There are times to keep a stiff upper lip

[soulinherfists]

Who: Allenby and open
Where: Pod caverns
Summary: Allenby is pissed at being abruptly short a best friend.
Warnings: Some cursing.


If someone were to venture down to the pod caverns today, they would hear the sound of screaming. Not the sounds of pain or terror--in fact, it was rather articulate and purposeful screaming at a specific individual, although very little of it was the kind of thing that ought to be repeated.

"Damn you, Stacy," Allenby snarled, stalking from pod to pod, wiping at the surfaces with her gloved hand--her left arm was still in its sling--and glaring inside, even though she knew that there was no point in trying to identify the occupants. She'd given up trying to find Domon and the others that way a while ago and just settled for the yelling... but this had just happened. Just happened. Shouldn't a pod that had been refilled so recently have some kind of sign?

So far, it didn't look like it. And even if they did, there were millions to go through....

"STACY! YOU BITCH!" she screamed for about the fifth time, looking up at the ceiling. "You expect us to think you're on our side, huh? Just 'cause ooh, you let Howard and his friend off two seconds before you were gonna rip him apart, gosh, we're so fucking grateful you let the Daligig and the Kessek stomp all over us for an hour just for that!" She clenched her fist, not caring that there were tears running down her face again. "If you want to be nice to us WHY DON'T YOU GIVE ZOUICHI BACK, HUH?! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU POD HIM FOR!"

Not just Zouichi... Ildraniath too. Jr. That psychic kid, Raz. And she hadn't missed that councilor Tarrant vanishing, either. It wasn't a coincidence. "You stupid puppet of a ship, tryin' to tie everyone else to the same strings you got. You try and put me back into the pods and there's gonna be trouble--we both know there ain't one thing wrong with my soul and there wasn't anything with theirs either! So give 'em back!"

She moved to the next pod, peering inside at the indistinct blob that might have been a person.

Comments

[morphitudinous]

Billy had come to take a walk through the pod caverns. He did so every now and then: when people weren't popping, it was a generally quiet and peaceful place. Where better to think of the friends he'd missed: friends returned to stasis, or friends who had never awoken in the first place? He hoped that they were safe here, waiting for the day that the war would be won and everyone could be reunited.

There was nothing peaceful about his walk today, unfortunately. A shout startled him out of his dazed walk: it sounded like someone could be in trouble! He tapped the morpher on his belt to assure himself that it was there and tore off toward the noise, sprinting up the ramps until he saw the source of the voice. It was his coworker, Allenby...distraught.

This felt familiar. He'd been on the other end of this scene once, a long time ago. His expression shifted from panic to an understanding sadness. Billy stepped forward hesitantly.

"You've lost friends to stasis too?"

[soulinherfists]

Oh... really, she should have expected that someone would come to see what all the fuss was about. Obviously she wasn't the only person who visited the pod caverns to try and find friends. At least it was Billy and not some jerk.

Allenby let out a shuddering breath, leaning on a pod with one hand. "Zouichi," she said. "Junior. Ildraniath." All right, so she hadn't managed to know Ildy all that well. But she'd been Zouichi's girlfriend and--goddammit it would all be wiped out, wouldn't it? If or when Stacy let them go again, it would be like they'd never been on the ship before in their lives. "She got 'em... I dunno when. Not that long ago."

She swallowed. "I hate this ship."

[morphitudinous]

She had. Billy knew this feeling too well. He came closer, gently resting his hand on the same pod. Were they safe? It was always impossible to know for sure, and that was what ate at hm.

"I'm sorry. It's happened to me a fair few times as well," he whispered.

[soulinherfists]

Allenby nodded. That didn't surprise her. Billy had been here for ages, way longer than she had. This wasn't exactly the first time someone she knew--even a good friend--had been sent back to the pods. But it hadn't been the same, then. She figured that they were at least safe there. Not anymore.

"It sucks," she said. "I mean--Hikari got sent back. Other people I know, too. But I didn't know better back then. I figured that well, even if they were in the pods they were okay. I ain't so naive now."

[morphitudinous]

"I know what you mean," Billy agreed, thinking back on those same deaths. His heart had caught in his throat as he'd read the names of the deceased, praying he wouldn't see a familiar one appear.

"All we can do is try harder to protect them, prepare for anything...but that's impossibly difficult, you know that too," he sighed, leaning against a pod and sinking to the floor. "You wonder if you'll ever talk to them again."

[soulinherfists]

Allenby nodded. "All the awful little surprises that Stacy's brought out for us even since I've been here... I don't wanna be a pessimist, but you'd be a fool to expect that things are gonna be okay." Not after all those missions where the crew had nearly been killed by the people who'd asked them to come, and especially not after SHODAN.

Goddamn SHODAN.

She picked at the edge of her cast. "I don't wanna think I'll never see Zouichi again. Or my friends from home." Then she clenched her fist. "What makes them think they got the right, anyway? To just gab us and put us away, like we're--like we're just screwdrivers or something!"

[morphitudinous]

Allenby's words were harsh, but they rang all too true. Billy curled up against the pod, imagining all the worst things that could happen. More death, more pain. It was all they didn't need.

"You know? Maybe you will," Billy said quietly, reaching for that last shred of hope. "I think...after the war's over, there's a chance that everyone could be released."

[anwei]

Anwei was looking for scars. The marks of burst pods, torn apart by SHODAN; the opposite of coffins, until they were opened too soon. But the cavern was so huge, and so poorly lit, that she could look for days and not find any marks. She might never know what sort of wound was left in Stacy, physical or mental; could never know how it had felt, to have people wrenched from her control and killed.

She stopped and leaned her forehead against one warm pod, feeling the shivering of Stacy's motion through it. Who was in here, she wondered darkly. Sam? The Captain? Some hero from stories (not stories of her species probably; all of those heroes were cooks) or some villain from nightmare...

When she heard shouting in the distance, she decided to go see who it was. Judging distances in the dimness was difficult, and she came around one to face a very angry young woman, fists clenched and tears on her face. She replayed the last words she'd heard to herself –

"Give who back?"

[soulinherfists]

Allenby tensed up immediately. She didn't recognize the woman's voice, and... crap. Most of her didn't care who heard her or what they thought of her, but there was still a little bit that was embarrassed at being found in such a state by someone she didn't know.

But that little bit was just as mad as the rest of her, so she straightened up and looked the woman in the eye. "My friends," Allenby said, jabbing a thumb at the pods. "Goddamn Stacy decided to put them back in here for no good reason."

[anwei]

The face and hair were familiar in passing. Unfortunate, that she couldn't put a face to the name. (For the thousandth time, her right eye shivered, looking for a videofeed for Horanckk.)

Anwei frowned slightly. "I heard that there had just been a lot of repoddings of department heads. There's more? People are still going in, right after podpop?"

Because if the medium they were traveling through was so dangerous for people's souls, why let anyone out now? Why not keep them where they were safe?

[soulinherfists]

"Yup." The word was said through gritted teeth. Although Allenby wasn't guessing at Anwei's train of thought, her own was on a very nearby line. "And it's no coincidence. Stacy--really, more like the Daligig are getting rid of anyone they think is gonna seriously threaten their authority. That's why they took away all those command guys."

It had a double effect, too, of spooking the hell out of whoever was left, but probably not as much as the Daligig expected or hoped. Rather than getting scared, people were just getting mad. At least Allenby was, and so were all her friends. "This here's probably more of the same."

[anwei]

Anwei clicked her own teeth. "Which makes sense - only if you're more concerned with proving that you're in command, rather than keeping the best people up front. This is a war we're supposed to be in, and somehow I doubt that the Daligig are going to be volunteering to stay and take the positions they've emptied."

The corners of her mouth slicked back for an instant. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they had an inferiority complex. That they were afraid of us."

[soulinherfists]

Allenby snorted. Yeah, that was an interesting way to put it. "They sure do have some messed-up priorities, don't they. Morons. Like they're gonna get any closer to winning this war they've put us in if they just keep recylin' us all the time."

Her mouth twitched in a smile--not a happy smile--at that other little thought. Afraid, huh? Well, that Daligig in the Sensorium record hadn't looked it, but the Daligig now... that was a whole different story. "Wouldn't surprise me. Heh. No wonder they put Zouichi back, after he shot their bigwig in the shoulder. Sore loser."

[expendable_mind]

Splicer had been pacing the caverns for a while now. It had been a bit surreal for him, he'd expected certain people who are now slimed to have been by his side till the end... But it seemed as if fate just didn't see the same future he did.

He wasn't upset, he wasn't angry, he was... confused. Maybe lost. It just didn't seem to be real and yet every time he tried to reach out to those people with his psionics, it always came back blank, empty... they were nowhere on the ship that wasn't warded against his psionics and one of those places was inside the pods.

Splicer let out a breath of smoke after taking in a long breath of his cigarette and noticed Allenby. He nodded in her direction and gave her a lax salute.

[soulinherfists]

Allenby wrinkled her nose very slightly at the scent of cigarette smoke, but didn't say anything about it. She hadn't seen Splicer in a while; since she'd left Starfighter command, she tended to run into those guys only on occasion. Except, of course, for Zouichi.

But he wasn't an unwelcome sight, exactly. The huge contrast in his manner pulled her out of the more vocal boundaries of her rage. "Hey," she said, turning around and leaning against the pod. There wasn't much else she could think of to say--most of it had been to Stacy.

[expendable_mind]

"How you holdin' up?" he said immediately. Allenby had been one of the few people Splicer trusted, even after the whole incident with Starfighter Command. Things had been a bit bent out of shape in recent times, what with his time detained in the brig after going loopy himself... He hadn't had time to catch up.

But what better time than the present right?

He inhaled what was left of the cigarette before having it consume itself in flames, moving a bit closer to Allenby and studying her closely.

[soulinherfists]

No better time, really, especially when 'people to trust' seemed to be getting fewer and fewer. Not that Allenby trusted the Department heads, really, but still...

"The only thing that's gettin' better is my arm," she said, lifting the one in the sling very slightly. How much of her yelling had he heard? Probably most of it. She hadn't been going too much for subtlety. "I'd rather have it stay broken another month if it'd get my friends out of these pods, though."

[expendable_mind]

"Wouldn't we all give something to have them out?" He replied in a softer tone as he approached.

"I don't know... if it's for the best or not. Right now, none of us do all things considered. All that's left to do is to carry on their wishes right? And if I'm not mistaken, everyone of them wanted this shit won."

[soulinherfists]

"Yeah... guess so." Zouichi wasn't the only one she'd like to see again, that was for sure. Splicer had friends too, she was certain, along with, well, just about everyone. "Too bad. When we're all done kickin' the Daligig out, they're gonna be real disappointed that they missed the party."

[punchedoutdestiny]

Looks like someone beat him to looking around in the caverns, albeit in a more spirited way than he'd planned on doing.

Once he gets close, Simon sighs as he leans against a railing. "Can't just sit idle, huh?"

[soulinherfists]

"No," Allenby said through gritted teeth, looking back at Simon. "I can't. I can't seem to get anyone back, either."

She didn't look away from him for a long moment. Simon... what if he was next? Allenby hated the thought, but it wasn't as though he was quiet about his desire to get rid of the Daligig, either.

[punchedoutdestiny]

He sighs again, looking up at the various pods for a moment. "You've been here longer than I have, Allenby," he starts, still kind of gazing off into space. "So I'm sure you've noticed that...stuff doesn't work right. As mad as we were, those big lugs shouldn't have been much trouble, if any."

[soulinherfists]

Allenby frowned as she digested that. Did he mean something like a power dampener, like SHODAN had done? But she had noticed that straight away when she'd tried to jump into her Gundam. Then again, her abilities were pretty standard as far as she was concerned. But it was true that the Kessek had been dishearteningly good at taking them out.

"You mean like... we're gettin' messed around?" she said. "Like they got an unfair advantage over us?"

[mythoughtsoncloning]

Someone in familiar blue pajamas blues and reds zipped over to where the two were. He'd been having a quiet moment in the Pod Caverns, wondering where all the people he cared about had gone and trying to convince himself searching every pod with X-Ray vision was an impossible task even at superspeed. That's when he'd heard the screaming. Superhearing and all.

"That is a powerful set of lungs you've got there."

[punchedoutdestiny]

"Maybe...I dunno. Maybe there's something about this ship restraining something. I just know that kind of beatdown hasn't happened to me before. Not without being able to turn it around, at least... Maybe I'm more rusty than I thought."

That train of thought got derailed somewhat, by a somewhat familiar person. Simon blinks for a moment, then points at Kon. "...hey, weren't you that streak of blue that knocked one of those big lugs off of Allenby?"