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He'd handled it well, in the beginning at least.

However, months upon months upon months of being stuck in this ship have started to take their toll on Bri.

And even as much as he cares for her, he didn't think he'd miss Deunan this much.

For the past couple of weeks, he's managed to make himself scarce from all the other people, taking time to himself to cool off.

Now, though, he's feeling a bit more sociable, so right now he's up in the Obs Deck, laying back on one of the meat-couches as he looks out the massive window.

Feel free to talk to the slightly mopey cyborg. He looks like he could use it.

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Behind him, there was a skittering noise and something crawled out of the vents:

(http://s607.photobucket.com/albums/tt152/clayinIcons/?action=view&current=squirrel.jpg)

Ax dropped the last few feet to the floor and allowed the squirrel brain to scrub at his face with his little squirrel forepaws. Well, that hadn't been quite as successful as he had hoped. On the other hand, he could now get from the Media Library to the Obs Deck without using the hallways. That would perhaps be helpful at some point.

Bri sits up and turns to see what made the noise.

"...the fuck?" is his reaction.

(http://s607.photobucket.com/albums/tt152/clayinIcons/?action=view&current=squirrel.jpg)

Ax whipped around, tail fluffing up as adrenalin flooded the squirrel body. Recognizing the speaker however, he forced himself to relax.

< Ah, Bri. Hello, I haven't seen you in some time. How are you? > he said, chittering to himself in squirrel.

It takes him a moment to remember that no, he's not crazy and yes, there are crewmates that can turn into squirrels.

"Hey, Ax. I've been..." he gestures vaguely. "...better."

Ax began to demorph as Bri spoke, preferring to avoid any possibility of being trapped as a squirrel. It was incredibly hard to tell the time on this ship, it was a metaphorical headache as well as a physical one.

< I think most of us have been better, > he said as the endless squirrel-chittering ceased as his lips and teeth sealed together to form a mouthless Andalite face. The gray fur turned blue and shooped back into his tail as the blade sprouted from the end. < Still, my sympathies. >

...Yeah. That's still weird.

"What about you? Heard about that whole...whatsit, Yeerk incident. From your world right? One of the AIs had me elsewhere when it happened."

Had Bri said that out loud, Ax would have told him that it never really became not weird.

< I am all right. My older brother is here, > he said, stretching a little as he completed his demorph. < The Yeerks are from my universe, yes. Fortunately, they were defeated swiftly once we were able to find out where the Pool was. I only wish we had found it sooner. > He paused. < Where were you being kept? We had noticed that some crew members disappear and we forget them until the reappear again, and were wondering who else might be hidden away on board. >

"It was sorta like an obstacle course," he says. "The one AI, GLaDOS, seemed to be running it for weird...tests...on crewmates. From the way she talked, it seemed like she did that from time to time, just taking crewmates and having them run through the course. It was weird."

He pauses for a second.

"...And never believe anything she says about a cake. Dirty, dirty lies."

< Do you know where the obstacle course was in reference to anything we've already mapped on the ship? > Ax asked. The name of the AI might be important, too. Cortana and Andromeda had both been abducted, just like the crew, so it was possible that someone was familiar with this "GLaDOS".

< Cake? >

"Couldn't tell. She took me while I was sleeping, and I was sort of out of it by the time I got back out."

Somehow, despite the fact that he doesn't really have any facial features, Bri gets a serious look on his face as he nods at Ax.

"Cake."

Ax scuffed his hoof against the floor in disappointment. Well, it had been worth a shot, at least.

< Why would she lie about cake? > he asked. Which really only reminded him how long it had been since he'd eaten an actual cinnamon bun. It felt like a good deal longer than it actually had been -- this must be what humans felt like all the time.

~~YOU HAVE NO IDEA OMNOMNOMCINNAMONBUNS~~

He shrugs. "Cause she's a cruel, heartless person...thingy?"

Briareos Hecatonchires. Master of the english language.

"Heartless" was definitely a figure out speech, and "thingy" was a term Ax had heard the other Animorphs use, so Bri's mastery over the English language didn't confuse him too badly.

< That could very well be the case. >

"Either way," he said, "just don't believe anything she says. Except when she says you'll probably die if you screw up her course. There were a couple of nasty drops in there..."

< You should mention that at the next meeting, > Ax said, furrowing his brows in an Andalite frown. < Did she give you anything to assist you in completing the course? >

"I will," he said with a nod. "At first I thought mine was just an isolated incident, but I've been hearing about more and more people getting taken like that. We should probably start warning people about GLaDOS."

He pauses to think for a moment.

"There was this one thing she gave me for a couple parts of the course. It was sort of like a...portal gun, I guess. Wherever you shot it, it created one end of a portal that led to wherever else you shot it. Only problem was that she didn't let me keep it long enough to really examine it or bring it back for one of the engineers to take a look."

< It hasn't happened to me yet, but it was made especially obvious when someone who had been on board earlier was released again, with a Yeerk included. >

Admittedly, the Yeerk may have not been running GLaDOS' gauntlet. Both he and the host had seemed a bit dazed, like they had been frozen. That would also explain how the Yeerk had survived as long as he had.

< That gun sounds very interesting, > Ax said. Certainly beyond Andalite technology, not that he would admit it unless asked. < Certainly mention that, too. >

"Nice ears," Luly comments as she spreads out a makeshift blanket (once upon a time, a wall tapestry down on the cty level--depicting a brave knight charging on horseback at a dragon) and sits on it. Despite her casual comment, she seems rather interested in Briareos, by the way she keeps glancing over at him.

He glances over at her, one of his antennae dipping down to the side. On the tip, a small camera lens was visible.

"They're also eyes, technically."

Luly leans closer as she sees that, eying the camera critically. "But you've already got... doesn't that get disorienting?" She's honestly not sure if Bri is a cyborg or a robot, though she's leaning towards the former... even if it seems like a distinctly confusing idea to her.

"Oh, the first couple of days were weird as hell. But I got used to it eventually."

He taps the side of his head.

"You'd be surprised what they can do with advanced neural-integrated circuitry. Eventually it was like I had these my whole life."

"What made you go with that instead of having the original parts regrown?" she asks, as if that were somehow a completely feasible option.

"I was sorta unconscious at the time. Landmine to the face. Nasty stuff. Plus they hadn't developed the Bioroid tech that could do that at the time."

Somehow, he manages to say that just as nonchalantly as she did.

"Eugh. ...'bioroid' tech?" Luly asks. She's starting to realize there may be some cultural disconnect here with the sort of medical technology that she takes for granted.

"Bioroids--biological androids, essentially. They were developed in Olympus to act as 'population stabilizers' when a massive chunk of the world's population got wiped out in World War III. They act completely human, except they're waaaaay more mellow."

He taps on his arm.

"They also used the same tech to develop prosthetics, though cyborgs are still really popular. Some people even go out of their way to become full-body cyborgs even if they aren't wounded. It's sorta become like this whole...sub-culture thing."

"Oh... no, we don't have that," Luly says as she processes the implications, face going kind of numb at the comparative insensitiveness of what she asks. "Where I'm from it's just—get a licensed doc and go through the rituals and they'll grow back anything you're missing." She holds up her right hand, waggling the fingers. "I lost this whole arm my second year of academy, some idiot mechanic hadn't had his gear hooked up right and I tried to use it..." She makes a splinching motion at the shoulder with her other hand. She's babbling a little, trying to (poorly) make up for any offense she might have caused.

Bri is...impossible to offend, really. Unless you mess with Deunan. And since she isn't here, he's just a really mellow guy.

"That sounds kinda neat, actually."

...Yup. That's Bri.

"Yeah, it's... I thought everybody worked like that," she says bluntly. "And that we just didn't have any medical sorcerers on board." Her face relaxes as she tries to process through the implications of that. Like... surgery to fix things? That's positively medieval, her face clearly states.

He shrugs.

"Eh, well, considering how technology is on this ship, I wouldn't be surprised if the medbay has tech like that stashed somewhere."

"It's not something you can do with just tech," Luly says, shaking her head. "There has to be a sorcerer involved... I mean, I guess you might rig something up as an extra energy source, but..." She shrugs a little, looking kind of helpless. "Not really my field of study, though."

"Not mine either. Mine is..."

He mimes holding up a rifle.

"Ka-pow!" he says, pretending to fire.

Luly grins. "I'm a pilot. Heavy weapons mecha, frontline stuff... I'm the one who gets to go in first and be the distraction to cover for everybody else."

Her expression is a little quizzical. She keeps trying to study Bri's face and then getting lost at the mechanical-ness of it.

Most of Bri's facial cues came from his antennae and the metal flaps where his cheeks would have been.

When he's happy or surprised, his antennae seem to perk up. When he's sad or serious, his antennae droop. When he's curious, one antenna will raise above the other, and when he's agitated, his cheek-flaps will open outward briefly.

It's all very...surreal, the first time you see it.

"Sounds like Deunan," Bri says with a chuckle. "She likes to use Landmates, which are basically 10-foot tall mecha-suits."

"Huh," Luly says, immediately picturing one of the suits of power armor she's familiar with about the same. "I pilot... well, Colopatiron's about forty feet tall if you stand him up all the way."

She stares at Bri's face a bit more.

One of Bri's antennae dips down slightly in a confused manner.

"...Do I have something on my face, or am I just that pretty?" he says jokingly.

Luly laughs, albeit in a mildly confused way. "It's just, uh... I keep trying to read your face and it doesn't work like how I'm used to. ...Sorry."

That gets another chuckle out of Bri.

"That's alright. I'm still getting used to the fact that some people here come from worlds that don't have every one in ten people as cyborgs."

"One in ten... wow. You don't see that kind of thing where I'm fromt at all unless they're really hardcore military who wanted to upgrade themselves or something." Her expression suggests she'd like to poke and prod Bri but is holding back. "How it usually turns out is... you're totally fine after a sortie or you're dead, because of the kind of healing sorcerers can do."

"Most people only have minor prosthetics, like an arm or an eye," he says. "Most of the full-body cyborgs are ones who did it themselves simply because they wanted to. It's actually fairly rare to see people like me who had to undergo massive reconstructive surgery because of an injury.

"I don't think I've ever really understood the mindset of people who do it on purpose," Luly says with a little nod. "Where I come from, at least... if you're going to be a military type, anything blatant won't really help anyway except reflex boosting, since you're relying on your power armor anyway."

Bri shrugs.

"Well, a lot of them go for combat models, like myself. Some of them also have special equipment connected directly into their nervous system."

He leans in slightly.

"Mine has a device that lets me remotely hack into digital equipment. Only problem is, I'm not much of a hacker, so I mostly use it to deal with low-security doors."

That makes Luly grin. "I, uh, I just blow the locks in," she says with a bit of a smirk. "Or remove the door..." She mimes pulling the pin from a grenade. "I've tried having an electronic warfare AI ride shotgun with me sometimes, but it usually can't keep up with me."

That gets a laugh out of Bri.

"Nothing like the old-fashioned ways, huh?"

"Yeah... you should see me in a Tymazzi," she says, pronouncing the weird foreign word without breaking stride. She gestures in a quick motion. "Whoosh." And then she realizes Bri probably doesn't know what she's talking about-- "Blitz armor," she adds, a little sheepishly. "Oh, three hundred KPH on level ground, easy. And I'm not one of the wimps that slows down to do anything with it."

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