trans_9 | Rooting around in Stacy's innards (closed to Ian Chesterton and John Crichton)

That wasn’t exactly comforting how the shape just…absorbed it. John didn’t want to see what happened if it tried that on a human. “Well, see what you can do, but I think we probably are gonna have to book it or try shooting it and hoping we don’t piss off Stacy.”

John didn’t think he needed to say outloud that they were going to be having a really big problem if they went with option two and that didn’t do anything. The shape continued to advance, like some creepy thing you pictured coming at you from out of the closet.

If Stacy took exception to them shooting it, then it would be best to leave that option until last. "Let's try and lose it first." He wasn't sure what senses this thing used, but staying still wasn't the best one to test and sight would be easiest. So he ran back down the tunnel, left a sample tube on the ground and then chose another tunnel that branched off that one.

Great idea. John took off after Ian, making sure not to slip on the sample tube Ian left as bait, and ducked into that other tunnel after him. It was a tight squeeze, and John couldn't take the feeling of being inside a giant blood vessel that could constrict at any moment. It took less than a minute for the shape to slurp over, investigate the tube, and then bend and ooze toward their tunnel.

Looked like it had their scent.

All they could do was run down this tunnel, although it was so narrow that they had to go single file. And halfway down it suddenly narrowed even more. Ian turned sideways and held his breath, waiting to see if it would pass. They couldn't go backwards, where the shape was and who knew what was ahead of them. But after a minute the tunnel widened again and Ian breathed. When he looked back he saw the narrowing was going along the tunnel and when it reached the shape it seemed to absorb it. Although he wasn't sure they'd seen the last of it.

"Let's get out of his tunnel before it does that again."

John would like to say he could finally relax, but this was just reminding him all over that they were surrounded entirely by Stacy - that thing could come out any where, any time. Maybe full on go IT on them. John's breath was fogging up the visor of his helmet as he swiveled, trying to listen or look for any signs of the walls bulging. It was so narrow that he had a hard time moving here. Not exactly a place he wanted to get ambushed in.

"I'm with you all the way on that." John blew out his breath in a sigh. "Let's book it."

He squeezed his way out of the tunnel after Ian. They were in a larger area, like a spider-web of hard material (cartilage?) and more membranes pulsing above their heads.

"How about up there?" Ian pointed up at the spider-web like structure. "If whatever that was only works on the ground then it might be safer." Might being the operative word. He reached up to touch it and found it was more springy than he expected. "I don't know if it'll support our weight." Perhaps it was best not to try unless they were desperate.

"We're not short on tunnels at least." It looked a little like a hub, with all the tunnels coming out of it, and more conduits carrying liquids. "I'd like to get a sample of one that looks healthy while we're not being chased."

John glanced up where Ian was pointing. It looked like a more organic version of the ceiling strats on Moya, and he had to hope it was just as strong -- at least strong enough to hold two grown men. Mentally crossing his fingers here. "If we gotta try that, you'll have to go first."

The gun was going to slow John down and he wasn't at the point he felt comfortable ditching it, so there was that. Besides, he figured worse came to worse, he could give Ian some cover. A few of the conduits throbbed overhead as something pumped into the core. With all the sounds Stacy made and the fact everything here seemed to breathe, it made it harder to keep track of what was Stacy being her normal self and what was that thing coming at them again. John was on red alert.

"Think we'd better figure out what it's supposed to do before we make another field trip," John said. He nodded toward the center of the hub, where there was a long column of what looked like glowing flesh growing up. "That leads up to the core, right?"

"I think so," Ian said, standing beside John and looking up. "I wonder if we can climb it." He touched the glowing flesh, but it bent far too much when he pulled on it. "So we need to find another way round. One of these tunnels must go up there."

He went around the room, looking down the tunnels to see if any of them sloped upward. There were a couple that sloped down, which was interesting and he definitely wanted to investigate later, if they had the chance. Finally he found one that went upwards. It didn't necessarily mean it continued to go upwards, but it was looking more likely than any of the others.

"I think that's the tunnel we should use to get out of here," he said, pointing to it. If the blob came back again they wouldn't have time to choose a tunnel.

Then he turned his attention to one of the conduits. It didn't have an opening anywhere and Ian didn't think that taking his penknife to it would be a good idea. He followed it round, looking for a tap on it.

Okay, so they'd both decided which way to book it if - when? - that thing came back and tried to absorb them. He could go with a plan like that.

"Hey, over here." John glanced over his shoulder to make sure he didn't have that blob suddenly materializing behind his back, then gestured Ian over as he pointed as a spot on the other side of the large conduit. "Check it out."

It was feverishly warm to the touch. A lot of Stacy was, but this felt different. More give here, like some of the sections you had to touch to open some of the smaller doors. John kept a look out as he gave Ian a chance to investigate, trying not to look nervous and spook himself and Ian. Probably a good thing they both had these helmets on - he couldn't get a good look at how Ian himself was doing here.

Ian was too interested to be nervous. He touched the spot John pointed to and frowned. "Is it supposed to be that hot?" he wondered. There was what looked like a join in the conduit here, so Ian put some pressure on it until it tore a little. He collected up some of the liquid and watched as the liquid in the conduit flowed faster, presumably to compensate for the leak. He hoped that hadn't done Stacy too much damage. He put a finger over the hole, which helped, but it wasn't as if he could stay here and do that. "Do you have anything to seal a hole?" he asked John.

John winced at seeing the little tear, the liquid oozing out a little too much like blood for his comfort.

"I'll check." John patted himself down. The thing about space suits was there wasn't much room for pockets and in the end, the only thing he had was the strap that was attached to the rifle he'd dragged down all this way with them. After some struggle he managed to get it off, passing it to Ian and hoping they could make it out of here in once piece. Something told hi it wouldn't be that easy.

He turned again to check their backs. The throbbing sound had picked up in pitch since Ian opened up that small tear in Stacy, as if she was becoming aware of the tiny little aliens poking around her insides and was deciding he wasn't gonna have none of that. John tapped his foot on the floor, white-knuckling the gun and trying to keep a poker face so he wouldn't set off Ian. Ian wasn't the panicking kind of guy - most of it was for John's benefit.

"Uh, Ian." John said.

One of the walls was bulging out toward them.

Ian looked round from where he was tying the strap around the conduit. "I think it's time to go," he said and finished off the tying. He hoped it wouldn't be so tight to stop the conduit from working, but tight enough to stop it from leaking. They didn't really have the luxury of waiting for Ian to take time checking.

As soon as it was done he ran off to the tunnel he'd discovered earlier. The bulge in the wall had already got a lot bigger and was looking like it might split off into a separate blob any minute.

There's nothing quite like a bit of what looked like certain death chasing you to help you run. Ian ran along the tunnel at a speed usually reserved for a flat surface.

The tunnel twisted around and the gradient increased. By the time it opened out into a room Ian was panting hard. But the view was worth it and the blob hadn't yet caught up with them. There was a tall structure that ran from the floor to the ceiling - and perhaps further than that. It pulsed regularly, pushing liquid along the conduits running from it.

Time to go was right.

John was a bit slower than Ian, between dragging around a rifle and being just overall bigger than the other man, and there were some places in the tunnel where he had to turn sideways to do that awkward side-step so he could get through without inching along. He tried not to imagine the tunnel constricting on them. He finally caught up with Ian, fogging up his visor's shield and wishing he could wipe it from the inside. Damn things needed to come with windshield wipers.

Or defrosters.

"Whoa," John said, eloquent as ever. "Talk about Vatican sized."

He stepped forward, slung the rifle under his arm, and grabbed at one of the fleshy knobs poking off from the column. It was a lot more stiff than he expected and looked like it'd hold a human man's weight. John glanced over at Ian.

"Hope you're good at climbing," he said. If Ian wasn't, he was probably gonna get really good today. There didn't seem to be any tunnels but the way they came and it was either up or John tried shooting at the blob (or Stacy's version of a white blood cell? Who knew?).

"I've climbed trees." This was probably more like tree climbing than rock climbing, which Ian hadn't tried. With the blob chasing them it was academic - he was sure he would find a way to get up there and away from it.

"I'll go first. You shoot it if it gets too close." So far they'd only seen the blob move along the ground, but that didn't mean it couldn't float upwards if it needed to. It had already made it to the top of the tunnel, so there was no time to waste.

Ian stepped onto the first knob and hauled himself up. They were further spaced apart than a ladder, but at least they didn't have branches in inconvenient places. He was a couple of feet up when the knobs started getting slimy. "Ugh." There's some sort of slime up here. Not that they were in a position to stop, but the slime gradually got worse and he was having to wipe it off the visor with his arm - which was also slimy so it just made the whole thing a blurred mess.

John nodded. He could point and shoot - he just wasn't some hotshot with a gun that could shoot the wings of a fly or anything crazy like that. At least they had a relatively slow moving target. John slung the rifle against his elbow. "Sure, Boss."

He took up a position at the base of the shaft, glancing up from now and then to follow Ian's progress. Ian was doing pretty good for wandering around in a spacesuit...that was, until he ran into what looked a long thick slime trail, the stuff getting into his visor. Maybe that column was registering Ian as an irritant and was excreting that stuff in an attempt to get him off. John shot Ian a worried look, hoping he could either hold on, move up or make it back down.

Movement from in front of him drew his attention. The blob had disengaged from the wall and was forming in front of him, the gel-like surface shivering.

John shouldered the rifle and took aim, frowning as another one of the blobs began to form. Guess he didn't have a choice. John fired a short burst into the first blob.

Ian held on with an increasingly slippery grip as he watched John shoot the blobs. It didn't seem to have much of an effect, though, as they just seemed to absorb the bullets.

They needed a new plan and just climbing was more of a last resort, as they didn't know where they would end up. Ian had a couple of sample tubes left, so he pulled one out, covering it in slime from his gloves, and scooped up as much of the slime as he could manage quickly. Then he threw the tube down onto one of the blobs. It completely ignored the tube.

Okay, so the rife and the test tubes weren't slowing the thing down. John was trying to squirrel up the shaft after Ian, climbing a lot faster than he thought he would've been capable off. Apparently the fear of God could get you even more motivated than before. He managed to almost catch up with Ian when he ran into the same problem, this thick slime oozing out of pores the side of his hands and dripping toward him. Soon enough he was covered in the stuff as it continued to drip down his body and back to the floor.

He managed to keep from slipping off by hooking his arm through the large flesh branch he'd managed to hold onto, using his free hand to try to wipe his visor clean. Through the streaks he could see that one, Ian was okay and two, the blob was actually starting to inch up the shaft toward them, the slime sliding right off it.

Of course it could climb. It would have been too easy if it had hung around on the ground waiting for them to fall. At least it was going slowly, but then it wasn't as if Ian or John could climb very fast covered in all this slime. And Ian was sure he must be imagining it, given that it was on his suit and not on his skin, but it itched.

As slippery as it was, he wasn't just going to wait for the blob to catch up to them. Nor could he sit here and let it get to John because John was stuck behind him. Except that every time he reached up for a hand hold his hands slipped. He could get his arms over a lower branch, but then his feet slipped.

But if they couldn't move up, perhaps they could move down. "Maybe we could wait for it to nearly catch up with us and then jump off and run." Jumping would be easy, landing less so from this height. And that assumed the blob couldn't understand what they were saying.

“On three?” John asked, peering down again at the blob which was doing a lot better going up then it had chasing them earlier. They probably only had a few seconds.

He didn’t think he needed to point out that from this high up, it was possible they could sprain something or, worse, break a leg and then that was going to be a whole new problem right there. Still, he figured they were both ready to take on a broken leg over digestion by Stacy blob. Ian seemed like that kind of guy. John counted down to three and had that brief hestitation that was probably common sense kicking in before he kicked it to the background. He hadn’t made it this far by listening to it anyway.

“Three!” John pushed away from the column and suddenly he was falling through open air, hoping Ian was right on his heels and they weren’t going to break anything on the way down.

He nodded at John's question and echoed, "On three." His heartbeat sped up as the blob got closer and John counted, but on three he let go and fell. He did his best to land and roll, but he'd come from pretty high up. Nothing hurt enough to be broken, but he was going to be bruised. If they even got out of here.

He looked up at the blob, which was now coming back down, faster than it had gone up. "Great." Then he looked round at John to see if he was all right. "Back to running," Ian suggested.

Stacy’s internals apparently had different ideas. The way out was blocked by more of those blobs and here the two humans were, stuck covered in goop and basically surrounded. John supposed he could try smacking them with his rifle but shooting these things didn’t do anything, he didn’t think he’d magically get lucky trying to rifle-whip them either. John pulled up to a stop from his attempt to run. The blob from the shaft was making for Ian as the ones blocking their way solidified into a gooey wall, the almost liquid surface seeming to breathe.

The blob closest to Ian extended a thick tendril to touch him.

Ian backed up as the blobs closed in on them. There was no way they could outrun this many. But he couldn't back up too far because there were blobs behind him too and although Ian twisted out of the way, the tendril touched him. He tensed, ready to do something, even if he didn't know what that might be.

But it didn't do any more than just touch him and Ian let out a breath as the tendril receded, now with a blob of slime on the end of it. It could have just been preparing to attack, even though they'd seen no evidence that they thought about it in advance. But the blobs all moved, clearing a space between Ian and John and one of the tunnels.

John’s jaw dropped, just in time to get one of the tendrils slapping against the side of his helmet and running a sticky slime trail down from his head to his arm. That went…well, okay, that went way better than expected. They were alive and not partially digested, and it looked like they’d tested negative on the threat level to Stacy thing. John let loose the breath he’d been about to strangle himself on without even knowing it, blowing it out and feeling all the tension just go flooding out of him, just like that. He slapped Ian on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Looks like we lucked out. Congrats,” he grinned. “Let’s finish up here and get out before they change their minds.”

Aside from getting chased all over Stacy's bowels, he had to say it went way better than expected. He just could skip the part of doing it all over again.

Ian was all for that, although he went cautiously, in case one of the blobs changed their mind. "At least I have some samples," he said. "So I can analyse them and work out what they're samples of."

The tunnel they were herded down sloped downwards, so they were probably being taken back to where they started. Which would be fine because at least they could leave. After chasing them around the blobs probably didn't want to keep them here.

"I wish we could have climbed further up that thing." He took a last linger look back at it. "I want to know what's at the top." Being threatened every time he ventured into Stacy's innards hadn't put him off at all.

John almost laughed. “At least we’re alive and we’ve got some goo, right?” He grinned behind the fogged up visor of his helmet. Ian was just a bundle of positivity and was already thinking about those samples and what they’d missed out on. True scientist right there.

They were definitely being ushered out. If he glanced around, the blobs would darken in color, almost like a warning signal. John turned back around, his shoulders bumping against Ian’s as they were squeezed out toward a series of the tunnels toward the way they’d come. At least he thought it was the way out. Stacy could probably open up new ways if she wanted to. John motioned for Ian to take the last opening first, squeezing in after him.

“Maybe we could sketch it out and ask around. Maybe the science or engineering departments might have a better idea.”

Rooting around in Stacy's innards (closed to Ian Chesterton and John Crichton)

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Sorry about the wait, gnarly shifts at work more than usual

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Going to have them touch and do the scan thing?

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