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Waking up covered in slime and naked had been strange enough. One minute she'd been sleeping peacefully in the humid, mildly sticky jungle, the next she'd been waking up in the humid, EXTREMELY sticky room with the stacks and stacks of pods bulging from the walls, surrounded by humans, more humans than she'd seen in months. More naked humans than she'd seen in her life. And then Jane had found herself in a maze.

And another maze. And another one. With . . . something, that was most certainly a machine, but so much more advanced than any machine she'd ever seen - and much more vindictive, too. Had GlaDOS known somehow that of the few things she'd missed about England, cake had been high on the list?

Jane, deposited on the Observatory floor, stood from her ungraceful landing still livid with frustration from her weeks of 'testing.' Whatever that had been for.

"Oh! You wretched - you vile machine, if there were cake, why I'd jam every one of your gears with it!"

Oh! It appeared she was no longer in the strange, awfully austere mazes anymore. Jane looked around, considering that her surroundings had suddenly become much more like the strange room she'd been in before being captured by that terrible thing that had promised cake and not (for it's own good, no doubt!) delivered. Perhaps some of the people she'd seen around when she first woke up in a place not the jungle were available to answer some of her questions.

"Excuse me! Is - is anyone here? Hello? I don't suppose there is cake after all?"

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Beastboy happened to be in the air as a dog today sniffing about. He was trying to retrace his footsteps over the past week so he could locate a stash of treats he'd hidden. It was slow going, but a dogs nose was the best.

A dog!

Well, it was better than another computer. Jane sighed and knelt down, wishing for a person who knew what was going on, but pleased to be seeing another living creature all the same.

"I don't suppose you have any answers for me, do you boy?" she asked, kneeling and holding out her hand to the animal. After the weeks she'd been through, that the dog was green seemed an oddity too minor even to comment on.

The dog barked and then shifted into, a green pointy eared boy who took her hand and shook it cheerfully, "Well I might be able to answer a few questions." He winked cheekily.

"Ahh!"

A green dog was one thing, but a green dog that turned into a boy was quite another thing entirely.

"Ohmygoodness! What - who - just how did you do that?"

A shocking thing, certainly, but not a bad thing by any means. Jane's surprise was mostly enhanced by curiosity, rather than apprehension.

He gave an elaborate bow with a big wide grin.

"The name's Beastboy! I'm kind of a superhero you know? Fighting crime, saving lives, turning into animals. It's all part of the package." He joked cheerfully.

"Super . . . hero?"

It's not a term Jane's heard before. Being a clever girl, that doesn't stop her long.

"An individual with superhuman abilities, who uses those abilities for noble purposes in situations where ordinary heroes would be at a disadvantage. Am I close?"

The excitement of meeting someone who might very well have been of a sentient, English-speaking nonhuman species was winning out over Jane's alarm.

"Do pardon my manners! I'm Jane Porter, primatologist. I don't suppose your abilities give you a special accord with the animals you transform into, do they?"

Beastboy gave her an excited nod and thumbs up "Bingo! Exactamundo! You are one smart cookie!" He cheered.

When she introduced herself and then asked further he looked rather self satisfied, "You bet! I can communicate with all kinds of animals. Though...sometimes they tell me I have a heavy human accent."

"My husband was raised by gorillas, and my in-laws have told me as much. Through Tarzan, anyway - I'm afraid a year hasn't been long enough to become fluent in the language. Goodness, it is grand to have this conversation with a human who can relate!"

Maybe she had been missing communication with humans other than her father and Tarzan.

"If you don't mind my asking - how did you come to have such astonishing abilities?"

"Oh dude it's a great story!" His eyes lit up with the pleasure of bragging about his "Astonishing abilities"

"First off, have you ever heard of Sakutia?" He didn't give her a chance to answer, "It's this super rare disease that turns animals green and is deadly to humans. It was becoming a problem in this one area of Africa right?"

He launched into a dramatic tale about how his parents were genetic scientists and had been studying the disease as best they could, when the test subject they needed "The rare green monkey" Stumbled into their camp. He had been a child at the time and the creature had bitten him before fleeing. Infected and dieing of Sakutia his parents rushed him into their lab. The only way to save his life, lay in discovering the missing link between man and beast. Only then could he survive.

Through genetic experimentation he was altered, and survived the disease with a few...side effects.

"Pretty cool huh?" He ended after having acted out the entire scene.

"Fascinating!" Jane resisted the urge to take notes as she listened, and applauded the performance enthusiastically. "I hope you don't mind my saying so but this is absolutely marvelous, a wonder of science - I don't even know where to begin - I've never even heard of this rare green monkey! I don't think Tarzan has even seen one!"

He'd tell her if he had, right? Probably.

"I know right? Totally AWESOME origin story." He cheered shifting back into green monkey form and crawling up onto Jane's shoulder tail curling and uncurling excitedly making little chattering noises.

"Nope, no cake," an answer came from behind her. There was a young man sitting on one of the fleshy couches, and he didn't seem all that surprised by a woman being dropped out into the area. He had shaggy black hair that looked like it hadn't been cut in a while, and was wearing a black single-piece suit with a blood-red bat splashed over the chest.

"GLaDoS is a lying dreg," he said casually. "You get used to the disappointment."

"Oh!"

Another person! Finally! Jane rushed over, eager for answers.

"Can you help me? I was in the jungle, which is where I am supposed to be, with my father, and my -" she paused, almost adding "husband," but Tarzan was not in fact married to her, so she couldn't really say that, could she? Even though the only reason they weren't married was because one simply did not have the religious personnel available in the jungle to be married by, she certainly couldn't take the time to explain to a stranger why she was living in sin with a wild man.

" - Well all of a sudden I wasn't there anymore, and then that awful machine grabbed me before I could ask anyone what in the world was going on, and I do hope you can help me, because I would very much like to go home now, please."

She was tired, she was hungry, and she was absolutely tired of running mazes. What she wanted more than anything else in the world was to go back to her family, hug her father, kiss her wild man, and have a go at making something resembling a coconut cake, just to spite GLaDoS' memory.

Well that was a sudden outpouring of a lot of words. Terry was used to people feeling a bit frantic on finding themselves on the ship, but it usually involved sulking and wanting to punch things. Not such... what was the word he was looking for... politeness.

"Oh, geez, GLaDoS must'a grabbed you right after you woke up, huh?" He said, though the question was rhetorical. How else could she know about the mazes, but nothing about the ship itself?

"Man, where to begin," Terry said, then took a deep breath. "You're in outer space. This ship calls herself Stacy, and she grabbed us all up because... well, I don't know a way to put this that won't freak you out, so I'm just gonna say it. Your world, my world, everywhere that anyone here is from, is gone. Stacy saved us, but there's really no way to go home again."

Okay, Caz had been lounging about and messing with his hat in pure and utter boredom.

Then he looked up, and there was a woman going on something about- cake?

Needless to say it startled Cazali enough that he flopped off the pulsecouch, looking around suspiciously. Where the hell had she come from without him realizing?

"Excuse me!"

And now the woman was rushing over.

"Please, would you tell me where I am, and when the next steamer leaves for Africa?"

That was a very vague direction, but frankly Jane wanted to go home, and now.

Hold on, this is taking a minute to process.

"Africa?" Well, wasn't that a throwback. He hadn't been near the African coast in...wait that was a tangent, damnit Caz get it together.

"Er. You're new, aren't you~?" Caz got up and dusted himself off, looking the lady over with a brow high. "There isn't an Africa anymore. Blah blah our worlds got destroyed and some weird space ship picked people up, yadda yadda we have to fight aliens in space or the entire universe gets eaten."

"Why would there be cake?"

Seriously. N'tho wanted to know. He had heard it mentioned several times and he was sick of it being so nebulous.

There was a place she might eventually wander into on the ship, a place full of trees like none she'd ever seen before, and strange twisting plants, and animals unlike any on the face of the earth.

It was the most wonderful place she'd seen yet on the ship - a place that almost felt like home. A place that COULD have felt like home, if only it weren't missing the people - human AND gorilla - that made a home just that.

Jane wandered through the trees, half of her thinking sadly about the jungle home she'd lost,l the other half looking for samples of the flora she'd come to know in the African jungle. Perhaps the jungle she loved could be cultivated anew on some Earthlike planet, but without the creatures she'd come to know so well to inhabit it . . . did it even matter?

There was only the slightest rustling through the trees. He wasn't trying to surprise her, but he tended to move quietly naturally.

As soon as he peeked through the branches and saw it was her, really her, he dropped out of the trees and bounded over to her on all fours.

Once, she'd tackled him, on the beach, when she'd decided to stay with him.

Now, he tackled her, overjoyed to see her.

"Jane!"

"Ahhhh!"

At first there was a bit of screaming and flailing, because it was so rarely good in the jungle to be tackled from behind by something.

Fortunately, it became clear pretty quickly that Jane was not, in fact, being attacked by a leopard, and was instead being accosted with affection by one of the very people she'd been so sad about missing.

"Tarzan!"

And then there was kissing. Lots of kissing.

There was kissing, yes, and playful rolling around in the grass.

Jane was here. This new world was different and confusing, but Jane was here. She was safe. And that meant everything was going to be alright.

Tarzan leaned over her, looking at her face intently, gently pushing a strange of hair out of her eyes.

"Tarzan miss Jane. Worry about Jane. This place...confusing. Dangerous."

"Dangerous! You would not believe the hoops I've had to jump through just to get here! Literal hoops!"

Actually, Tarzan would have probably had a ball with GlaDOS. As much of a ball as anyone could have when a strange machine was trying very hard to get them to kill themselves by accident.

"I don't understand entirely what's going on, or why we're here, but I'm so glad to see you -"

She relaxed as he touched her face, reaching up to touch his back.

"I was afraid I wouldn't see you again."

He must have been afraid of the same.

"Tarzan see Jane," said Tarzan simply, still gazing adoringly at her. "Jane see Tarzan."

Therefore, everything was cool now. They'd deal with all this crazy shit together.

"Yes. Jane see Tarzan."

It was remarkable just how much she was comforted by that, even in this strangest of places. She touched his face, happy and calm again for what felt like the first time in ages.

Still, Tarzan wasn't the only person she'd been missing.

"Tarzan - is my father here? What about the gorillas?"

Tarzan sat up, and held out his hands to help Jane sit up to face him, his expression looking concerned.

"No family. Just Jane and Tarzan."

His mother and her father and the rest of their family wasn't here.

"Oh -"

Jane's hopes fell, even as she sat up to face her . . . not-husband. She hadn't realized how much she'd hoped his presence had meant that the rest of their family was there too, until those hopes had been thoroughly dashed.

What a blow this must be for Tarzan, who was so much more accustomed to a larger community than she was. Really, she could get by with just him and her father as family, but he had a whole tribe of gorillas that he was meant to look after.

She knew Tarzan well enough to know how seriously he took that commitment.

"Well."

She patted his cheek again, doing her best to stuff down her worries about her father. "I suppose sitting here carrying on won't do us or them any good, now will it?"

She had Tarzan, and he had her, and that was many times better than having no one at all.

"This place is...strange," Tarzan said. "Dangerous. People strange. Tarzan watch."

He occasionally sneaked around other parts of the ship during times that many were asleep, so that it was easier to avoid getting caught.

"Some seem..." He looked for the right words. "Can be trusted. Maybe."

"Well of course they can be trusted."

Some of them, anyway. Not all of them, but Jane had always regretted that Tarzan's experience with other humans had taught him that trustworthiness was the exception, rather than the rule.

"Most people are not like Clayton and the sailors. I myself met some lovely people on my way over."

Perhaps here he'd get to see that for himself.

"We can go...talk to them?"

He hadn't been sure how to go about it alone. One on one, he was fine with. He'd met a few individuals that wandered into hydroponics and it had gone well.

He had been a bit nervous about walking out into a crowd. He wasn't used to crowds. There was his family and Jane and the Professor and a vast expanse of jungle. This was the largest group of non-gorillas he'd ever seen gathered in one place.

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