trans_9 | [open] show and tell: a ghostly presentation of the first podpopped crew's final confrontation

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[open] show and tell: a ghostly presentation of the first podpopped crew's final confrontation

The two women had waited until a good number of people had gathered in the sensorium next to where the Tapestry was kept. Sakura glanced toward Howard, wanting a visual reassurance that he was there with a recording device. He was someone she could count on for the paranoid sensibilities that she sometimes put aside in favor of other practicalities. With everyone gathered, they turned toward each other, and the sensorium came alive.

Loud pops suddenly rang out through the air. Noises that were clearly gunshots. A panel set into the flesh of a wall nearby exploded and yet at the same time...it didn't.

Far off, there were yells and screams, orders being shouted, the sound of things exploding.

Over it all, there was a voice that rang through the hallway, firm and commanding, and yet frayed around the edges, desperate. It was a woman's voice. Occasionally it dipped too low for certain words or names to be heard.

"Give mwurmur covering fire! Fall back! Fall back! We're almost to the escape vessel!"

Several shadows shapes moved through the hall, shapes that looked vaguely humanoid, but then, just like the noises and the yelling voices, they disappeared without a trace.

Tthe world suddenly shifted again, like they were passing through panes of colored glass. Shapes shifted around them, half in tune with reality, half out. Words were blurred, especially names, as if something had tried to erase those names from existence itself so they'd be lost to time.

"Where's Zuko? Where is he?"

The same woman that had called out orders earlier said, "He's in the vents. He'll catch up. He might've even beaten us there."

At first they could only catch fleeting glimpses of sharp green eyes, and of a face with harsh features when they looked at her. Though they couldn't see it in the woman's features, they likely got the sense that she was lying, as if the story being woven around them had more truths to it than just the ones that could be seen and heard.

There was a voice that could be felt rather than heard that chimed in next: Reckon this my time to shine then. You lot go on ahead. I'll buy you some time.

Then there was a sound like a record scratching and suddenly the scene jumped ahead, and they saw the women firing at something down the hallway, others of various species around her firing weapons and shooting weapons at a blurry, unknown enemy.

A machine man that looked like his design specs had been based on a Cheetah lunged at one of the blurry shapes, fill with fury over a fallen friend nearby, another robot with its chest ripped open and its insides still sparking.

Electricity arced, there was a scream, and a girl that looked like she was made of silver dissolved into a liquid, metallic puddle on the floor.

A man threw a razor-sharp boomerang that sliced the heads off of the invading, blurry creatures, whatever they were, and yelled into a comm device, "Harper! Come in! What's our status on the escape pods, we're getting murdered out here!"

"Uuuuuh, not so good, boss!" came a high and panicked nasally voice over the comms, in a Bostonian accent. It could barely be heard over the crackle of gunfire and pulse blasts in the background "We're taking heavy fire down here and they have the Hub barricaded. Wash is hurt real bad, and something's blocking Will's ability to talk to machines. I know I'm a techie god-made-flesh and all but even I need water to make into wine--I need more time!"

"We don't have time, Harper, we're losing people up here!"

"I'm workin' I'm workin', but I have to lay it to ya' straight, Mercer," the man said, his voice unsteady and shaking, "I don't think we're gonna make it. That's not just the fatalist in me talking either. Our only chance is if you can get a team down through the access vents, we need someone to cover our a--EDEN! NOOOO! Get away from her!"

The explosions on the comm grew louder and were accompanied by screams. Then the comm went silent and only relayed static.

"Harper! Harper, can you read? Harper! Evac team, can anyone on the evac team read?" The man cursed and tossed another boomerang that exploded once it hit one of the machines that was walking through the hallway among the opposing troops. "Cybs, we've lost contact with the Evac team! The evac team's down! I repeat: the evac team's down!"

The record skipped again. There was a barricade up, a forcefield, but cracks were appearing all along it, glowing. It wouldn't last long.

There was an explosion behind it and a young man shot through the barricade with such speed that he slammed into a wall, now forced to stay solid. His hair was white, and he was wearing a strange black jumpsuit. He was hurt badly, glowing green blood oozing from multiple wounds.

"Daniel!" An older man with white hair was quickly at his side. He was injured too, his arm in a makeshift sling.

"Is he still breathing?!" asked the woman named Cybil, the same green-eyed woman from the earlier visions that had been leading this beleaguered group. She looked like she could barely walk now, and limped over to the older man and the fallen teenage boy.

Behind her lay the fallen. Most of them were still alive. Some were dead, but most were still alive. Barely. It was hard to tell yet if that was a good thing. A few were weeping, from the pain of their wounds, or because they were quietly grieving over their lost friends and loved ones. Some were weeping over losing something greater than any one of them.

"He's alive. He's still in his ghost form--he should heal faster that way," said the old man, who was patiently, if awkwardly, tending to the boy.

"You need to leave, Vlad."

The man named Vlad looked up, his gaze hard. "And what do you mean by that?"

"We're done," said Cybil. "We're finished. And don't even pretend for a second that we're not. You're a pragmatist."

"Comes with the territory of being a villain, I suppose," mused Vlad. "So does losing."

"Don't pretend for a second you're a villain, either. None of us are what we used to be before, not after everything we've been through."

"I am, as you said, a pragmatist, which means that I plan to cut and run anyway, to save my own skin," said Vlad. "So why tell me to?"

"We have no idea what they're going to do to us. They might kill us. They might brainwash us. Someone has to stay on the outside."

"If you think I'm going to manage to single-handedly rescue you all, or that I'll even try, you're more deluded than I thought."

"Not a chance," said Cybil. "I'm not an idiot. You're still you."

"Then what do you have in mind?"

"You can phase. You can hide. Because of that stunt you pulled where you tried to take over the ship, before you started playing by the rules, I know that you know where all Stacy's sensor blindspots are. You know how to mess with the AIs. You understand how the tech works." Cybil went on, "Do you remember what they told us about the Tapestry? Down on that planet? That we were the wrong group, the wrong ones. That someone was coming after. Someone from the same ship."

"That others would wake up after us."

"Exactly. And if they do wake up, maybe they'll have more luck than us. You can hide and help them as best as you can, to give them that chance."

"I won't do anything directly. I'm not risking my neck for anyone."

"You won't have to. Free the AIs--Cortana and Rommie can do what they can. Find ways to sneak them some answers."

"I could feed them clues through one of the AIs. Maybe question mark-question mark. Having an AI that's just responsible for intellectual exercises is near useless--I could make him into something else."

"Exactly. Maybe if they are the right ones that Tapestry thing can help them out, I don't know. All I know is they deserve at least a fighting chance. It's less than we had. Someone's got to see this through to the end."

"I don't think I'll get that far, Cybil."

"You can make sure anyone that comes after us at least gets a leg up."

"I can possibly help any new wakers at the start, Cybil, but I won't be able to keep doing it for long, especially once they get back in contact with them."

"Then the rest will be up to them. We just have to hope..."

"What about Stacy? It's all pointless if Stacy turns on them, too."

"That wasn't her fault. They made her do it just like they've been yanking us around since they came in contact with us. She didn't want to. She almost fought it off for us. Maybe if they're more subtle than we were about freeing her from their control, she'll be able to help them. She wanted to help us."

"I'll need a diversion to get away, when the shield's down. I'll barely be able to transform as is."

"We can give you that. We can give them that. The ones that come after us."

Vlad gently patted the teenage boy--Daniel's--hand and stood up. "Don't let them kill the boy, Cybil. Do you understand me? Whatever happens..."

"I can't make any promises. You know that."

"I promised his mother, before she..."

"I know, Vlad."

Vlad rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "Butter biscuits! I think I preferred the villainy to all this caring-about-my-enemy-like-he's-my-son selfless heroic teamwork nonsense. At least back then, when I inevitably lost, it was well-deserved and nothing but my own pride was hanging in the balance."

Two rings of light flashed over Vlad's body, changing him to a rather nasty-looking creature with green skin, red eyes, black hair, and a strange white suit.

Cybil stood up to face all the others.

"Everyone, listen up!" she called out in the same commanding voice she'd been using earlier. "We only have one chance at all to make sure that we didn't fight for nothing today. We have to make sure at least one of us gets away to give anyone else that wakes up after us an edge against them. Vlad's volunteered to do that. We have to make sure they never get a chance to stop him from slipping away."

There was only silence and hopelessness in response.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't get us through this like I promised. This is my fault. We pushed too hard and too fast, and that was on my orders. Open rebellion wasn't the way. I screwed up and I let you all down." She went on, "But I need to ask you to pick yourselves up one last time. I need you to follow one last order, and it's a very, very simple one."

All eyes were on her.

"Fight to the last."

There was no rallying cry. There were no cheers. There were only hopeless faces staring back at her.

But along with those despondent gazes, there were people wiping the tears from their faces, dragging themselves off the ground to shaky stances, helping the injured off to the side out of the way. There were hands balling into fists and tightening around the hilts of weapons.

The barricade started to fall apart, and then all hell broke loose. They fought, as ordered, and they were beaten, as expected. Amidst pulse fire and bullets and energy blasts, Vlad Masters phased and disappeared through the floor, completely unnoticed, as planned.

After the fighting died down, after the last body had fallen to the floor, stunned, a humanoid being stepped through the bodies, its segmented body probably somewhat familiar to anyone that had met the Daligig or seen footage of them. Its face was in shadow.

A young man's quiet laughter filled the emptiness of the room, and the Daligig stepped through the bodies to where Daniel Fenton lay on the floor, propped against the wall, where Vlad and Cybil had left him.

"You've all lost," hissed the Daligig. "All this death, all these lives wasted, for nothing. So little was expected of you, and you threw away the relative safety that was provided to you for nothing, for the sheer delusion of freedom. Why are you laughing?"

"You're the one that ordered the rebellion be put down, right? You're the one that did this to us? Do you even care?"

"Your actions could have destroyed the entire war effort. I have no regrets for choosing to stop you."

"That's what I thought. And that's why you're going to lose this war." The teenager took in a shaky breath to steady his nerves. "Anyway, I just wanted your attention. I needed to get you closer."

His glowing green eyes were bright with rage, and tears were streaming down his face, as he said, "This is for Sam."

Then he screamed a horrible ghostly scream that tore the faceless one's carapace apart like wet tissue paper and shredded the bodies of the soldiers around him.

One of the other soldiers in the room managed to shoot him with a stunner and then he was out like the others, rings of light passing up and down his body, leaving him back in his normal human form.

The fight was over.

And so was the vision. The grisly scene faded, the bodies on the floor disappearing one by one...

... leaving everyone standing in the sensorium's blank interface as the mental replay shut down.

[ ooc: Feel free to make your own threads and discuss as your characters are want to do! You are absolutely not required to respond to either Barbara or Sakura's question threads. That is optional! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He shakes his head. "I'm not relaxed."

He's not quite sure how to describe it. The first time he ever witnessed carnage was when the coyotes got sicced on the daycare in Perdido, when he was 13. And then the power plant, the fire, the insects, the mobs. It's a long list, and he can't remember exactly when it was no longer something to freak out over or just a fact of life. He's not relaxed, no, he's as alert as ever, but he also isn't the panicky mess he would have been about it over a year ago. Instead of being twitchy, his affect's a little flat.

And he can tell she isn't relaxed either. There's a way people hold themselves when they'd rather be somewhere else. When they know with all their mind that ignorance is bad but still feel that they want to erase that piece of knowledge from their mind.

"No, not my first time. Not even close." He licks the rim of his empty coffee cup. "You okay?"

"I'll be alright," she answered quickly but gently. The last thing she wanted was Howard telling Ian how distressed she might be, and then having him watching her like a hawk. "With any luck, we'll learn something valuable from all of this and use it in this dreadful war."

Howard shrugs. So much for trying to be nice and concerned for her well-being. The sarcastic little crinkle returns to the corner of his mouth.

"With any luck it'll push us into action. We've been sitting around getting bossed around by these crazies long enough. I mean, I been expecting this a while now. In a way, actually seeing it's kind of like...closure. Really sucky, awful closure."

In her mind, Barbara went over the story again, where the Daligig were on board with them and together everyone was against the Ohm.

"Do you think we'd win this time?" she asked eventually, quietly and kept all eye contact to the absolute minimum by focusing on the opposite wall.

"No." Howard respects her current distaste for eye contact, if only because he's not a huge fan of it either. "This shouldn't be a call to fight back. This should be a call to run away as fast as we can without ever looking back."

Which makes sense to him. Running from things comes naturally. And for once in his weaselly little life, switching teams isn't really an option.

She frowned, "where would we run to? We're on a spaceship and any planet we land on, they'll know of. Unless they're happy for us to run, of course." They did still have hundreds of unpopped pods waiting to be opened, after all.

"Who says we have to go anywhere? We can just keep running. Someday we'll all get old and die and it won't matter. Or the war will end and the Daligig won't need us anymore. We can live as refugees." He already considers himself one anyway.

"What kind of a life is that?" Barbara asked him. Whether Howard liked pity or not, he was going to get it. It was the automatic maternal reaction. One of a small collection of switches Barbara had with other people.

Howard recoils, not only mentally but physically as well. He takes a cautious step back. While she may have been talking about the hypothetical future of the entire ship, since he already believes himself to live that life he finds the pity both targeted and uncomfortable.

"It's not that bad. There's more to life than...I don't know, consistency. It's not like living in fear's a new concept no one's heard of - we do it already. At least on the run we get to call the shots."

Barbara watched him while he spoke, trying to remember if it'd felt like he'd told her his entire story or a watered down version for whatever reason.

"Not necessarily," she replied in the same spot she'd started in, not wanting to make Howard uncomfortable to the point of lashing out or running from her. "It would depend what you're running from. If we're running from a group of beings who can read our mind and control the ship we're currently living on, there aren't many shots to call. You're stuck in the places where you believe you're safest." Admittedly, you often got to choose your company.

"If we've weapons or strategies to use against the Daligig, and the Ohm, the Daleks, the monsters in the closet, then we can last a little longer. But forever running without an overall plan or purpose..." she trailed off and shrugged. Chances were the Howard had an amazing defense built from all the wretched things he'd experienced before coming on board.

"Not if we take control of the ship. That gives us a little leeway, at least. Right now we don't know where she's programmed to go, so they'd be able to meet us anywhere we landed, but if we boosted her...we have better odds than trying to fight them."

Why throw your life away when you could live? Even desperate, scrounging, terrified, running, any life is better than none at all. Howard believes that, enough to justify some of the awful things he's done in the name of survival, but Barbara doesn't seem the type. Too soft, he thinks. Too idealistic. Too unwilling to be completely ruthless.

"The Daligig made a ship with the power to pluck us out of time. What weapons are you even thinking?"

"I don't know," she replied, "everyone has a weakness. Maybe we can find the Daligig's? And if we're going to take over the ship, a weakness would be more than helpful."

"I'm thinking of ways, but we need more intel." He's a firm believer in doing things himself rather than letting others figure it out.

Howard puts the empty coffee mug on the floor and wraps his arms around himself. His body language, as usual, is defensive. Over the last few minutes his attempts at openness have withered and retracted like paper in a fire. "That said, if we run and the Daligig hunt us down? They either have a whacked sense of priorities or we're more special than we know."

Barbara, open as ever, listened and thought. There was still so much for her to learn, but she doubted how far she'd get when other people who'd been here so much longer than she had still knew very little.

"Well, let's argue for a moment that they can't read our minds or predict our movements; how might we go about gathering more information?" It seemed like a logical question to her, or at least a step in the right direction, rather than making lists of maybes and what ifs.

"Push the boundaries of the ship as much as we can. Talk to people. Keep an ear to the ground." He raises an eyebrow at Barbara. "Why, you got any ideas? You know I can't resist a chance to stick my nose somewhere."

Because while he doesn't trust Barbara, and doesn't think she has that spine of steel necessary to drag yourself through the gutter and persevere, he has realized that she's game for most challenges, and fairly intelligent.

If only you knew, Howard. If only you knew.

"Getting them to squabble against one another might be one way, but it could also make things worse for us," and she had only seen it successfully work on cavemen. "If they're going to squabble, we could watch and see if they reveal any weaknesses with those higher in the chain."

She thought about how the rebels on Earth worked around the Daleks. "Communication is the key, I've found. If we were to rebel, we'd need safe houses and a way of communicating between them which can't be monitored by the Daligig. Then, we could work at taking out their resources, or at least their access to them.

Someday he may. Currently Barbara's still 'adult-zoned', categorized in that same group as the rest of the people he projects his distrust and abandonment issues onto and yet still seeks approval from.

"That would mean even getting close to them, though. I know you weren't around, but the last time they paid us a personal visit, they broke a woman's legs so badly we had to haul her out on a stretcher." Not Howard's best day at work.

He nods. "Supposedly they can't monitor the channels, but I don't know how much I trust that since Stacy can go in our brains. We'd have to organize on a shore leave, probably."

"But if they're squabbling with one another, it might be a decent distraction," she counter-argued. It also might not be a decent distraction, and there could be more broken then just legs. Barbara wasn't a planner, however. She merely witnessed something horrific that was also significant. Anything else she had to say on the matter was most likely going to be ignored.

"Would it be possible to organise something like that on a shore leave?" She asked, brow furrowed in her continual thought and consideration.

"If we can get them to squabble. They keep everything pretty close to their chest." And Howard doesn't want to be any nearer than necessary to their super soldiers. "And I don't know. It's hard enough to coordinate the freaking Medical department here, much less the whole ship. No one knows who's where or who's podded and we can't even keep track of time."

"Would you say that you could split the residence into groups? Because if that's at all possible, we'd only need to contact one or two people from each group. They'd then pass on the message, and we wouldn't have to know where everyone is." Even if the groups over lapped, a lot could be said for a grapevine. "Although, I suppose that would make it more difficult to monitor who hears what. We wouldn't want anything falling on the wrong ears."

"Not to mention it turns into a game of telephone. Personal experience means that none of the right information will get anywhere that day." He bites his lip. "We're really just heard animals. Bad at disseminating information."

Barbara sighed, "I suppose we don't even know if anything rebellious will arise from all of this. But if it does, perhaps communications might be something we work on." She assumed that they'd need a lot of advice from various people. "And that's if we get a say in it all."

"We won't." That's the cynic talking. "We don't matter on this crew. Me, I'm just a kid, apparently. No one listens to me even when I'm right."

"Clearly I'm listening to you now, or this wouldn't be much of a conversation," she pointed out, head tilted to the side.

"And you don't exactly have much pull on the ship." He tilts his head over, partially because the gesture comes naturally to him and partially as a mimic. "At least, not yet. But you're a teacher, you're used to listening to kids."

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