A mass of zombies has laid seige to the Vatican.

Time to fight for your lives!!!

Stacy jerks and shudders to a sudden stop, likely upsetting more than a few things already upset because the comms have stopped working. And deep down inside Stacy, on the first level, a little section thoughtfully titled "Contagion Containment and Quarantine" spilled open.

Hal 9000 had opened it up. And the things that had been kept there were still alive.

Or at least, they were moving...

Their groans echoed through the lower level as they spilled out of Quarantine 1, shambling and shuffling toward the Hub. The Hub would take them where they wanted to go. And what they wanted to do first was make some new friends.

So they went to the Pod Caverns. Then, after that, the zombies started heading up to the City...

[[OOC: Holy $#%&, Team Left Behind, ZOMBIES. Going to set up some subthreads, please wait until I do! INFO HERE, FIRST SUB-THREAD GO GO GO!]]

The Vatican had a lot of ground to cover. Normally covered in expansive gardens (just empty plots on the ship) and comprised of a multitude of buildings, holing up there meant holing up in simply a part of the Vatican. The group was therefore in St. Peter's Basilica, which had had most of its entrances sealed off. Now they had to work on small windows and a few other entrances left neglected, but overall, it was a very defensible position. There were no exits other than the ones leading to the sacristy and treasury--which was their main avenue of escape, and heavily guarded. The prisoners were being kept in this area, and guarded by the rear guards, as leaving them in the prison was deemed too dangerous for their safety. As bad as they'd been with the Yeerk conflict, they were crew, and no one wanted them to die.

The courtyard was a chokepoint. Gunners could sit on the roofs of the buildings running alongside the courtyard to strafe St. Peter's square from the sides.

The various chapels and vestibules along the sides made excellent areas for food, medical, and weapons supplies to be gathered, and most were clustered in the middle of the basilica. The Medical area was in the Chapel of the Column, the main weapons and ammo caches, and Food storage areas were in the two Transepts, respectively, to the sides of the Papal altar. Pews all in the main areas had been converted to sleeping areas, right in the center of the whole place.

There was still work to be done, before the other group could leave. Last minute barricades, blocking more windows, moving the last of the medical supplies, inventorying the food, and so on. Then it would be time to hunker down.

So push up your sleeves and lend someone else a hand, folks.

[ooc: Read instructions for these threads here!]

Jaime Reyes voice sounds over the comm-rings--all of them--and it sounds very urgent.

« Everyone on the ship, listen up! This is Jaime Reyes, your local 'Blowing this pop stand' coordinator and escape facilitation engineer. I need everyone on the ship to come to the City, in front of the Precinct, immediately. Grab people who don't have their comm rings with them--and tell them to grab their comm rings, people who are sleeping, whoever you find, and try to make sure everyone on the ship knows to come. This is very important. This is "getting the heck out of here" important. »

When they arrive, they arrive to find the Command Staff waiting, and a tiny, tiny young man standing on stone ledge from a fountain, waiting for them.

Here goes nothing.

The ship was a big place for the little gamin, and even after being here for quite some time, he still hadn’t seen all of it. He finally decided to take it in parts, on corridor one day, another the next, find all the holes, nooks and crannies and then make sure he kept them in his mind. It might not have been Paris, but for now, it was his home.

He walked along, his hat pulled tight around his ears, humming a made-up tune about eggs and women (of less than proper profession). Eventually he would memorize the entire ship’s floor plan, even if that day wasn’t going to be today.

Well, that was strange. The last thing she remembered, she'd been in her bunk. So how had she gotten here in the middle of the hallway? Shaking off the initial disorientation, she shrugged slightly and started to walk. She didn't have any particular place in mind, it was just a walk. It felt like it had been a long time since she'd done anything. But there didn't seem to be a way to check what the time was, so she just shrugged it off as oversleeping. She'd never done that before. But maybe she'd been tired.

She just kept walking though. And eventually, her feet led her to the City. She'd never been to this part of the ship before, but the buildings seemed more familiar, if somewhat more reminiscent of Old Earth architecture than she was used to. Running her hands along the brick wall of one of the buildings, she looked up toward the crest of a hill and saw the Parthenon. Hadn't Déjà taught them about that before? It was a place the Greeks had held sacred, a temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare.

Walking up the hill, she reverently touched the stone pillars. Moving to the center of the floor she lowered herself to her knees, feeling suddenly tired and worn. Strange. Shaking her head, she knelt, head bowed, eyes closed letting herself feel the place. To worship, in her own way, the goddess who, if she'd believed in such things, ran her life.

"Beatus mihi,
Quod servo mihi,
Dea,
Duod illud EGO pugna pro." She whispered into the silence.

Bless me and protect me, Goddess, and all those I fight for.

She never thought Déjà's latin would have come in handy. But in this place. It felt right.

Roxie has been doing a lot of work here and there on her little ex-vet's-office. It's a small building, barely big enough for a reception area and a few offices and storage areas. She's taken down the alien lettering of the sign out front of the building, leaving it a freestanding blank, and an odd pile of removed shelving and cabinetry sits off to the side of the lot.

She's decided to leave the building to air out, today: there's the faint stink of drying paint coming from somewhere in there, wafting out through the open windows (in all room but one, the windows of which seem to have been painted over with black from the inside) and doors.

And Roxie herself, well, she's sitting in a rolling office chair that's been dragged out onto the sidewalk out front, and her head is leaning back with her eyes closed.

Vega's bummed out by being treated like a kid, true, but the worst of it is the general atmosphere on the ship is pretty grim. Vega can do grim, but... this is just depressing. He doesn't even really understand what happened, he hasn't really asked. It's probably something miserable, so he's okay with not knowing the gory details.

But this kind of sucks, so he's turning to the sensoriums to cheer him up.

His footsteps echo on the floor of the empty hangar as he heads toward the berth at the end. A pair of slitted red optics light up as he approaches, a hulked figure of black body metal and pale armor shifts a little. The Berserk Fury. His Zoid. Forty feet tall at its full height, 127 tons of tyrannosaur-shaped warmachine.

"Hey, buddy."

The Zoid responds with a low, bass rumbling noise but does not move otherwise. Vega walks up to it, placing a hand to its lowered snout and sweeping it across the metal.

He misses the Fury. He really hopes that the ship's got it here for real, too, but pretend helps a little bit.
He plans on taking it out to fight.

Vega's being very sneaky. Well, okay, actually not. He's trotting down a hall on his way to the city, making sure to throw some hallway twists in to potentially lose any adults pursuing him. Mostly though, he's feeling pretty pleased with himself. Lock him up in the sensoriums like a little kid when interesting things are happening, huh?

He wants to go see what's up with this whole Yeerk mindslug thingy, is it so much to ask?
It can't be all that dangerous.

All told the Sensorium wasn't a bad place to be holed up in by any means. It offered fantastical adventures to every corner of the imagination, certainly. Any kind of amusement a kid could want was here: colorful rainbow castles filled with gentle princesses and brave knights, giant platform videogames where you yourself could be the one jumping on monster's heads and dodging falling blocks, amusement parks and ice creams, paintball and petting zoos.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that the adults were doing something important and they were doing it without them. And here they'd been ordered to stay in the sensoriums. Things were happening!

Yuri and her fellow kids debated what they should use the chamber for loudly as they awaited the arrival of their guardian(s).

Today should have been weeks ago. Truthfully, he hadn't been ready for it--even on a temporary basis, it was a strange sort of betrayal to take the responsibilities of another team, when there wasn't even any members of SG-1 on it. Leading a team was always a tricky business, and it was often something Cam preferred to tackle only after long deliberation and planning. This was compounded by the fact that Stacy had essentially tossed a group of random strangers together without preamble, and chosen a leader just as arbitrarily.

Of course, the ship wouldn't have just messily thrown anyone together as was convenient, or he wouldn't have gotten an addition to the team later on. Clearly the AI had some way of gauging their skills and finding a complementary combination. However, he did not possess those personnel files. Aside from Dr. Lam, who should not have been on the field, he had no idea what array of strengths, talents, personalities, vices, and weaknesses his impromptu team possessed. That by itself was a recipe for inevitable disaster. The fact that he had no way of knowing whether they were military, or whether they would accept an arbitrarily chosen leader (presumed skills or no) meant that the disaster would very likely happen far sooner rather than later, as soon as they were expected to act as a team.

In lieu of personnel files, buying rounds of drink, and early, rhythm setting missions, Cam would have to come up with alternatives to allow the team to become familiar with one another before they needed to be. He needed to find a way to see how the team members interacted with one another, ferret out peeves, judge where they could be pushed, and determine what unique skill Stacy chose them for before they had a giant alien breathing down their necks.

Most importantly, the team would have to know to trust each other without hesitation, and how to operate together harmoniously, before someone's difficult past and stubborn nature got themselves or someone else killed. On Stacy, there weren't very many ways to prepare a team for that, especially if the team was composed of civilians unused to what would likely be expected of them, or worse, the kind of military men who'd never learned flexibility.

In his own experience, the easiest, least trauma-inducing possibility, was a game of basketball. Many, in fact, but they could start slow, especially if some of them were like the woman he'd met earlier who didn't know the game. The learning of the game could do what he needed just as well.

For now, Cameron stood outside the Sensorium, leaning against a wall and waiting. The sad fact was, he couldn't say for sure when the others would arrive. Even if they all tried to be on time, timekeeping wasn't the most accurate thing on Stacy. Or anything close to that. However, they were in a fairly visible place. He had hope for the best. Even if their watches were off, there was still a good chance they'd all migrate to the right place mostly on time.

Provided they read and listened to the announcement. Apparently it was his turn first, to trust his new team.

[OOC: Despite the fact that Cam has set this up for Team Papa members exclusively, there's no reason someone couldn't just crash the game. He wouldn't prevent them from joining, it. Still on the same side, after all. Sensorium-generated players will augment any uneven teams.]

The Sensorium was dark around him, its empty, featureless state as the default.

Kira closed his eyes for a moment, a part of his mind telling him to not do this - it had been almost two years since he'd last flown, and why just accept war like that? But no, he shook that off. There were things worth fighting for, and this world was one worth protecting. He would need to keep his skills sharp.

All that was left was a proper test of the program he'd written. "Stacy," Kira said aloud, his voice quiet. "Please run program KI_YA_SIMU.01... Setting: Space, Earth Orbit; Craft: ZGMF-X10A Freedom."

As the words left his mouth, the room around him transformed, becoming a cavernous hangar bay that lay open to the star-speckled black of space and the small blue-white-and-green orb that was the Earth as viewed from one of the Lagrange points. His clothes, too, changed - the teal-and-white flightsuit that he had once worn, and it was remarkable how accurate it was to his memory.

He was standing on a walkway forty or so feet above the floor of the hangar bay, a walkway which led to an open cockpit in the chest of the machine standing sixty feet tall in front of him: His Freedom Gundam.

Kira stood there, looking at the familiar Mobile Suit, and felt... nostalgic, in a way. It had been almost a partner to him, hadn't it? And if what he'd been told was true... it would be his partner here, too.

He tightened the seals on the helmet of his flight suit as he walked forward, climbing into the cockpit and strapping himself in. The door slid shut, and the small chamber was dark for a split second before the viewscreens that surrounded him lit up, providing him with an unobstructed view of the hangar bay. For a moment, his breath caught in his throat as he reached to touch the ignition... and then he pressed it.

"Kira Yamato, Freedom. Heading out!"

(ooc: The door to the sensorium is programmed to open into a viewing chamber. Come bug Kira, talk about giant robots, or use your own!)

After being released from stasis, having the slime removed from their bodies and clothed in the creepy, pulsing leaf-suit that everyone wore, and being taken to the Weapons & Possessions lockers to collect their belongings, the new arrivals would find themselves standing in the Observation Deck. Round windows lined the fleshy walls, revealing the bright display of lights that was inter-dimensional travel. They would also discover that there were people--members of the command staff and crew that had woken earlier--waiting for them.

Snake has been on the ship a while now. He's done a pretty good job of casing the place out for his own mental map. Aside from a few places that he couldn't get to... needless to say, being smacked by tentacles isn't fun. He'd rather not repeat that too often. Though some may find his grumbled, "...ow," and small curses under his breath amusing.

But... he can't help it, he has to try to get into the restricted areas. Currently, Snake can be found looking for alternate access routes through Stacy.... even if that means some more smacks from the ship. After all, getting smacked by a tentacle is nothing compared to being shot at so he is being a tad adventurous in his searching.

Leon hadn't been on the ship that long, but in the time he had been stuck here, the number of small children running around has grown quite a bit. When it was just one or two, it was fairly easy to keep an eye on them, but with more? Well, he didn't want to risk them falling through the cracks.

Fortunately, he knew someone who would be glad to keep an eye on them.

Yet another reason why he was glad Claire was there.

He had told Claire he would introduce her to all of the kids on board, so he asked her to meet him down in the city that afternoon, which is where he asked all the kids on board to meet him.

For the newbies, there are people waiting for them in the Obs Deck. A whole gaggle of people. Behind them is the nasty statue, and the beautiful sight through the windows of the stars streaming past and the swirling vortex of collars that was interdimensional travel.

There are more questions than answers, but the crew is willing to help, especially the Command Staff and greeters.

[ooc: Newbie Helpers List | Instructions: Post your character with one post establishing them as being podpopped. 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... )