trans_9 | There are times to keep a stiff upper lip

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.

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"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?"

Allenby jerked in surprise at the sudden arrival of Kon, temporarily distracting her from the subject at hand. Despite everything, a corner of her mouth lifted in something between sheepishness and defiance at his remark. "Glad ya think so. Maybe it'll get Stacy to actually listen," she said.

She nodded at Simon's question. "Yeah, that's right. You were the guy flyin' around up there before we all got drugged up." The face, she'd seen that face... right, yeah! She remembered it from his omnicomm profile. "You're Kon-El, right?"

Edited 2012-04-17 04:30 (UTC)

"Yep and yep. You can call me Kon."

Floating down to the meaty floor, he landed lightly. He didn't seem quite as angry at Allenby, but hey, he was here in the Pod Caverns, too, so it was probably fairly clear that he was here for similar reasons.

"You guys all full of rage and fury signifying something at Stacy, too? Seems like she just wanted to kick us in the jimmies, morale-wise, with this last round of repoddings. I lost a bunch of friends, my girlfriend, my cousin, my surrogate lil' sis..."

He nods. "Simon." A beat. "...Councillor Simon now, I guess," he adds, still not sure about getting the title via something like these repoddings. Just doesn't feel right.

"Yeah, something like that," he comments with a sigh. "Friends and housemates for me."

That was a pretty colorful way to put it. It was also 100% accurate. Stacy had completely done away with the tiny shred of credibility she'd gained in Allenby's eyes by stopping Punishment. She grimaced at the list of people Kon rattled off.

"What the hell's wrong with her? Is she just gonna gradually repod every single one of us and bring out a whole new crew again?" Something that Allenby wouldn't put past her.

She gave Simon a friendly sort of nudge with her elbow when he belatedly tacked on his new title. "Hey, I voted for ya. 'Course I dunno how much all that rank and council stuff matters at a time like this. I just want to stick closer with the people that are still here."

"She's always been like this," Kon said, looking up and around. "People coming and going. There aren't many left of the ones that woke up in the really early days. The crew's constantly changed around since the first ones of us woke up. I dunno if the avia thing is true at all, and some of the recent ones definitely seem...strategic, but I'm not sold on Stacy being outright evil, either, and not because of the hokey, in-your-head motherly feelings, either. It's always seemed like she was fighting to get free, too, just like we always have."

Maybe he was wrong, though, in believing in the best in people. Maybe he shouldn't extend that to Stacy.

"Even with all she's done like this, she did refuse to punish Howard and his friend. Granted...I admittedly haven't been here very long, so I haven't seen a lot of the stuff you guys have. I'd still say that counts for something, though."

If believing in the best in people is wrong, Simon doesn't wanna be right.

He half-smiles at Allenby, then scratches his head. "I'm just worried that with what we did at Punishment, it's gonna paint an even bigger target on me."

"Definitely strategic," Allenby said. "And even if she ain't, the Daligig are. They're the ones that push her buttons. Even if she wants to help us, I doubt she can override everything that they tell her--and she didn't stop punishment until the very last second." Her look softened very slightly. Being a puppet controlled by someone else... "Maybe she does want to change things and she can't. But I just can't trust her." Hell, they'd seen what happened when she did try to fix herself. It was called SHODAN.

"Well if that's true, we all got big red targets on ourselves. But if I see any tentacles tryin' to drag you off to the pods, I'll just test out how good my beam ribbon really is on them," she said with a grin. "But we gotta be really fast to--make sure we're okay." To get rid of the Daligig. But this wasn't a great place to talk about that.

"I just wish we could see how all the pieces fit together," Kon said slow, mulling the whole thing over. "There's so much going on here, it's such a big picture, that it's impossible to really know everything that's going on."

He shrugged. "Drives me crazy sometimes. I'm not really a solve-the-puzzle kinda guy. I'm way more 'point me at what I'm supposed to punch.'"

"Yeah. I wouldn't trust her completely at this point, but I wouldn't count her out." He chuckles a little at her comment about the tentacles, and nods at Kon. "I know the feeling. I'd do some crazy stuff if it'd mean we could wake up some of the smart guys from home that would be better-suited to figuring out all this stuff."

Allenby had to laugh, if a little ruefully. "We got a real team here, don't we? Man, if only the problem were that easy to solve we'd be all set." For her part, she could have done with having George de Sand or Rain Mikamura around. In fact, Zouichi had been one of the people she would have counted among the smart guys.

"Well, maybe if we just think of the puzzle pieces as a way to unlock the identity of who we need to punch and how," she said, raising a finger. "And it ain't like there's no brainy people left on the ship, despite the Daligig's efforts."

"...I'm really liking that puzzle analogy. Instead of putting it together and getting a picture of the Taj Majal or three wolves howling at the moon, it's a giant picture of whoever it is with a 'punch me' sign taped to their front," Kon said with good humor.

Tucking his legs up, he floated in the air, just sitting there a few feet up so he was close to eye level, as if he was on an imaginary cushion.

"Speaking of having a real team here, if you ever need someone to watch your backs..."

He jerked his thumb towards himself.

(He appreciated their fighting spirit, okay.)

"Not that I wouldn't try to watch everyone's backs but with Kara and Julian back in the pods, I'm sans most of my usual battle-buddies and I work best as part of a team." All his time with Young Justice and the Titans had shown how much more effective he was--he hit 'em high while other people hit 'em low.

Allenby's not the only one counting Z among the smart guys, even if he did seem a little disbelieving regarding how Simon did things.

There's a bit of a smirk though. "Yeah, that sounds about right. I wouldn't be too torn up if it turned out to be a certain guy that didn't get his way a few days ago," he adds, referring to Yavek.

He nods at Kon. "That'd be appreciated, especially on-board the ship here. I'm a pilot first and foremost, so I'm a little lacking in the actual man-to-man fighting department."

There are times to keep a stiff upper lip

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