After receiving the warning the Tapestry had provided them, along the order to begin preparations from Councillor Kang, the crew had been getting ready for upcoming combat with the Ohm.

Unfortunately, the rather vague nature of the warning they received meant they had no particular way of knowing exactly when this battle would occur. Understandably, this put some of the crew on edge, but at the very least they had some prior warning that they would be facing the Ohm, rather than being thrown blind into such a dangerous situation. Combat drills, vehicle maintenance and armory inspections seemed to be regular sights for the week or so following Kang's message. Not much time to prepare, but the crew worked with what was given to them.

Eventually, however, the call came.

||Alert, Alert,|| Stacy called out throughout the ship, ||Priority One message from GIA High Command. All crew members please report to the Obs Deck. Repeat, Priority One message from GIA High Command, All crew members please report to the Obs Deck...||

Stacy kept repeating the message over and over until the crew began making their way towards the Obs Deck to receive the message.

[ooc: As implied by the post, we're assuming the crew's ICly had a one-to-two week heads-up about the battle. It was supposed to be played out, but RL timing prevented this from working out. Feel free to come up with the details of your character's preparations on your own

Also, as usual, please wait for subthreads to go up before tagging in.

Edit: It's up! Feel free to start tagging in!]

[Takes place right after clone plot and arriving back on Stacy. After there]

“First sharks and now explosions!” The Doctor held up his ruined sonic screwdriver and turned it in the light. “I’ll have to proof against both, I suppose.”

He crossed the Hanger in long strides, expecting Otter Soother Daniel Jackson to keep up. Daniel had held himself rather well during the whole clone thing and what was more, he even saved his sonic for him! The Doctor found himself feeling rather fond of the human right this moment. Good man! Resourceful! But also being annoyingly close-mouthed about what he might have picked up from that encounter with the Other Doctor, which was surprising because he thought he knew humans and if there was anything he learned from all his time amongst them, it was they loved talking almost as much as he did! Questions in particular were their favorite, no matter how obvious or rhetorical or downright silly. Big big fan of the obvious questions. Basically they were a chatty species.

Part of the reason why he’d asked Daniel to come with him to the TARDIS.

If he was lucky, Daniel would tell him what he’d seen from that clone on his own, given enough time and company.

The Doctor was tucking the sonic back into his pocket when they came into sight of the TARDIS. He only paused for the briefest of beats as he took in the fact the old girl’s doors were wide open, positively gaping open! This wasn’t looking very looked out after and he wondered if maybe Jamie’s memory retention was failing thanks to him being an ex-dead man. Clearly the human needed a talking to! He approached cautiously, poking his head inside.

Everything in the console room looked in order, if you ignored the suspicious trail of foam cups leading away from the door and a few minute scratches on the glass which he knew for a fact hadn’t been there since he last checked. The Doctor’s lips pursed as he peered about, head weaving as he checked under the control console and then straightened. Where was Jamie? In fact, where were the rest of his friends?

“Better have a look around,” the Doctor lied, perhaps too cheerfully. “Long time away from home and I’m afraid River’s gone and organized things. I’m very specific on my organization system, I’ll have you know.”

He made a vague shooing motion at Daniel.

((So basically this is thread two, with the Doctor/Daniel/Rory jumping into a TARDIS taken over by the Master. Since the Master can switch up rooms (up to the players in the threads for what's wrong with the rooms) and trap people/shift people around, I guess assume timey-wimey things to allow different characters to stumble into each other? But yeah, I guess do subthreads for characters stumbling and we can subthread different people running into them.

I think we're looking at people in the TARDIS as: Victoria, Martha, The Master, River, Jamie, Doctor, Daniel, Rory, Amy, Eva. If I missed anyone, poke me!))

The Master strolled through the Hangar with his hands clasped behind his back, looking like someone who had all the time in the world. And even if that wasn't particularly true, he wasn't in a hurry at the moment. He was waiting for someone.

To pass the time, he examined the array of ships before him... and inwardly laughed at how primitive some of them were. Only one of these ships would ever get his full attention.

The TARDIS itself was never far away, even as the Master wandered. He could see it now out of the corner of his eye, a ridiculous blue box gathering dust, quite possibly as useless as its owner, nestled in what looked like a graveyard for relics. He'd jettison it into space if he didn't need it.

But he did. It made the Master smile to think how the Doctor must have assumed it was safe enough to leave here. How he underestimated him! A locked door, even an indestructible one, meant little when a key was so easy to obtain. And getting this particular key to cooperate had been child's play for a Time Lord.

[ooc: This is backdated to not *too* long after the Master's podpop, during the clone plot. Jamie is going to let the Master into the TARDIS in the first, marked thread; others should tag in a separate thread below it so their characters can encounter him once he is inside. Pre-emptive trigger warnings for violence and mental messing around.]

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.]

[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... )

Team Mike, please report to the... a pause ...it's large, it's French, does everyone know what the Notre Dame looks like? Hold on, I'll send a photo on your comms.

The Doctor, seated on the steps, pauses to do as he just said. With some juggling of his communicator and omnicom and, all right, perhaps some slight screwdriver-y, he gets it done with minimal difficulty.

As I was saying. Team Mike, please report to the Notre Dame, Team Mike, please report to the Notre Dame.

He pauses again, laying down to wait, ankles crossed.

Master, that does mean you as well. No, we're not changing the name.

"What the HELL!!? What the hell are all of us then? Loose trash?"

Rose doesn't appreciate being manhandled by the tentacles EVER, but she appreciates being dismissed from the new and exciting stuff and stuck in this sentient prison thing while everybody else gets to go and DO something even MORE!

They sent the guy with the freaking STICK but not HER?!

She gives the wall a good punch in frustration and anger and a little pinging voice promptly informs her that she's just racked up a violation. So she kicks the wall and racks up a second.

( Yeah well... )

The Meeting is interrupted.

There is a resounding mental alarum that sounds through the ship. Nearly "deafening." Lights flash from places for extra emphasis, making it impossible to ignore.

||Attention, Attention. All personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention. All personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention, all personnel...||

They can hear it through the meeting bubble and Jaime drops it.

It's entirely likely that she won't stop repeating the announcement until, well, everyone reports to Obs Deck. The mouth in the huge statue opens, revealing a screen. On it, the dossier for the mission flickers into display, understandable to every person there. Smaller copies of the dossier appear in holographic form in front of everyone.

The planet's stats, right next to a rotating picture of it, marled blue and green, are as follows:

( Mission Dossier )

Now, it seems, the unpleasant aftermath of the Yeerk insurrection has finally died into obscurity. Right? Right?

Every Yeerk has been expelled from their respective hosts, the Sub-Visser was dead and their machine left in ruins. Right? Right?

Ahem. There's still one Yeerk to account for. Specifically, the Yeerk that had tried to get cozy in the Doctor's brain only to wind up aiding the crew to locate and eliminate the threat to Stacy. After the battle, the implanted and injured had been interned in the Med Bay, and this Yeerk was no different. It sits in a draw, to the rear of the lab, stewing in a small, handheld vat of a very necessary fluid. And it sits there for minutes, hours, days. Patiently, mostly out of terror, waiting.

And now everyone seems to have forgotten, or at least moved on to the next mission. Now is when the Master goes and fishes his chum out of his obscurity. He takes the vat from its draw and scurries off to the 'blind spot' that his ill-fated accomplice Scorpius had found.

"Howzit, old chum?" He establishes a telepathic field. For a Time Lord of his age and disposition, it comes naturally.

Enough games. Release me.

"Ah-ah-ah, you know what I want." the Master waggles a finger, his eyebrows raised.

Of course. The schematics in exchange for my freedom.

"And? Don't forget--"

No interference. We are quite aware of that term.

"Excellent, let's take a walk. I do love a good stroll around the duck pond on a Sunday." The Master dunks the Yeerk back into the vat and skips off into the city, cheerily whistling one of Cyndi Lauper's more notorious hits.

Allen is picking through the Special Weapons division. He has a pile of Stuff in the corner that he's gathered so far - it's small, given that the slightly wrecked wing has already been picked mostly clean. But that was for serious things, and this is a personal project.

He hums cheerfully to himself as he works, in spite of, or perhaps at, the room's aura of evil.

||All crew-mates. Please report to the Obs Deck to meet your new crew-mates.||

It's time for all the newbies to get a chance to have a formal meeting with the crew. Given the confusion of their arrival, that's probably a good thing.

Word gets out among the crew mates, spreading in a game of whisper down the meat-alley, that an informal crew meeting is what's happening, free from Stacy's prying ears, and sure enough, as soon as everyone's in the room, they're gestured to move in close, and a wall of blue energy goes up around them all.

((ooc note))

Mai had discovered the Sensorium earlier in the journey, but due to a variety of things (brain slug parasites chief among them) she'd never really had a chance to explore it properly. She'd dropped in, bored again. After all, exploring was something, wasn't it? And maybe she could find Zuko. Instead, the Sensorium had given her a replica of Ember Island. Devoid of people, but it was Ember Island on a summer's day. She was standing on the simulated beach, not quite sure what to think. For a brief moment, she'd thought she'd gone back home. Then she'd remembered that this place simulated things.

For the first time in her life, she actually missed her home and parents. They'd been strict, but they were still her parents. She sighed softly and then sat down, running fingers through the sand. Why did it feel so real?

Xander had spent longer with the Yeerk in his head so it had plenty of time to wriggle its way into his very chocolatey Xanderyness. He was not enjoying the latest mental viewing of girlfriends who somehow got 'jinxed.'

"Come on, just jump out already."

Down in the city, behind a holographic wall, an epic battle for the whole of Stacy was taking place.

The Yeerks had dug out a portion of Stacy's 'brain' and built a machine that would let them wipe it clean, let them take her over and control her. It would also probably destroy the coordinates that would let the rest of the crew find their way home, but the Yeerks didn't particularly care about that. They knew their own coordinates, that was all that mattered.

Bumblebee, the Doctor, and the Master had found the machine, following the directions of the very unfortunate Yeerk that had wound up in the Master's hands. They'd brought an unconscious West with them and were shortly confronted by Sub-Visser 7, the leader of this particular batch of Yeerks. Scorpius had apparently attempted to first team up with and then betray the Sub-Visser -- what the result of that was, the Sub-Visser hadn't said.

But between two Time Lords and an Autobot, they should have no problems taking down one baseline human, right?

Well, that was before he'd brought out the Taxxons. Giant, flesh-eating alien centipedes, driven by a mad hunger to devour anything that couldn't run away fast enough. They weren't very sturdy, and they would immediately fall upon any Taxxon unfortunate enough to be injured, but there were hundreds of them. And they just. Kept. Coming.

And over all the fighting, the machine that would wipe Stacy's brain was slowly charging up...

((OOC note.))

There are three major things happening. One of them is that the crew is sweeping through the ship, scanning whoever they find, and shipping the restrained Controllers back to the MedBay with some crew members.

Another is Paco--or his Yeerk, at least--is leading Scorpius, who appears to have betrayed the crew, towards the machine, hidden away in an alcove in the city, attached to one of the fleshy walls near one of Stacy's nerve clusters. It took them quite a while to find it.

The Yeerks do so love collaborators.

The last thing happening is the Doctor, Master, and Bumblebee, with the last one carrying an unconscious West, are hunting for that same machine and closing in.

With all these thing happening at once, the shit is, as they say, about to hit the fan.

Ax had escaped the Controllers on board. Brainy had not been so lucky. Neither had Sam and Tim. And who knew how many others on board had Yeerks wrapped around their brains, controlling their every movement, pretending that everything was normal until the time came to strike.

Who do you trust, podlings?

The Master waits somewhere between three and four hours for Brainiac-5 to vacate the Medical Wing before setting up shop himself. He takes a free station (okay, so that may not be entirely unused...) and uncerimoniously dumps on it an assortment of the tools he's picked from the weapons lockers. Nothing heavy duty, he's mostly picked multitools and anything with enough internal components to cannibalise into something more useful.

Pulling up a chair and propping a pair of goggles on his forehead, he sets about looking for something to strip the equipment with.

((ooc: Open post, feel free to pester him.))

"Listen up! Everyone gather in close. There's something we need to discuss."

She turns to Jaime and the telepaths. "Ready?"

There's a vorp and all of a sudden, everyone on Obs deck is surrounded by a blue shield, protecting them from the watching eyes of Stacy's (functioning sensors). The telepaths are standing by to make sure Stacy doesn't try to read their minds and to block her if necessary (although at the last meeting, she didn't try it).

"Do not be alarmed by the blue shield. That is one of the ways we're currently being shielded from Stacy so we can talk without being overheard."

( Let the meeting get underway... )

They've been bickering the entire time up to the Living Area.

"While I'm loathe to interrupt your trivial musings, the signal is coming from in here--"

There's no one currently in the Obs Deck, but there are some belongings carelessly scattered about.

While chaos was going on in the city, a level below the Living Areas, the rest of the ship was functioning normally. Stacy, apparently oblivious to goings on in the city, likely do to her malfunctioning sensors there, carried on with ship business.

||Pod Release Protocols Initating,|| Stacy's familiar voice sounded out to the upper levels, though no one was there to hear her. They were all downstairs, fighting for their lives against giant cockroaches.

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

The usual condensation and mist sprayed out from cracks in the pods, they ripped open and the people inside slid out onto the floors, covered in slime. One of them, due to his mechanical nature, slid out covered in a sort of oil mixture, in a smaller body than he'd once had.

Pop. Poppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiissss.

There was no one already freed from the ship to greet them, only Stacy herself, and the empty silence of a ship caught in the middle of a crisis.