HANGER - TARDIS - Half-safe(ish) zone

[makeherblue]

The Doctor isn't there to open the doors of the old girl.

Not the the TARDIS needs him to.

It's only a few hours after the attack starts that the TARDIS doors suddenly open on their own, that golden light spilling out onto the hanger floor, almost as if beckoning any companions or would-be companions or maybe they just want to try on some adventuring on for size in a safe(ish) zone and maybe she isn't quite 100% safe, but there's still loads of hiding spots for anyone who happens to duck inside. The hum and drone of the TARDIS tries to entice any crew inside that can make it through her doors.

She does miss having people inside her. It's been so lonely and wrong in parts of her thanks to that horrid Time Lord rummaging around in her guts, so to speak. There's that angry little library storming about somewhere in the Southern(ish) hemisphere, looking for bones to chomp and a willing ear to listen to the Recital of the Three Mountains audio-drama at the same time. The dumbwaiter is bored to tears (if it had eyes) waiting for someone to cart to places. The bog of black water and the stench of smelly socks expands a few more rooms out from the Wardrobe. Out Somewhere Beyond, the Everything Forest lies about its name and gets a few more shades of mind-wiltingly boring, but might provide cover if you can stand that sort of thing (the Doctor can't).

And there's loads more rooms, undiscovered. The chances are out there in Stacy or possibly risking diving into the depths of the TARDIS.

[OOC; Basically the TARDIS is wide open for anyone who wants to explore her. :3 If you want to make up a room or trash another (just not console room please), go for it. It's probably going to be possible for the smaller droids to follow inside but it's a huge place, so yes]

Comments

[Closed to John Crichton]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard used a lull in the action to make another supply run, this time to get medical kits to the Macross Quarter. The Hangar has both a great advantage and significant disadvantage - while there are plenty of ships and fighters to take cover behind, almost everything is made of metal. A metal robot surrounded by metal machinery could hardly choose a better place to sneak around.

Thankfully, so far, the robots have seemed less interested in sneaking around than in just blowing things in as noisy and noticeable a manner as possible. Howard slips behind fighter to fighter, pausing behind a small white one to catch his breath and tie his shoes again. With all the running around he's done in the last ten hours, it's a miracle the threadbare sneakers haven't fallen apart entirely yet. And a relative miracle that he hasn't collapsed from exhaustion.

After peeking out and checking the surroundings again, he gets down to his knees behind the module and wraps his arms around himself, forehead to the ground, trying to pant as quietly as humanly possible. Fear that violent death is around the corner isn't new to him, and if he's honest, he by far prefers it to the fear that a slow death is somewhere in the near-future. At least the fear of immediate danger gives you the adrenalin boost to dart around for nearly ten straight hours.

He tries to get up and leans against the back of the module, feeling jelly-legged. Maybe just two more minutes to recuperate. Then to the Warehouse to check on Diana and collect more weapons for another supply run.

He notices something on the module glint out of the corner of his eye. Straightening up a bit and sneaking along the side of the module, he sees it's not entirely metal. Something organic, at least partially.

Well, his backpack is empty now. No one should blame him any if he uses his swiss army knife to take it off and figure out what it is. He may even return it, if it isn't something useful. There probably isn't enough time to really examine what it is here.

He starts to remove it from the module.

Re: [Closed to John Crichton]

[youmissed]

Okay, so John Crichton gets the whole material things are just things, but he'll be damned if he doesn't check to make sure his module is okay.

It's probably his only ticket back. And in the less rational part of his brain, he associates it with Home; Dad; DK; Earth and he just needs to see it for himself. See if it's a scrap pile or what. He doesn't even know what he'll do if it's suddenly turned into an IASA pancake.

Aeryn hasn't answered her omnicomm. John figures she's doing her Peacekeeper thing and holing up somewhere defensible, maybe making for the Prowler or gunning down some droids while she's at it. Droids. He never thought he'd think that and think Terminator again. The droids he'd gotten used to were small, drop-kick size or trip-over-and-almost-break-your-ankle size depending on your mileage, and he'd almost gotten himself shot when he gaped at the human sized droids coming at them. His sense of self preservation had kicked in and here he is now: doing something really stupid and risking his life for what every alien he's met considers a hunk of junk.

There's already more of the droids in the hanger. Some of them are occupied taking pot shots at one of the bigger ships and if they're going systematically, then his might, just might, not have been touched. Maybe Farscape One is safe.

John does that crouched run-jog to keep himself in the shadows and a smaller target, just like Aeryn showed him, Winona out.

He breathes a sight of relief when he sees his module is safe.

Then it dawns on him that somebody is actually trying to break into it. Are you serious? John's stunned at his crappy luck. All the ships in the hanger and his was the one that was getting boosted.

John makes sure he has a clear shot to his module before he ducks over and materializes next to the kid trying to pull off one of the Moya components tacked onto Farscape One. His thief now got to have a nice, personal introduction to Winona, the pulse pistol not wavering like it might've a cycle ago. She's gorgeous, isn't she? She's also like the Hulk - you don't want to see her when she's angry.

"Kid, you got some serious issues with priorities," John hisses, keeping his head down. "That's my ride."

Re: [Closed to John Crichton]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard whips around just in time to see a pulse pistol maybe an inch from his face. At first he thinks it's a robot, and either way, his first response to anything dangerous being pointed in his face is to cower as far back as he can get. He presses himself to the side of the module, shaking and eyes wide and glassy.

To his credit, he doesn't scream - that might attract enemies. He does have fear written all over his features, though.

"I didn't take anything I promise I didn't take anything I was just curious!" he whispers. He's processed by now what John is saying, and well, if there's one thing he'd rather run into less than robots, it's the owner of the vehicle he is currently vandalizing and looting.

And yet, in some far-off corner of his mind, it registers that he finds it very, very strange to be called 'kid' still.

He's about to continue pleading when he pauses. There's something else in the Hangar with them. There's a sound, a whirring noise like wheels on a gurney, and the clacking of some sort of break.

"Let me go so we can run," he hisses.

Re: [Closed to John Crichton]

[youmissed]

"Yeah, yeah, heard that one before, same song and dance." John makes a motion with Winona like he wants Sticky Fingers here to get on with it. To his credit, John at least doesn't go pointing his gun at his head. He may be some ass-backward Earthman to the others on Moya but c'mon, that's common sense. "Don't tell me, you bumped into my module and some pieces just fell off."

He doesn't have any intention of shooting the kid, despite Winona getting friendly. The thing is, John isn't at that point and he doesn't plan to be, no matter how tactically sound it might be to some Peacekeeper mall-cop wannabe. After a moment of letting Sticky Fingers get a nice, long look at Winona's curves and angles, he relaxes his finger back from the trigger. Hell, he didn't plan on going in guns blazing, thief or not. For one it wasn't like he was packing unlimited Chakan oil for Winona here and two, he's still a kid. And they have bigger problems, as the thief points out. John risks looking away long enough to peer over his module.

One of the droids patrols their way on a set of three legs, almost like a bug's, clicking as its flat plate of a head peers left and right. Scanning? It packs a HAL light, shining red and it just looks like it means business.

He realizes the reason it's so bright is that the eye-stalk is looking right at him. Oh. Well, damn.

He squeezes off a shot from Winona as he decides he's not going to use his module for cover and that maybe the kid has it right this time with the whole booking it in the opposite direction thing. John dives behind one of the other ships, the droid following and taking potshots at the two humans. He ends up squeezed between what looks like some kind of starfighter and...

It's blue. It's impossible. And John Crichton half-expects Tom Baker to come swinging out of it with his scarf.

He banks on the TARDIS being fake. Wood isn't exactly much good against droids and he already can picture that thing going up in flames if it's so much as tickled. So that's not much cover there.

John fires again at the droid as he glances around, half-afraid he'll find Sticky Fingers facedown on the floor. Sure, he doesn't like him boosting his module, but that doesn't mean he wants him dead, either.

Re: [Closed to John Crichton]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard's gotten quite good at sneaking around in shadows, so he might not be immediately easy for Crichton to find. The dizziness from the concussion he got in the Med Bay barely slows him up as he darts, shadow to shadow, vehicle to vehicle. He already has an idea.

Granted, not an amazing idea, and not anything even remotely approaching a plan, but an idea nonetheless.

Hunched under the wing of something that looks like a distant cousin of a Tie-Fighter, Howard roots through his medical kit as quietly as he can. He sends a little mental thanks to Crichton for drawing the fire, then, once he has Crichton's eye, makes a 'cut!' motion with his hand and hopes Crichton can get the gist.

The droid pauses for a moment, trying to locate one of its targets again. With both hidden from it, it rotates the eye-stalk back and forth on its angular little head, like a Lazy Susan of death and lasers.

Possibly that is going to be the title of Howard's first book.

Howard's going to take a wild guess and bet this thing tracks by motion. It wouldn't be an effective tool for destroying the ship if it went by thermal output, since some of the crew is cold-blooded.

He picks the most expendable of the items from his med kit - odds of a spare bottle of antihistamines being vitally important during a robot war are fairly low - and rolls it across the floor, away from him and Crichton.

The droid, reacting quickly but not especially accurately, fires a few shots at the bottle before returning its attention to trying to find them. It's a few seconds of distraction for them to try and make a break for it, but there's also an opportunity for the discovery that the tacky blue crate someone ditched in the hangar doesn't, in fact, burn.

It has a forcefield.

"In there!" Howard turns on a dime and dives for the door of the TARDIS instead, not even bothering to consider the possibility that it might be locked, that the forcefield might block people as well as lasers, or that the droid might nail him before he gets the door open.

This would be a really awesome time for Territorial McWavesaGun to fire at the dumb droid.

Re: [Closed to John Crichton]

[youmissed]

"Not -- " It's too late, 'cause Sticky Fingers is making a break for what John is convinced is the worst possible place to take cover in. Nah, why don't you hide in the one place that's basically tinder?

He takes another shot at the droid, Winona blazing, before he runs after his thief to try to save him from doing something really stupid. Aeryn might've considered him not worth running after, what with the whole...thieving thing, but John didn't care if he was Sebacean or even a real human -- he still saw him as a kid. A kid who's gonna get his head blown off at the rate he's going. Apparently John's too busy shooting at the droid to see that the other guy makes the right call with the TARDIS too. John tries to grab at Sticky Finger's arm as he - as he...

He runs right through the doors and there's a whole new room inside.

John gapes as he lowers his hand. There's no physical way this could be real except he's standing there next to an old school hat stand and it's really...orange.

Common sense kicks in, John glancing to make sure the kid is in the room.

"Help me with the doors!" John struggles to close them. Okay, he's not entirely sold on this really being the inside of the TARDIS but maybe it's a - a teleport or whatever and maybe they want those doors closed. His feet scrabble as he tries to pull them closed, the droid clicking closer.

OPEN

[bequiet_hescreamed]

Hello. What's this? She is a strange blue box who is being very enticing right now, of course, but this is a diminutive purple-haired alien that likes spaceships.

Clef doesn't immediately realize that he has just met a spaceship, however. He thinks he has inadvertently met some very good drugs, because he walks into the console room and then walks out and around the blue box and back into the console room and then into another room and several more rooms and oh there's the console room again wow I think I need to lie down oh look a bedroom!

"You're bigger on the inside!" he finally exclaims to, one assumes, the TARDIS.

[splendid_roman]

Ian had seen enough robots to know that not having weapons was a bad thing. But since he was near the TARDIS and it was open, he ducked inside. And then got very lost. It was different to how he remembered.

"It is," he said, smiling at the boy. "Don't worry, you get used to it."

[bequiet_hescreamed]

Clef didn't have any weapons, unless you counted the very large, heavy-looking staff he was carrying. Which he did, judging by the way he was holding it. However, it didn't pay to be small, alone, and without any cover even when one had a weapon in hand. An immense area with only one known entrance seemed relatively safe.

"Strange place to put a subspace dimensional pocket," he remarked. "Don't you think?"

[splendid_roman]

"It's camouflaged. Who would expect a police box to be bigger on the inside?" he said lightly. "There ought to be something we can use against the robots in here."

[bequiet_hescreamed]

"Good point," said Clef, who had no idea what a police box was in the first place. In fact, his native language didn't even have a word for "police".

He took a look around, considering all of the sundry objects in their current surroundings. They seemed to be in a bedroom, at the moment.

"I suppose that depends on what you want to do to the robots."

[splendid_roman]

"Stop them from killing anyone, ideally." Although not with anything they would find in here. "I don't think it's laid out the way I remember." It didn't even look like he remembered it. But the Doctor had said something about changing the wallpaper. "It's a big enough place, we just have to keep looking."

The next room turned out to be a small kitchen. Ian went straight to the selection of knives, although he was limited in what he could carry. He was sure they would do some damage to the electronics.

Re: OPEN

[monster-san.livejournal.com]

Fuu did not have a clue what was going on. One moment she was trying to complete the maze she was in, the next she was in the Hangar. It took her about ten seconds to realize that her magic had been stifled, her glove jewel was frozen, and worst of all she could barely hear Windam's voice.

The only sensible option was to try and hide from the killer robots. The first thing that Fuu spotted was a larger, old-fashioned telephone booth. It would make very poor cover, but she needed a few seconds to get out of site and access her Omnicomm to see what was going on--

--only things were quite different when she ducked into the door. "This isn't a telephone booth at all!"

[bequiet_hescreamed]

"It isn't?" said a familiar voice, just before a shock of light purple hair and a pair of huge blue eyes popped up from behind the console. "So, a 'te-le-fon booth' is not something that normally contains a subspace dimensional pocket?"

[monster-san.livejournal.com]

"Oh, Clef-san!" Fuu whirled around quickly, feeling an enormous sense of relief at seeing him safe and intact. If whatever had restricted her magic had affect him, he would be just as unable to fight as she was. "No, this is the first time I've seen one like this. A telephone is an Earth device that lets you talk to someone very far away, you see."

She edged towards one of the doors and pushed it open a little. "Usually, they're very small, but this one seems to be more than spacious."

icon = what is not happening right now

[bequiet_hescreamed]

"There's an entire public bath in here," Clef replied, nodding. "I've seen it."

He came around the other side of the console to join her in peering through the door. It didn't lead to the baths, but that was alright. Now that they had this whole telephone business sorted out, there were more important matters at hand.

"I was considering going back out there, nonetheless."

[becoming-more.livejournal.com]

On second thought, checking on her Prowler might not have been the best move. But it's important to keep a secure means of escape, any decent training would at the very least emphasize that, and Crichton's module isn't her idea of a secure... anything.

Aeryn swears under her breath, ducking fire from something on wheels that she's honestly surprised can even stand up on its own, and returning that fire in short order. She might have even considered using her secure means of escape by now, if Crichton was with her. As tempted as she is to get the frell out, she doesn't feel right leaving him behind.

It's a strange stroke of luck that brings her to the TARDIS. She doesn't think much of it when she first sees it: an old, narrow box that could be barely adequate cover if anything. But when what can only be described as a mechanized man catches her in her sights and lurches toward her, Aeryn decides it's better than no cover at all. She dives into the TARDIS, landing with a grunt on the floor grating and kicking the doors shut behind her.

Going to timey-wimey this post-Howard

[youmissed]

This place is a damn maze.

John feels like he should've known this. It wasn't as if he hadn't grown up knowing the words "it's bigger on the inside" by heart. But being in the boot-leg version of it is different and he'll have to say that that amount of running down corridors just to get to where you wanted to go is getting old already. He's almost surprised to come running up the stairs and almost stumble, literally, back into the console room.

"Aeryn!" John breaks out into a relieved grin as he makes for her. Winona's getting low on Chakan oil but if anything comes through the doors after her, he thinks he can still provide cover. John hurries over to the Sebacean and starts to hold his hand out to help her up, going on auto-pilot before he remembers that she's the original intergalactic GI Jane here: the last person she probably needs help from is him.

"Take it you swung by to check the Prowler?" He doesn't ask about the module. Aeryn's made it clear several times just how little she thinks of it.

[becoming-more.livejournal.com]

Aeryn ignores his hand pointedly, getting to her feet on her own and brushing herself off. She's relieved to see him-- something she can't even acknowledge herself, let alone show to Crichton.

"I did. It's held up surprisingly well, considering how much fire it's taken. Where the frell are we now?"

Like many before her, she can't help but realize that the TARDIS is much bigger on the inside. Much bigger than it should by any right be. This doesn't help to put her at ease.

[youmissed]

John holds up his hand once it's clear Aeryn isn't going to take his offer to help. He drops it as she stands up, looking about as frazzled as she can get (as in not very. Getting shot at for her is par for the course).

"No kidding. " John reaches up to rub where he get beaned in the head by that Sarlaac thing that attacked him earlier. Sarlaac slash library slash giant what the hell. There's still a nice splotch of ink on his face from the receipt spit. "Call me crazy, but we might be on the TARDIS. Like the real thing."

He catches that look on Aeryn's face. Thankfully it's not that one she gives him when she thinks he's being less than stable and more the old one, where he'd run his mouth off on about stuff that he kept forgetting she didn't know about like anything at all Earth related. It beats the other look. John pops Winona's Chakan oil cartridge as he catches his breath. Weirdly enough, he feels way more in control and focused than before. Maybe it's the adrenaline. All he knows is he's beyond wired on survival mode and if Aeryn told him to storm the droids right this very second with her, he wouldn't even blink an eye.

"It's like a ship. Bigger on the inside? Plenty of ambush locations and vantage points," John says as he tests the oil cartridge, figuring he better lay it out in terms Aeryn understands.

[becoming-more.livejournal.com]

"TAH-DIDS." Aeryn tries it on her tongue, then shakes her head, not even wanting to know right now. There are bigger problems than the fact they're standing in an impossible place that Crichton seems to understand intimately. Why does that not surprise her?

Before she can say much else, the doors behind her shudder ominously. "Perhaps you should give me a tour, then," she says, drawing her own gun and moving to crouch down in a more strategic position, aiming carefully and eyes trained on what she hopes is the only entrance.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard's back in the TARDIS. Like hell he would find a place that has just about everything only to abandon it, and he can't risk being outside at the moment when he's too exhausted to run. And injured. The dizziness from his head injury has worn off, but he needs to stop for a moment to tape the bandage on his side again.

It's as he's paused that he notices there's someone else approaching the room. He shuffles behind a box of exercise balls to take notice of whom it is. Some woman, maybe young-middle-aged, not somone he knows. And clearly on the move from other robots.

Normally Howard would stay hidden, but he knows by now that the robots can get in through the doors. "How many are there out there?"

[becoming-more.livejournal.com]

She's lost John. She's lost John, and there are frelling machines outside trying to kill them both, and these corridors never seem to end. Aeryn skids to a stop at the sudden voice, swinging her pulse pistol toward the sound out of grim habit. She's definitely not panicking.

It's just a boy, but to a Peacekeeper there is no 'just', even when it comes to children.

"Come out slowly with your hands up," she commands, eyes darting from the box to the rest of the room and back, scanning for other signs of movement.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Jeez, what is it with you people and sticking guns in my face?" Howard ekes his way out of the corner, hands up. "See? Not armed."

But trembling ever so slightly, despite trying to sound casual. He's not sure he'll ever get quite used to guns in his face.

[becoming-more.livejournal.com]

Aeryn can tell he's nervous despite the brave face. Still, it doesn't mean he isn't dangerous. It's only when she spots the plantsuit that she lowers her weapon slowly.

"You're part of the crew?" she asks, and then, before Howard has a chance to answer, "Is this your..." Aeryn gestures helplessly for a moment.

"...Box?"