his eyes that held most the malice. GLaDOS was something he severely disliked at this point in his existence.

"You are referring to GLaDOS? I thought she put her test subjects through her paces." Soren made a brief walking gesture with one hand. "Made sure they were fit for the rigors of space travel. No?"

Soren didn't care either way about GLaDOS, having never encountered her before. If anything, mention of her provoked mild intellectual curiosity.

"No." Esplin didn't particularly care to re-elaborate (on his not very elaborate) explanation. In fact, he was more inclined to walk away.

Which he was, given his particular set of priorities lay nowhere near continuing this conversation. (S)he turned, walking back the way they'd come.

Soren debated going after Esplin for a good... .1 seconds.

Nah, not worth it. He wandered off in the opposite direction, to find a quiet place to read.

Cassie approached the stranger curiously, watching the young woman to see if she could figure anything out about this newcomer from her demeanor. Given the fact that the newcomer seemed a bit disoriented, she guessed that this might be a new arrival, although the girl seemed to carry herself with more confidence then she'd expected from someone who was likely at least a bit lost and confused. Some people just carried themselves with natural assurance no matter where they were though, so Cassie didn't think on that much. Besides, for all she knew, this person could have been here for a long time. She had certainly not met everyone aboard yet. Not even close.

Still, sympathy ran through her as she remembered well how confused she had been when she'd first woken up and she resolved to find out if everything was okay. It couldn't hurt to ask just in case. The worst that could happen is that she'd be mistaken and this person wouldn't need anything, which wasn't a bad thing at all. "Do you need some help?"

(OOC: I'm sorry. I know that this is an older post, but I thought it might be interesting to thread these two, but if you're not interested just feel free to ignore me. I totally and completely understand. :) Also, I'm sorry that I can't make this post properly. -_- Last try.)

Esplin shifted, face neutral at first. Something like irritation crossed her face, a subtle turning down of her lips and narrowing of her eyes more reflexive of a general displeasure than intentional displays of emotion. She read awkwardly, like she herself was a bit disjointed, if the irritation did seem genuine.

"No," she said curtly, voice lacking the edge her eyes carried. "I need time and better information, that's all."

He remembered Cassie from when he arrived, still in the glory that was Aldrea. Aah, the power, the sheer... assurance of being that an Andalite had inherently.

She smiled, the barest upturning of her lips, so much more forgiving than the hard faces of the Hork-Bajir. Humans used their mouths for a lot of expressiveness, he observed, if he didn't spend much time observing them. Irritations, all of them, and something the Empire would have to deal with in the future.

Hmm.

"It's frustrating," she said, honest. It was an interesting word to say, with this particular mouth. Frustrating.

Cassie was a little taken aback by the girl's tone and the harsh look in her eyes, but she quickly set it aside. Everyone reacted to stressful situations differently and irritation as well as anger were a common options.

"Well, maybe I can help a bit with that. I can't do anything about time, but if you have any questions then I can try to answer them."

"You mean this place? I could certainly agree with that," she said sympathetically, offering a friendly smile. "I'm still not really fully used to being here yet, but it does get a bit easier as time passes."

"If you can see how much time passes." Her voice was flat, partly out of preoccupation. Esplin found Cassie to be... perhaps perceptive, if more to a point he found her tendency to want to connect with, understand, or help others to be an open means of manipulation.

Not that he needed something like that. If it could be... useful.

He turned to her, attempted to smile, then stopped the attempt. "How much can you tell me about the Ohm? Or the Daligig. Or the GIA, or even these Catastrophists?"

"How much do you know? About them and why we're here?" Her voice was soft and comforting as she spoke. Cassie didn't know how much this young woman had already been told and if she wasn't already aware of what had happened to all their worlds, that was a bombshell that needed to be approached with the utmost caution and sensitivity. "The Daligig I can at least tell you are supposed to be our allies, although we don't seem to know much about them. At least the people that I've spoken to don't," she amended.

The Catastrophists? They had been a part of that awful battle on Lirath, but she hadn't heard any reference to them recently. Had this woman been around at that time or had she simply heard the name? "Did you fight on or around Lirath?"

With a kind smile, she asked, "May I ask your name? It might prove more comfortable for both of us if we weren't complete strangers. I'm Cassie."

(OOC: If this isn't good enough then please let me know and I'll fix it. I struggled a bit with the post, so I'm kind of worried about it. Thank you!)

Esplin hesitated, largely because he'd never decided on what to call himself. Anything close to his actual name, as much as he thought it was right and proper, stood out as clearly alien to humanity. More to a point, he didn't want to give them any particular reason to start thinking of him as what he actually was.

He also wasn't the most creative, so when he agreed with himself to answer, it's a fairly short, to the point truth: "I'm... Lin." Yes.

Disguised by dropping the first half of his name.

He was brilliant.

He did remember to be polite at the end, borrowing on Andalite sensibilities over human ones. (He didn't know the human ones.) "It's an honor to meet you," she said, looking serious. He couldn't fake enthusiasm quite yet, but he could do serious pretty well.

"I didn't fight in Lirath. I read about it. Saw it in the media library, if I haven't seen all the files." He felt that was explanation enough for why he was looking for the Media Library, if it didn't explain him stopping at Hydroponics, so obviously out of the way.

"All I know about the factions I mentioned I've gleaned out of the files. The incomplete files, with more loose ends than answers anywhere in them. The Daligig," he said, voice communicating his disdain for those individuals, "Have lied to this crew and manipulated it for ages. As far as allies go, they're allies as long as we're biddable. They don't know how biddable that is, but when we don't have full control of the ship we depend on for survival, they're hedging their bets we're biddable enough."

Which was smart, and in a way he respected the manipulation, if he also despised it. Much of what the Daligig did in dealing with the crew had echoes of what the Andalites had done dealing with the Yeerks, years ago, only with overtones of being frontline fighters taken out of their natural element and tantalized with countless things they weren't allowed to actually have.

Really, they were jerks.

"Lin?" Cassie asked, seeking confirmation. The hesitation that the young woman had shown just before finally offering her name seemed to indicate that she wasn't yet ready to trust Cassie fully which was understandable under the circumstances, if a bit sad. It led to the possibility though that Lin might not be telling the truth, but there was no harm in playing along for now until she learned more. She could only hope that Lin would come to feel comfortable enough with her that all such concerns would eventually be a thing of the past.

"The honor is all mine," she responded with just as much seriousness. Cassie started to smile, but she suppressed it as she watched Lin's face. She wasn't sure that a smile would be well received and it might even come across as if she wasn't taking this situation seriously enough, so she decided to follow Lin's lead rather than risk offending her.

She nodded as Lin spoke. That would certainly explain how she knew of Lirath. "The Catastrophists were fought on Lirath, but I haven't heard anything about them recently. As far as I know, they were beaten back."

It was sad to think about the fact that their allies were so questionable, but it wasn't a new concept to her either. After all, the Andalite military forces hadn't exactly been the perfect allies. All that waiting... hoping for a rescue and they'd ended up almost being destroyed by those that they'd viewed for so long as their "saviors". "They're not well trusted as far as I know, but we need them and they need us. Mutual goals lead us down the same path."

She hesitated. "You know what happened to our worlds then?" If Lin had been investigating the Media Library, then she should already know that, but Cassie still wanted confirmation before continuing. It was too traumatic a topic to be handled carelessly.

(OOC: Thank you. :))

"Lin." He'd have to remember that, for consistency's sake. Irritating to live as only a fraction of his whole true self, but necessary enough. For now.

The return of seriousness suited Esplin just fine. He preferred operating on the business side of everything, and as long as Cassie could pull herself together and act on the same level, she was more tolerable than her asking how s(he) felt and worrying about the side of things that wasn't worth spending time examining.

"Mutual goals lead us down the same path. We don't know their goals, only what they claim as goals." Stopping the Ohm, stopping... these things. It was superficially shared, if the intent was different from the Daligig to the Crew. Some crew.

"They were devoured." Destroyed, perhaps, but it had felt hungry to Esplin, and in a way he could identify with that... hunger, or at least the drive to so overtake something it has no time to object. Not that he'd ever had that opportunity, outside of his planning that had landed him Aldrea. And will, again. "Destroyed, whatever word you want to use. There's supposedly nothing left, and it's more than a world to world context. Whole universes, yes?"

This smile is more along the lines of something small and angry, not at Cassie, at the waste of what had been done by the Ohm. All that trying, all that work, for what? Nothing! Nothing as long as the Yeerks had been so completely undone by a species of insects that didn't bother doing their own thinking fighting on the front lines.

"I... suppose that's true," she agreed reluctantly. "I'm not suggesting giving them the utmost trust, just that I don't necessarily think that it's wise to automatically treat and think of them as the enemy for now." The truth of the matter that she wasn't sure how she really felt about their supposed allies. A large part of her wanted to trust them, to believe in them, but it wasn't so simple. There were just too many secrets being kept and that made her uncomfortable.

The fact that Lin already knew made this situation a little simpler, although Cassie was a bit taken aback at how... matter-of-factly she seemed to speak of the destruction of all their worlds and then the added smile... it just didn't seem to fit the situation.

"Yes, you're right. The Ohm are supposedly responsible for all that's happened." Her voice was sad as she spoke, her thoughts on the all the horrible destruction and death that should never have happened. "There has been talk of being able to restore our worlds if we manage to stop the Ohm, but I don't know how much truth there is to this."

"Talk from the Daligig, or talk from the psychic construct in the Sensoriums?" Esplin clung to that hope with all the tenacity in his tiny Yeerkish soul. It was the obvious, razor-sharp path to walk to get everything he wanted back. Unless he could find the other Yeerks, maybe find another pool, set himself up as leader...

... Oh, he would try. Yet he had to be careful. And if he gave any weight to the Ohm, the Daligig, or anyone else involved in this farce of a projection for saving the multiverse, or whatever it called itself, then he still needed to figure out how to win against a species that had the kind of autonomy and specialized development he couldn't only hope the Yeerks would achieve under brilliant guidance.

His, if anyone was asking. (No one was.)

"There's one path, out of millions, that can lead us to that hope. If we cooperate. If we make the better decisions more often than the worse decisions, if no one bothered clarifying who sits judge on those better and worse, and from what perspective."

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holy gosh Tetra I never got this notif laksdfj so sorry!

HOW DARE YOU. J'ACCUSE!

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