trans_9 | Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

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Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

After the 'bitching about Stacy' session finally reached a head, Sakura and Howard decided to actually do something about all the questions they had about their spacefaring fleshy home. Granted, they couldn't really find anything out about the Ohm on their own, and the Daligig were Right Out, so that left exploring the ship itself.

Time for them to find out what it is that they're putting in their bodies.

They drew on a few people they trust, or at least have figured out well enough to not distrust (more than they usually do), and now they're gathered at the mess hall at some awkward hour when no one is there to eat. They've brought Kanoe Zouichi (specialties: stuff going boom and wrangling Howard into being cooperative) and Ian Chesterton (specialties: hot cocoa, also science). And Ian's brought Barbara Wright (specialties: ??? and pissing Howard off).

Howard's tucking away at a tray of slop, figuring that if they're going to find anything that puts them off eating food forever, he might as well enjoy sweet, delicious ignorance now.

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Sakura laughed, if she took Barbara's suggestion seriously. One never knew what the ship could be hiding. "Yes, just in case."

She stepped closer, holding her hands out for Barbara's end of the rope. "If you'd like, I can teach you some of the knots I know. They probably aren't the same as Howard's, but they're effective, and from my own world." She deliberately tied a knot slowly enough to be followed, if it probably wasn't immediately clear how and why she wove the knot as she did.

Short work on herself had the two of them attached with a five foot or so of slack between them. Sakura offered the flashlight to Barbara. "Can I make you responsible for lighting our way?"

She watched Sakura tie the knot and went over it a few times in her head while she finished with the rest of the rope. "What is it that you did in your home world?"

At the mention of being their light, Barbara held up her own torch. She'd had it turned off to conserve the batteries. They had no idea how long these tunnels went on for, and while she trusted Howard to be organised enough to have full energy put in them before leaving, it wouldn't do them any good to have both torches run out of power. But she turned it on now and lit the way up the slope, ignoring the gentle crunches from underfoot from the dried sludge.

She nodded to Barbara, tucking her own flashlight into her medic pouch. Once they were underway, she answered her question in a conversational tone.

"I'm a kunoichi. Most people recognize the word ninja, but it's the same idea. A trained fighter from a young age, with an emphasis on subtlety." However much that really applied. "I specialize in medical jutsu, which is more equivalent to an Earth doctor than most anything else. What about you?"

She kept listening to the sounds in the distance, taking stock of their upward slope. "Doesn't look like anything's come down this way recently."

"I do believe you're right," Barbara replied before answering the initial question. She had to lean forward quite a way to keep her balance, but she was mostly fine.

"I was a school teacher," which partially explained Howard's disdain toward her though she was slowly noticing that she wasn't really all that special where Howard's people skills were concerned. "History was my specialty. Not quite as exciting as a medical ninja," she smiled. "What made you choose to do that?"

Choice was an interesting matter, when it came to Sakura's world. She found herself in a toss-up between the truth, and misleading version of the truth.

"I wanted to be useful. Medical ninjutsu requires precise control of chakra, and an ability to take in lots of information at once and to react to it as you learn. You need to be adaptive, need to be able to learn and remember different systems in the human body, and body of any other animal you're working with. It fit what little I was good at back when I was look, at about twelve."

She kept easy pace, glancing up and over her shoulder at various points in time. "What history did you focus on? All history?"

"Sounds intense," she commented, nearly slipping on one particular chunk of solidified food. Barbara shuddered, but kept her footing thanks to the treading Howard taped to her hands. "I liked to specialise in ancient civilisations, namely the Aztecs, Incas and Pagans. To study all of history would take a innumerable lifetimes. Unfortunately, government policy dictates what areas I teach, and they don't often fall in line with the areas I personally favour, but all of history is interesting." She smiles back at Sakura, still trudging up the slope.

"So you've been doing medical ninjitsu since you were 12?"

All new names, if Sakura had a niggling sensations... "Those are cultures on the American continents, aren't they?"

She'd picked up strange facts while trying to locate Hispania, what could she say?

"I have. Makes it... maybe closer to five years now. I was traiing under the world's best medical nin, Tsunade."

"Mostly," Barbara replied conversationally. "Though traces of Paganism can be found throughout the globe, and can be found, in forms, within other religions and cultures. It helps that the Pagans weren't wiped out entirely like the Incas and the Aztecs. Although, to be fair, some Incas survived as slaves but the race was diluted with others and we lost it, unfortunately."

The combination of the slop and talking was taking Barbara's breath away, and she puffed as she spoke. "So you're only seventeen?" that was a bit of a shock, not that Barbara could understand why. Some of the Thaals didn't look much older than 16 and 19, yet they managed to survive and thrive in petrified forests.

By now Barbara and Sakura should be exiting the slimy tunnel and approaching a large chamber with metal, boxy walls. A tube from above, about three feet in diameter, leads to a vat, although the vat is currently empty and unlike the rest of the passage, completely spotless. The metal room is also fairly clean, although there are scuffs on the floor.

A conveyor belt runs through the center, onto which tiny petri dishes are placed by a tentacle and then whisked away down another tunnel. Do they want to follow where those dishes are going, or where they're coming from?

Sakura scanned the room, surprised at the size of the tube in the ceiling. She recognized the petri dishes, if not their purpose as the tentacles arranged them and sent them on down the conveyor. It reminded her of the clone factories on Galilee, an uncomfortable thought, and the only time she'd seen line-industry in action to any appreciable extent.

"Which way do we want to go first?"

"I say we follow the dishes. They look to clean to have come anywhere that wasn't a storeroom." The tentacle was mildly unnerving, but it didn't stop Barbara from wanting to leave the room as quickly as possible.

Sakura nodded, glancing toward the direction the dishes arrived in. "Let's see for ourselves." She kept an awareness of the tentacle's antics as she moved along with Barbara.

They followed the conveyer belt into a new tunnel, the tentacle continued its work as though nothing was different. Barbara picked up one of the dishes. There was a small amount of sticky residue clinging to her fingers from the outside of the dish.

"Do you think this is from the tentacle?" she asked Sakura.

The new tunnel is wider and very clean. If they go much further through there's a little spurt of air from the edges of the tunnel, a little detox. Clearly Stacy is working with very delicate substances down at the end of the conveyor belt. Down at the end, the little dishes are blooming with colorful algae or bacteria or something of that nature, a variety of different shades and tones and smells.

"The residue? I don't think so. At least not in the sense of it being solely produced by a tentacle." Sakura picked up one of the dishes on her own, examining it as well. "These are getting moved along fairly quickly. What's this ship trying to grow?"

Anchored to Barbara, she peered down the new tunnel. Amazing how dust just appeared to be no issue at all. Not dust, not grime, not anything.

"They reach some sort of pinnacle at the end. What happens afterward?" If only she had a ready identification book on hand, and a microscope... paired with her chakra, it would have made this even more fascinating to examine.

"Let's find out," Barbara suggested and carefully started down the tunnel. Now that the tunnel was clean, Barbara was able to brace herself with a hand against the wall. Although, with slipping less of an issue, it didn't matter so much.

"Stacey is certainly mysterious," she commented. "All these tunnels and conveyer belts..."

The air in this tunnel is even more humid and cloying than the others. It must be a good five degrees warmer.

At the end of the line, the petri dishes are entirely overloaded with growth. Tentacles descend from the ceiling with little droppers, only instead of depositing residue, they collect it and disappear back into the ceiling. A computer console at the end displays, at the moment, an image of Ian Chesterton with alien writing. As each dropper collects the bacteria, a button on the screen lights up, until all the buttons on the screen are filled.

Sakura felt sweat dripping down the back of her neck, both touched and untouched by the plantsuit she wore. She disliked the sensation, lips thinning into a line as she examined this new tunnel.

"It's often at odds with itself. Organic designs and fleshy walls, then pristine areas like this."

She moved toward the computer console at whatever pace the both of them together could achieve. "Barbara, come look at this."

Barbara had been watching the tenticles work when Sakura called her over. She grinned at the image on the screen.

"Ian!" for a moment, she thought that it was a kind of communications channel, and for some reason, they could contact the other group. But either Ian had fallen asleep or it wasn't a communications device, which was far more likely given the strange symbols on the screen.

"What do you think it is?" Barbara asked, feeling somewhat disappointed that it wasn't actually Ian. "Do you think it might have something to do with those dishes?" She watched the petri dishes being collected by the tentacles.

She examined the screen, watching symbols light up in correspondence to... what? Sakura looked to the petri dishes, considering. "Probably," she said at last. "The ship is supposed to tailor our diets to our specific needs. We may be seeing part of that process."

She reached for a petri dish before the dropper could quite get to it. "We're seeing Ian's specific needs, as catalogued by the ship. But when? Does it keep an updated system?" And how was it doing it?

At the interruption between the dish and dropped, a tentacle descends from the ceiling and wraps around Sakura's wrist. If it were possible for a tentacle to emote, it would be 'displeased'. Another reaches down and fondes Barbara's face.

A frown crinkled Barbara's brow in thought. "The ship has access to all kinds of things...if Stacey had samples of Ian's waste, she'd be able to pinpoint what he needed more of and less of in his diet." There was a thought she'd rather not have. With a small amount of luck, the thought was interrupted by some abnormal behaviour from the tentacles.

Barbara batted at the one trying to take hold of her face and stepped away before realising that Sakura had slight troubles of her own. She ducked around the wriggling limb to get at the one which had wrapped around Sakura's wrist. "Are you alright?" she asked as she struggled with the tight grip.

"It'd explain the use of our waste product. Since we've never seen --" Sakura jerked back from the tentacle, which didn't let go. Emotes were lost on her even on textual screens, so after a brief, "Let go," she raised her other hand and focused her chakra.

If Sta'c was going to play touchy feeling, Sakura was going to cut her way out. One swift, short movement of her hand, and she'd sliced into (and perhaps even through) the tentacle above where it wrapped around her wrist.

"I'm fine --"

Displeased at being attacked, the tentacles go and tell Mommy - and by that, I mean that the ship itself rebels against Barbara and Sakura. A hole appears in the fleshy floor under their feet, sending them plummeting downwards...

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Foodplot: Parte Uno [Closed]

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