Podpop

[cityship]

[Instructions: Post your character with one post establishing them as being podpopped. Tag each other in groups of 2's, 3's, and 4's, to get some interaction to start with. If a thread doesn't already have 2 or 3 people tagged in, tag it with your character's podpop popping near the other people, rather than making a new subthread. If you would like to play out them talking to the AI, please send an email to the mods making the request--we do this only by request. Then move onto the big Newbie Meeting. Once your character has gotten the rundown from the old crew, you may start posting entrance posts and freely tagging.]


||Pod Release Protocols Initating|| Stacy's familiar voice sounds out to all the podmates through the ship.

In the Pod Caverns, there are the sounds of: Pop. Pop pop pop. Poppuhpoppoppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiiiissssss.

There is condensation and mist spraying out from cracks in the pods, as the people inside slide out onto the floors, covered in slime.

--



There was nothing. You were going about your normal life, then there was a bright light, and then? Nothing.

Then the world lurches.

The chamber here is humid.

Actually, "chamber" isn't quite accurate. You're in a cavern, half-lit by an eerie greenish light, going on and on as far as the eye can see. The light is coming from what can only be described as pods, glistening, round greenish-yellow things, glowing with a pale inner light, outlining human -- and not quite human -- forms. Each is rooted to the floor, to the walls, with something black, twisted, and unidentifiable.

They line the walls of the cavern, go up in maddeningly high columns, curling and corkscrewing up into the darkness, until the light from them is like that of the stars, glowing pale and mournful in clusters in the darkness above. Twisted walkways and stairs crisscross, traverse the platforms in front of the pods, wending their way back and forth, up and down through the chamber.

You just came from one of those pods, broke free like a butterfly from a (slimy, nasty) chrysalis.

Now you stand alone but not quite alone, naked, not knowing how you got there, who took you, or why you were taken.

As your body heats up again, you realize the air is warm -- just a few degrees too warm to be comfortable -- and muggy; it smells acrid and organic, like freshly spilt blood and sweat. Your mouth tastes of salt.

The floors are pulsing under your feet, throbbing...

Wherever you are, this entire place...is alive.

Oh, and also you're naked and covered in alien snot.

When you call out, ask where you are, a voice speaks to you, in your head. She tells you:

||You are here.||


When you ask who she is, she tells you that her name is STA'C K'LTRRB'TXFT, but that you may call her Stacy. When she tells you who she is, there is a gush of emotion, love, maternal warmth. You are on a ship. She is that ship. Her name is Stacy and she loves you. Her voice is warm and motherly, even if these messages sound almost automated.

Glowing phosphorescent lights appear in pustules along the floor. They lead you up a massive spiraling walkway that gives you a view of what are possibly millions in stasis. At the top is a room with moving vines that clean you and clothe you in a plant-like body-suit--soft, but durable. After that, the lights lead you to a great cavernous room with a clear floor that lets you see all the holes and tunnels in the walls of it. When you reach the center, the last thing she tells you before whisking you away to gather your belongings and meet the rest of the crew is this reassuring thought:

||You have been Chosen to accomplish a Great Purpose. You have been Chosen to help fight the Ohm, a race of insectoid beings that are the destroyers of worlds.||

||You have been Chosen as champions of life, as protectors of the worlds and peoples that are left. The others are waiting for you. They will explain everything.||

Comments

[thedetectiveprince]

Even if she had overcome many of the gender and mental barriers regarding herself, the last thing Naoto Shirogane would have wanted in her life would be to end up naked and covered in slime. In fact, if it wasn't for Stacy's voice, she would have attributed it to a nightmare caused by a late-night snack.

No. This. This was very real.

"Tatsumi-kun? Narukami-kun?" she asked, horrified and realizing neither of them were there. None of her friends were here. She tried to walk but slipped, overcome with a strange paralyzation and the fear of being discovered in this state. It was hard enough to wear a dress (near impossible), but completely naked in public was her worst fears coming true. Her brain was panicking, and she began to crawl to the exit, watching left and right to make sure no one saw her...

[equivalent_trade]

Oops someone saw her.

Edward whipped his gaze away from Naoto the instant he recognized he was staring at a girl, but it was really too little, too late. "Uh... sorry. Look, do you know what's going on around here? Are we still in Amestris?"

[ringoutyourdead]

She can taste the death on her tongue. It's almost as if she sprinted a very long time and is now tasting the copper tang of exertion in the back of her throat, except all the more upsetting, knowing what caused it. Somewhere in these pod caverns, recently, many people died in fear and confusion.

As such, this is not the most pleasing place for her to wake up, and entirely nude isn't exactly her idea of a perfect introduction to her new home. A voice in the air tells her that it is like a mother, which Sabriel finds laughable, and explains that they are drafted to fight a war to save their universes. Sabriel isn't entirely sure what is meant by universe, although she recalls the term from her philosophy and astronomy classes, but in her mind it means the sum totality of everything - not a concept that lends itself easily to the plural.

She gets up and flips her wrist. A wad of snot-like goo flies from the end as she whips it off and begins to wipe herself down. She finds that without the slime she feels even more naked, and to be naked is to be unseemly and uncouth. Manners and courtesy are a silly notion to fixate on now, but without her bells or sword and with no knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, not to mention no immediate enemy, she has no distraction from her pearly-white, unabashed nakedness.

"I'm sorry, but does anyone have a towel?" she asks the throng of equally unclothed people around her, knowing full well that it's an exercise in futility.

[anwei]

"I'm afraid not," said Anwei, smiling a polite human-sized smile. In the dim cavern lighting, the little differences that marked her as alien were hard to see.

"There should be clothing waiting in the upper level - that is, if you don't mind a plantsuit."

Edward Elric | Fullmetal Alchemist

[equivalent_trade]

Edward coughed, expelling a glob of ill-tasting slime from -- his lungs? He didn't really want to think about it.

He fell forward onto the damp floor of the Pod Chamber, looking around for some clue as to how he got here or some trace of his brother. What had happened? Was this the Portal of Truth? Had he been transported to one of the laboratories?

No. Around him were other people in the same state, but the surroundings were completely unfamiliar. This wasn't Father's doing. There were no traces of a transmutation reaction anywhere. Even if there had been, to create an organic mass of this size...

He stood up, shaking the slime from his hair. "Heyyyyy! Al, where are you?"

[noblefive]

There's someone watching you, Ed. Not because you're short, but because he's watching everyone, trying to determine if they're a threat.

He's also 7'4". Have fun with that.

Re: Edward Elric | Fullmetal Alchemist

[electricman]

Cole had started walking after that conversation with the pony, Big Mac. He needed to get to this Obs Deck and get answers...

"Heyyyyy! Al, where are you?"

...

Cole really didn't have time for this, but he was just too much of an active bystander at worst.

"Hey kid, need help?"

[noblefive]

This was unexpected...

Jorge is lying on the pulsating floor, getting his bearings. His last memories were of shoving Noble Six to safety. Of looking out at Reach for the last time...

And then, here. The 7'4" SPARTAN pushes himself to his feet, wiping some of the slime off himself. He was naked, armourless and didn't know where he was. That means he was probably in danger. There were other people emerging from pods... Probably in the same position, but you never know. He's just going to look around silently, assess his situation...

[anwei]

Tall, scarred, standing relaxed and yet ready to move: the dark-haired man certainly looked like a soldier. Someone you didn't want to see the bad side of, anyway. Anwei was walking past, following the line of lights on the floor (she wished that Stacy would add a few more lumens to those, or maybe a touch of ultraviolet).

She pauses and dips her head in what is not quite a nod. "Hello. Do you need help finding your way out?" For all she knew, this man had even poorer night-vision than she did.

[youvegotsuckersluck]

"No...nonnono Not again!"

The exasperated cry of despair came from a shaggy scrawny looking man who was covering himself and shuffling along trying to put two and two together. Was this a reoccurring dream? Or was it real? How could he tell anymore?

"I thought it was just for a day..." He mumbled as unfocused eyes darted around nervous and paranoid. He had to find Chell. Had to find his cube.

Had to hide before "they" found him.

third time's the charm!

[ringoutyourdead]

As displeased as she is about waking up nude, she's even more displeased about waking up nude and near an older man. Sabriel slips and slides her way to her feet on the slick floor, trying to remind herself that propriety takes no place before a man in need.

"Are you alright?"

Granted, her reaction to this place is similarly distraught, but she's not screaming in despair.

[space_cadet]

One minute she was with John, the next she was...

Here.

Where was here? The automated voice had told her the bare minimum. It was a decidedly alien looking place. But the other people sliding out of the pods around her didn't look alien to her at all. Most of them looked human.

She tried her best to cover herself, stumbling onto the pulsing floor, and squinting out into the dimly lit cavern. A normal looking thirteen year old by all accounts, except for the dog ears currently pressed flat against her head in a show of distress.

[equivalent_trade]

Edward was staring at her -- not at her body, exactly, but at the animal ears protruding from the top of her head.

"A chimera? What are you doing here?" Not that chimeras were necessarily evil, exactly, but one that young? No telling what she'd been through. Or how dangerous she might be.

[its_me_curzon]

Ezri winced and tried to wipe the slime off of her arms. It didn't work too well with hands that were equally slimy. She shouldn't even be worrying about slime right now, but it was a simpler thought than 'Stacy's' enigmatic, telepathic introduction.

Right now, Ezri didn't feel like champion of anything except for confusion and aggravation. She hadn't signed up for this! This was obviously some kind of abduction, and who the hell would abduct some Starfleet counselor with the rank of lieutenant?

Well, maybe they'd abducted a Trill with nine lifetimes of knowledge and experience. And then put her in the most primitive stasis pod imaginable. Against her better judgment, she licked her lips to confirm her suspicion about the slime. Yup. Who would invent a stasis chamber that used mucus to suspend? "Well, I guess there's just one way to find out what's going on," she said to herself. She'd meant it to sound nonchalant and confident. It came out more ticked-off and anxious. Oh well--time to follow the lights and hope that her captors had a sonic shower at the end of it.

[noblefive]

Have someone staring curiously at you, Ezri, though not in the way one would expect a naked man to be staring at a naked woman. The SPARTAN has never seen a Trill before, and was a bit curious as to weither she's just human with an odd set of tattoos or not.

[dragonspooker]

Stumbling around near a pod is a short gal with long red hair. She's...kind of dazed, trying to process just what all Stacy said, and after a moment, an epiphany hits her.

"WHY THE HELL AM I NAKED?! I DON'T CARE ABOUT THESE 'OTHERS', I WANT ANSWERS FROM YOU!" Her head jerks around - there's others here, but she doesn't care about them right now.

Well, that would be a lie. She ducks back into her pod to try and hide behind part of it. She still has her shame, after all!

"WHAT KIND OF CRAPPY RECRUITMENT IS THIS?! WHERE'S MY CLOTHES? WHERE'S GOURRY?! You got a lot of explaining to do before I even CONSIDER playing exterminator for you, lady!"

_{[OOC: Mostly directed at Stacy, but feel free to interrupt Lina, or talk at her anyway, or whatever. o/]}

[cityship]

Stacy responds in a very patient voice.

|| Your clothing would have rotted in the damp environment your organic matter required. It is awaiting you in the possessions lockers, along with your other belongings. ||

Cole MacGrath | inFamous

[electricman]

"What the...?"

Cole didn't know why he got here. He didn't know how he got here. He didn't who or what or why Stacy was.
He remembered beginning the end of those like him, himself included, to save Zeke and the rest of humanity.

He certainly didn't remember getting on a spaceship, he certainly didn't remember going to sleep in a pod of snot. And he certainly didn't remember suddenly being naked.

"Zeke?" Any answers?
"Kuo?" Any answers?

He then hears the thing about the Ohm, and how he's been Chosen and he knows.
He is once again destiny's pawn.

Please excuse Cole if he verbally lashes at you, his last memory was literally committing genocide in a last-ditch effort to save humanity. And now he's here, and not in New Marais.

(OOC: Sorry if responses are slow, doing homework at same time.)

[nize_hat]

Maxim blinked up at the ceiling of the pod cavern before sitting up with a grunt, running a hand through long, purple hair. Hair that was slicked with slime. This certainly wasn't Castle Wulfenbach, nor anyplace else he recognized. Had the Other struck, then? But no, he didn't remember this type of thing being her style...

He gave his hand an experimental lick before shaking it off. "Not bog, but not bad, eidder..."

Then, a horrific thought struck him and he leapt to his feet, disregarding any around him. "HOY! HYU! VAT DEED HYU DO MIT MY HET?!"

No, it wasn't the naked that bothered him. But to have his trophy stripped away from him? Unbearable!

[ringoutyourdead]

The strange purple man near her doesn't smell like Charter or Free Magic, but he certainly isn't human. Sabriel approaches, hands over her private areas, trying to discern whether to be afraid of this man or not and what strange language he's speaking.

"Beg your pardon?"

[acornprincess]

Sally was expecting her cozy home in her cozy hut, the dawn of a new day of freedom in Knothole. They'd finally overthrown Robotnik's tyrannical empire, finally stopped the destruction of Mobius, and soon they were going to de-roboticize their dear friends and family, right?

Not here. She awakened in an unpleasantly warm slime, though the chill of the air disrupted that some. The net effect? One sticky-furred, grumpy squirrel, alone in an underground world she'd never seen before.

She instinctively ducked behind another row of pods, peeking out from within the cover of darkness. No sign of her Freedom Fighters, just...overlanders. They didn't appear hostile from this distance, just disoriented, but one could never be too sure.

Why were they here? She was no stranger to being captured, but it had never felt so threatening before. She had no weapons, no NICOLE, no familiar friends, and everyone else was much bigger than her.

This was very bad, and the vague messages from the resident master computer were no reassurance at all. She slowly worked her way between the rows of pods, staying out of sight until she could obtain more information or reliably defend herself.

((I think I'll go straight to meet n greet with her. She'd react to any interaction attempts by running at this point.))

Mashu

[yourbelovedfuture]

"Blech! Yuck! W-what is this?" Mashu wipes at herself, then proceeds to sniff then taste the goop on her.

"I don't remember any of this... Where did Kimimaro toss me at..."

It took but a moment for her to catch on what the mysterious voice from above was talking about.

"What?! Is this some new district?" She looked around before huffing impatiently. "Eh, I'll find my own way out."

And with that, the brash girl floated her way towards the exit, not really caring about the state she was in but she was certainly interested in her surroundings and could be caught poking and looking around all the other pod sacks and random corners of the cavern.

It might take her a bit to leave.

[bbspider]

Home. Home. Home. Home. Go home now.

Maybe if he believed hard enough and clicked his heels, it'd actually happen, and this would all turn out to be a dream.

Nope. Nothing doing.

Pinched himself.

Still nope.

Okay. First things first.

"Clothes."

Everything else could be put on hold till he got that.

[anwei]

"Are you - oh."

There's a slightly strange looking lady staring at Miles, her eyes a silvery-blue color that doesn't look normal. She's also wearing nothing but slime, and doesn't seem the least put out by that.

"Sorry, I thought you were someone else."

Anwei Ayles

[anwei]

This was familiar. Unfortunately.

The stocky-muscular woman rolled to her feet, then bent over to cough the last of the slime out of her lungs. Straightening, she looked around. She must have been repodded, and now let loose again. And it sounded like the war was still on.

How nice it would have been to wake up with Horanckk's voice in her ears - eh, maybe not. She'd hate to discover that he had turned the crew into a buffet for her.

She wondered how many people were still awake that she knew. Well, only one way to find out. Anwei started following one of the trails of lights, heading for the way out while keeping one eye cocked for people in distress.

Presea | Magic Knight Rayearth

[forging_on]

Presea was normally quite good in a crisis. She was the person who remembered where her backup weapon was, and where the exit would be, and that people needed regular meals when on the run. But in this case, she found herself rather overwhelmed. She'd just been... expelled from her pod, feeling gross and slimy all over. She was naked, her long blonde hair loose and streaked with something sticky she didn't really want to think about. This wasn't like any ship she'd ever seen. Where was the ocean? Where was the sky?

Why was she here? She was no chosen one. She was a weaponmaker, a supporter of people who did great things. She was a sidelines type of person, and someone needed to do those jobs and be those people. There had been a mistake.

And she wasn't the only person here. She took in the scene around her, wide-eyed, her gaze finally focusing on the muscular blonde woman nearby. The woman looked like she knew she was doing, which was mentally reassuring. How anyone could seem so calm after this ordeal was completely amazing.

Presea opened her mouth to speak, coughed, and then tried again. "Do you know what's going on?" she asked. Her voice was reasonable, not nervous. She was already finding her equilibrium.

[eeeyup]

Whut... the... hay.

A big red pony woke up covered in alien snot, hearing a voice speaking to him. He'd never seen ANYTHING like this before. He had to be having a bad dream. Maybe he went to one of Pinkie Pie's parties and passed out in the punch bowl. Which would have been weird, since he didn't really drink punch that much. And he'd never done that before.

Well, the only way he was going to figure anything out now was to do what the strange lady said and follow the trail of lights...

[electricman]

Cole knew that whatever the hell was going on, he needed answers, and apparently his best option was heading up. He had taken notice of some of the people so far but still had to go...

Was that a pony? A red and yellow pony? With green, humanish eyes?

Cole may not have been have been an animal expert but he was sure that horses that color weren't normal.

He looked around, and just asked, "Hey, this horse belong to anybody?

[mercyisweakness]

Crematia roared in outrage as she emerged from the pod, enraged at being disturbed - who dared to violate her rest, trespassing her volcanic lair? Large, blood-red wings spread out, flickering the alien muck all around. Her tail lashed out, hitting the wall, equipment, people, anything that gets in her way.

"Who dares to disturb me?" She bellowed, flickers of fire spitting out of her toothy jaws. "Who dares to summon to me in their war? I AM CREMATIA! Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death!"

She reared her head back, sneering at all those who dare to answer back.

[notthetechguy]

"What the heck is going on?"

Chance had arrived outside his pod, naked and full of alien slime. As distressed as he was, he had to find something familair. So he looked for clothes and answers.

[closed to John]

[on_your_nerves]

Breaking free from a pod of viscous goo with a voice in one's head was a singularly unpleasant experience, especially for someone that prided themselves in the acuteness of their senses and in their rational mind. After coughing up a few lungfuls of fluid, questioning the voice in his head and finding its answers patently unhelpful, and having a look around, Sherlock had to consider the horrible potentiality that he'd gone mad.

Because this couldn't be real. This absolutely could not be real. This was like something out of one of those wretched science fiction movies that were sometimes on the television, the ones that Sherlock railed at for getting the science all wrong and John enjoyed having on the television because it guaranteed at least an hour's worth of Sherlock railing. (Not that Sherlock knew much about things like astrophysics, i.e. he knew nothing at all about it because it was useless to his work, but usually the fundamental precepts of biology were butchered ruthlessly and he certainly knew those.)

This was like something in a movie, ergo, it couldn't be real, but that meant his senses were lying to him, and that was a concept that was as absolutely horrifying to him as it had been the one time they'd lied to him before.

Sherlock briefly considered that he'd been drugged again and was having wildly vivid hallucinations like he had when seeing the hound on the moor, but had to quickly discard that hypothesis, because if it was true, the illusion or the dream was far too complete, far too detailed. When he pinched himself, he felt pain, which he knew was possible when dreaming, but usually didn't happen for him. His dreams lately, for instance, had involved falling from great heights and slamming into concrete and there was never a twinge of pain when he hit the bottom. No, there was just the indistinct feeling of something he assumed was guilt, an unfamiliar sentiment inspired by the horrified gaze of the person that was always watching him fall.

There was a part of him that refused to acknowledge his mind could be deluded so thoroughly, even in sleep, so dismissing the idea that it was being deluded right now by drugs was far too easy. That said, he could believe that his mind could produce something this vividly wrong and thorough if he'd gone mad. Madness was a frighteningly real prospect, especially in the face of pulsing walls and voices in his head.

That was why Sherlock spent a good, long while crouched on the floor, shaking uncontrollably with his eyes closed tight, taking in deep breaths as he tried to keep the nauseating horror at bay, tried to disconnect himself from the feelings he so often tried to suppress.

Then he opened his eyes suddenly as he ultimately came to his final conclusion about his situation, and stood up, stretching out his neck as he looked around the room.

When you eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth.

He didn't believe in any sort of afterlife, but even if there was one, he hadn't been in a situation where he was likely to have died without realizing he was in danger. It was impossible for him to be drugged so thoroughly that there weren't even touches of reality for him to perceive. It wasn't impossible for him to feel pain in a dream, but it was highly improbable for him to when he typically didn't. It was impossible for him to have gone suddenly and abruptly insane without any prodrome symptoms or warning signs.

Also, he just really didn't want to be mad, so he ultimately decided he wasn't and that reality would just have to deal with his decision by conforming to it.

Final conclusion: This was real. This was real and different and most importantly of all, not boring, and that was an absolutely thrilling prospect. He would have bolted out of the Pod Caverns in search of whatever else was there to find but a pod near him stopped him from doing it. It was making a hissing noise and seemed about to expel its contents, and because it was so close to doing so, he caught a sight of familiar dishwater hair and a face with all-too-familiar worry lines that were creased even in unconsciousness.

If anyone else had been down in the Pod Caverns near him, they would have been treated to the rare sight of Sherlock Holmes looking positively frantic, absolute panic replacing his previous excitement, as he tried to figure out if he should tear the thing open to help it along or if that could somehow cause damage to the contents within, which as far as Sherlock was concerned were the most precious in all of existence (not that he'd ever use the word "precious" or people really would talk). Fortunately the pod seemed to doing all the work on its own and it looked like he just had to let things take their course.

In a way, he almost didn't want them to, because as much as he wanted to see the person inside after having had to go without him for months, the prospect of facing the other man after what had happened at Bart's was possibly more horrifying than the prospect of having gone mad.

Re: [closed to John]

[nerves_of_steel]

For a moment, John felt a sense of brief resistance against his back. Then the resistance split and there was the sensation of falling before he landed on something firm in a rush of -- not blood, too viscous, wrong smell. He coughed and wheezed until the whatever-it-was cleared his mouth, reaching up with a hand to try to clear it from his eyes. The instincts that had kept it alive as a soldier in Afghanistan and on the streets of London with Sherlock leaped to the forefront of his brain, screaming at him -- someone was nearby.

John rolled to a defensive crouch, shedding goo like a dog from a lake, looking around wildly for the unseen presence, and--

Froze, eyes widening in the dim light, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

Sherlock probably saw the way John's weight shifted as his leg gave out on him. He also likely had enough light to see the emotions play out over John's face: surprise, confusion, rage, joy. Then, finally, an expression that suggested that John was trying to deduce something. His shoulders relaxed and he glanced briefly around them, touching his temple like it hurt or he was hearing the voice Sherlock had earlier, or as if searching for a head injury. In actuality, it was all three.

So. Sherlock was here, and 'here' was emphatically not John's flat. Or London. John tested the floor beneath him an determined that it had the same resistance he'd come to associate with flesh, which was quite a bit disturbing. Also, there was a voice in his head that sounded like it thought it was his mother

Yep, he was probably dead. Or dying, he'd hallucinated fairly vividly when he'd been shot, but nothing like this. Strangely, he found himself largely all right with this. Except--

"Oh Christ," he said, the first words he'd been able to say to his best friend's face in over three months. "I hope Harry doesn't fall off the wagon because of this."

[quixotically]

"The eyes of the mighty Caesar are upon you. He admires your accomplishments, and bestows upon you the exceptional Gift of his mark."

""I stand ready to receive you at your earliest convenience. God bless the New California Republic."

She pushes open the doors of the Lucky 38, and steps into the overbright Mojave sun.

... except maybe it isn't the sun after all. At first, she thinks she's tripped, but something isn't right. The ground underneath her hands and knees is pulsing. Her eyes adjust and it isn't as bright as she was expecting. There is no desert air, no weathered metal under her skin, no Pre-War music crackling over radios. This is the moment where it strikes her that she's naked, and, absurdly, it's because the lack of radios brings to her attention her Pip-Boy is missing.

Elle snaps her head up.

Her heart skips a beat. This... Where am I?! She's never seen anything like this place. It's... beautiful, breathtaking, in a strange and alien way. But it isn't New Vegas. Fear trills through her veins. This isn't the first time she's woken up somewhere she doesn't know without knowing how or why she got there. But, this time, she remembers. She knows her name. She knows where she was before this.

I've been chosen... again.

She takes a deep breath as she begins to move, shifting to stand. She's covered in -- something, and whatever it is, it's thick and viscous and fleetingly she worries if she might get an infection in... places... but she shakes the thought from her head. No matter what is going on now, she needs to stay focused. Once again, she needs answers, and she's not going to find them if she stays here, ashamed of her body or embarrassed at her nakedness (she can see countless others around her and moving in the chamber's alien light, it's not like she's alone) or worrying about anything at all (where's Veronica? Rex? are they even alive?).

Some day, Elle can't help but think, I'd like to have a choice in what messes I get involved in.

[estreen]

There's a short, stocky girl not far away from Elle, on her hands and knees as she coughs up slime. Feeling like she'd just been bathed in Taxxon goo, Cassie scrambles to her feet, which is a bit difficult as she's slipping and sliding. It's not until she stands that she realizes she's naked. Crouching down, she uses her hands to cover herself up; her instincts are yelling at her to morph, but she's afraid of being attacked while in mid-morph. The thoughtspeak didn't do much to ease her anxiety.

She notices that there are others in the humid cavern who are having the same problems she is, so she hobbles over to the nearest person -- another female, thankfully -- still trying to keep herself covered.

"Hey, are you okay?" Cassie certainly isn't, but she figures it's best to make sure this other person isn't injured, at the very least.

[acenturyofsleep]

Talia's eyes snapped open. She didn't make it to her feet on her first try, but she managed to pull herself to her knees, shaking and retching not only because of the foul stench of the slime but because she'd been asleep. She didn't sleep. She wouldn't sleep. A hundred years worth of slumber was more than enough for anyone and the vulnerability that came with closing your eyes was something that she would never allow herself to experience again.

Her hands clenched into helpless fists. If the ship had truly chosen her, then it should have known better than to choose her like this.

She spat out a mouthful of whatever strange fluid had filled the pods. The first thing that she needed to do was find some clothing. After that, she'd find Snow and Danielle and anyone else who had been taken from Lorindar. They'd make their way home together.

She'd been asleep before, but she was wide awake now and she’d find herself a knife or a dagger in no time. As soon as that happened, she'd show them that Sleeping Beauty couldn't be bent to their whims.