It was a fact: Stacy was the most awesome place in a universe full of awesome places.  Yes.

There were people, and it was scary that they looked at him and saw him, but they were nice!  Hardly any screaming or crying at all, and best of all, they stayed there and talked to him for a long, long time before fear and/or revulsion drove them away.  And there was food!  Perfect food, made just for him.  He'd never had food made just for him, not when he was in his bloody form!  It was wonderful, and it had come in a vat-sized portion, and he was happy.  So happy.  Much bigger, and so, so happy.

And there were places to explore!  Lots and lots and lots!  He'd never thought there could be a place so big.  There wasn't enough room in his imagining for it.

That was what he was doing now: exploring.  He had fed, and now there were pieces of him washing along in several locations, building a mental map.  To someone with a distant perspective and the right kind of mind, there might have been something pleasing about the intricately branching path of his wandering and the thoroughness with which he explored every surface he could.  In time, he came to the city, and then he all but exploded with enthusiasm.  Big!

To someone with a more personal, immediate perspective and the unfortunate timing to be right there when Duuv came through, it looked like street was suddenly awash with blood.  It swept along in low-crested waves, coiling up walls and anything else that looked climbable, and it had an unfortunate tendency to launch itself off of things, squirting up into the air and expanding into a huge, drifting, happily laughing sheet.  The only mercy was that he was careful to leave a healthy gap between himself and others - though there were many who would say that three feet of personal space was not enough when the other person was a large piece of Duuv.

"Whee!"

[[OOC: This right here is required reading if you're going to tag. OOC organization is here

For too long the firstborn son of Satan's demonic soul had been trapped, denied his rightful control over Daimon's body. Now, thanks to Mei-Xing, he was finally free. The next course of action was obvious- he would have to take control of one of the beings on this ship. He could start with the vulnerable and move on to the more powerful. He had to act fast before that fool recovered. Fortunately he needn't go very far. The city was full of potential victims.

Now, now. Who to possess first?

When she made her contract with Alaya -- the part of the world that governed humanity -- the girl known to history as the King of Knights had understood that it would involve certain sacrifices. She had been pleasantly surprised to learn that in eras well into the future of her own, good food would not be among them. In fact, the cooks -- she was hard-pressed to call them that -- of her own time were so terrible that she had wondered if food was merely a form of punishment. It was only after she had been summoned as the Servant Saber in the Fourth War for the Holy Grail that she had been awakened to a new reality: eating could be a pleasurable experience. That is, if the food was pleasant to the taste.

Whatever this 'food' was that was foisted upon her was decidedly not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination.

It did not seem to be an unreasonable thing: the little blonde was not especially picky about food as long as it tasted good. A simple but tasty (and large) meal was far preferable to a fancy but bland (and small) one. The indecipherable mass she was served was the worst of all worlds: unidentifiable, small... but worst of all, tasteless.

She accepted her 'meal' with her usual impassive expression, seating herself in silence. Yet, she made no move to begin eating, staring at the slop with no change in her stony mask. However, those sensitive to supernatural phenomenon -- or even those who were simply observant -- would most certainly feel the heavy weight of a killing aura surrounding the otherwise proper and elegant young girl as she sat in morose silence.

Karis was bored. She'd trolled some goody two-shoes on the communicator, but aside from the blue guy over in engineering, no one else had really been that interesting. So she did what everyone did when they were bored. She went to the Sensoriums. It didn't take much to call places up from memory - the rolling hills of Tirisfal, the distant sound of the surf on the shore. Dilapidated pine trees. Grass. The odd darkhound or bat flitting through the shadowy, overcast forest.

And, of course, the three armored men facing her down. Their armor was gilded with red and their insignia was that of a red flame on white. The Scarlet Crusade. The enemy. Karis grinned widely and hefted her poleaxe as the three closed on her with swords raised. Time for a decent fight. She blocked the first cut with the haft of her poleaxe and twisted, feeling another blade skitter down the pauldron of her armor. She'd been fighting scum like this for a long, long time.

She took a step back, whipped the poleaxe around and hooked on, bowling him over before the blade came up and crashed down into his chest, smashing through plate and chain. The simulation let out a gurgling scream and died. Messily.

Yeah, this was going to be fun.

It was a mutual decision that Rein and Ed would be passing customers back and forth between each other. Everyone liked clothing and people liked trinkets being made right? As thus being said, they had put up banners and a nice post with "Atelier Elric" <--- and "Stormwind Clothiers" ---> scribbled on it in fancy Crannagan script. Perfectly legible by anyone who knew at least English.

It was here both were getting ready for receiving customers and it was hoping that they would come and use their businesses wisely.

(ooc: easy enough. Put either Ed or Rein in the subject line so I know who you want, and they'll get something created for you, either it be trinkets/small items/etc or clothing. Both have cookies so drop on by. Repeat customers are certainly welcome.

PS: I am feeling much better this morning.)

Billy had just launched another portal in that maze of mazes, exhaustion setting in. Surely this time he would land on another moving platform of death?

Nope, just the exterior of the finished bathhouses. All polished, systems running, and just about ready to open! Given how sore and exhausted he was, that sounded like an excellent idea at the moment.

With a quick message to the rest of the crew, he set out the 'Open' sign for the first time and took advantage of his owner status---the prime waterfall spot could be his!

((ooc: The bathhouses are now open! Feel free to mingle around, relax, and have a party. Or cause trouble, but that might invite more trouble. Just start a subthread with your character's location and have fun. For reference there are individual showers in front, followed by hot tubs centrally located, saunas further back, and private baths along the side. The showers, tubs, and saunas have smaller sex-segregated units along with a central group unit that's larger.))

The past few days have been a whirlwind for Cagalli. Her home, gone, her people, gone... a mysterious ship beyond her comprehension her only salvation. Others too, including many of her friends by some stroke of impossible luck (or was it?).

Having her brother, her best friend, and others she knew here for her kept her together long enough to get her bearings. She had to figure out what this place was like and how things worked, and then find a way to be as useful as she could be. Awe at what was happening and what this place was could only occupy her for so long - she needed to find a job to do before she started thinking too much again.

So far: The food sucked, the living quarters were boring, the hangar and hydroponics were awesome... and she still hadn't checked out anywhere near the whole ship. How anyone made an organic ship, and how they made it this big... she'd probably never know.

Deciding to try something new, she looked at the 'comm ring.' She'd heard the explanation, but had yet to try it out, as busy as she was. First, she sent it a general thought - 'Everyone'. Would that work? On top of that she thought of everyone she'd run into so far, the people she knew as well as the Koopa King and Allenby, hoping that it would prioritize the 'everyone' and then if that didn't work...

She was confusing herself. Time to think at it some more! "Hello? Am I using this right? Can anyone hear me? This is Cagalli Yula Atha, Chief Representative of Orb," she introduced herself. It felt appropriate for a message of this scale.

[OOC: Cagalli's testing out the comm rings from whatever random hallway she happened to get the idea in, though she'll be moving into and through the city as she talks because standing around in a hallway the whole time is boring. Feel free to run into her instead of ringing her!]

With the help of Minion #1 Tavros, Bowser found his way to the Sensoriums and wasted no time recreating huge swaths of the Mushroom Kingdom, cycling through various locales as fast as he could. After wasting copious amounts of time going HOLY CRAP THIS IS AMAZING GWAHAHAHAHA, the Koopa King calmed down enough to remember that he had a duel with a certain book Overlord('s minions) to think about. Bowser decided to go with a flat platform of rock inexplicably floating above a sea of lava, deep beneath the earth- his favored battlefield, back when he'd stolen those 120 stars and sealed everyone in those paintings (just... you know, without the bombs that Mario had thrown him into).

And then it was time to warm up. Bowser cracked his knuckles...

A few minutes later, the Koopa King skidded backwards on all fours, his clawed feet leaving deep gashes in the rock as he braced himself. A split-second later, Bowser catapulted forward with a roar, swinging at his opponent with enough force to smash boulders- and only found air as the unassuming, somewhat chubby mustachioed man in overalls jumped out of the way with impossible speed. Grim-faced, the plumber flicked his wrist, flinging three fireballs before he even touched the ground.

Bowser shielded himself against the first two with his forearms. With a laugh, the hulking dragon turtle straightened up and contemptuously swatted away the last one- "ARGH!!"- before immediately regretting it because OH GOD that stings. Frantically waving his injured hand to cool it down, Bowser snapped his fingers with his GOOD hand. "Goombas! To me!!"

"GOO-RAH!" A horde of squat fungoids dashed toward the plumber just as Bowser fell back, but the human turned on a dime and jumped onto the first Goomba, stomping it flat and catapulting himself onto the next one. In fact, the plumber's feet never touched the ground as he worked his way through the horde, right toward Bowser-

- and the Koopa King immediately sent a stream of fire in Mario's direction. The battle was once again joined.

She'd seen the living area. She'd been hauled around the ship by tentacles. She'd wandered around the pod chamber with Hans, yelling for Domon or Rain or anyone else in the Shuffle Alliance without so much as a stir from the things. And she'd been told that Earth--her precious Earth--was gone, and she had to fight a war against the ones who'd done it. She'd learned that there were at least two Earths, and the other one used their Gundams to kill people that fought wars.

Nobel Gundam was here too. That was one good thing. But it didn't make Allenby feel much better.

She needed to fight. And she had no patience to sit down and figure out the ship's communication system, which meant if she was going to find Hans or another opponent, it would be on foot. So she ran around the city, feet slamming into the ground and an angry look on her face, occasionally leaping up onto smaller buildings and running along the rooftops. If there was anyone in her path, well, it would be best for them just to get out of the way.

[ooc: Newbie Helpers List | 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... )

The rest of the crew assembled on the Observation Deck to meet the latest editions to their numbers. After the revelation that their worlds are gone, many of them are even more eager to see people they knew from home.

Several people are set up near the doors to provide the new people with omnicoms and comm rings. New crew-mates might see a tall man in green armor and snake girl among their number. There are also several authoritative-looking figures ready to introduce themselves.

There's a lot to tell the new people. It's going to be a lot to take in.

[ooc: Only new characters and Command Staff can start new threads for introductions, to limit the number of threads. Everyone else, just tag in and have your guys greet the newbies.]

Kira was thoroughly exhausted from the week's training with the Rogues, but rather than going to his quarters to hop into bed, he almost always went down to the hangar where his Strike Freedom stood, armor inert.

The young pilot stood there for a long while, looking up at the mobile suit in contemplation. They'd been hard at work tuning them up so that they'd be able to fight on the same level as their X-Wing counterparts and soon would be physically overhauling them to increase their output. This was what they'd have to rely on for their survival... for their strength.

He was rather lost in thought, which probably made for a perfect opportunity for someone to come along and snap him out of it.

By this point, the Ohm had spread all across the planet.

Destruction spread throughout the cities of Zokez II. There were evacuees that still needed to escape. People that needed saving.

It was time for the crew to do what they did best.

[ooc: Sub-plots! Check here before tagging.]

As the motorboat puttered along in the open ocean, the princess sat near the edge with her arm dangling over the boat's side, fingers skimming the top of the water. It had been a few days since Lacus had mentioned a picnic, and, while Cagalli had had no idea what she was talking about, she didn't mind the prospect of more time with her friend. Now, however, the blonde was a little more in the know (or so she thought). From what she could tell, things were going to be nice.

She retracted her hand from the water and turned to Lacus, flicking a bit at her with a grin.

"How much farther is this island?" she inquired. "Not that the ride isn't fun, but I'm getting hungry."

It didn't take long for Lacus to decide what she was going to do with her time on shore. The suit Stacy had given her was utilitarian, but she needed some more casual clothes. And most definitely something to wear to the beach. Kira had said the simulators were very good on board, but she was eager to visit the shore, like they had done back home.

Shopping by herself isn't much fun, and so she's managed to find Cagalli and take her, with little mind for any protests, to the store. After a bit of rummaging, Lacus filled Cagalli's arms with clothing and pointed her toward a dressing room, and then did the same for herself.

She pulls back the curtain and emerges in a white and red sundress, giving a twirl as she steps out. She glances around for any opinions of people that might be nearby!

[Closed to the mechanics and engineers who are going to be involved in the Great Rogue Upgrade project. see this com post.]

The sensoriums had been set to look like an empty hangar in which a couple X-Wings sat. Tycho had no idea what else the engineers would need for their initial planing phase, but he figured whatever it was, they could tell the sensorium to create it themselves.

He conjured himself up a crate to sit on, and scrolled through some squadron numbers on his datapad as he waited for everyone to arrive.

It had been exactly a week since she had woken up naked and covered in alien goop she'd rather not think about. Some parts of the past seven days had flown by, and others had dragged on so long that time might as well have been standing still. Eating the mush they were supplied, exploring the ship, spending time in the hangar, being with Kira and the others: it was becoming a routine already.

Despite that, a week wasn't long at all. Things would definitely take some getting used to. Aside from the fact that her home and almost everything she knew was gone, Cagalli was being housed in a living spaceship. She still found herself hesitating when things moved, and, in all honesty, she probably would be for a while.

Now, the young woman sat in a chair, arms rested on the table in front of her. Things were still pretty fresh in her mind, so a little time to reflect was needed. Perhaps a little conversation, too.

Wedge had set up the headquarters for yet another meet and greet operation. The headquarters, of course, was simply an abandoned building with appropriate facilities he had commandeered in the city. A low building of bright red brick, it had at some point been an office complex. Now it was the headquarters of the best fighter squadron anywhere (or so the reputation went). A crude sign and been painted over the front of the building reading 'Rogue Squadron Headquarters,' replacing the precious owners which had advertised for insurance of some type. The front offices had been set up for use by Wedge and his small staff (now including Tycho, Ben and Nura) to run the squadron. Another side room had been set up as a 'pilot lounge,' though at the moment it only had some spare office furniture. Couches and other things were hard to come by on Stacy. Finally, the largest room had been converted into a briefing room of sorts, with a projector and several rows of seating, as well as tables that could be stowed or set up as needed.

At the moment there were simply chairs scattered around the edge of the room. Wedge waited, occasionally checking his chronometer. Hopefully everyone would arrive and mingle, and then he could get down to the business of letting them know exactly what they were in for.

<sub>[[OOC: Feel free to tag each other, please!

The briefing has started!]]</sub>

Char has only one focus in mind when he reaches the hangar - well, technically, two.

Sure enough, there stands his Sazabi, looking to be completely undamaged from its fight with the Nu Gundam standing next to it, despite Char having a rather vivid memory of it being nearly totaled no more than a day ago, tops. Pleased as ever, Char mounts the scaffolding next to it and makes a beeline for the cockpit. He doesn't have any particular plans for the unit (although Nu being right there within punching distance made vandalism awfully tempting), he just feels the need for the familiarity of its cockpit, and the psycoframe system, in the strange, strange new world he had suddenly found himself in.

"Never thought I'd be this attached to a unit," Char mutters to himself as he starts the machine up and dons the psycommu helmet unit to link up with the sensor and weapons systems. "I must be getting dependent in my old--"



"Wh-what the hell is this pressure?" Char practically yells once he's connected to the psychoframe. "It's enormous...could it be the ship?"

Char takes the helmet off, disconnecting himself from Sazabi's psychic enhancement. He's breathing heavily from the effects of the shock. "That's going to take some getting used to."

[ooc: Newbie Helpers List | 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 Initiating|| 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... )