There were 8 bombs spread around the ship. The teams were assigned. They had their orders, now they had to carry them out. And pray to whatever they held dear that they could disarm them in time.

Tick tock.

Recognizing, decoding, rearranging, and making sense of star charts was nothing new to the Doctor. Sometimes it would’ve been right after the TARDIS rematerialized in an unknown location where only the scanner was working, trained at the section of sky in which they were stationed; sometimes they could determine the origin or type of species in an area; occasionally putting them in the right location would disarm traps, if the Osirians were any base indication.

This would be the first time he’d ever used his knowledge to piece together a chart of the space between dimensions—for obvious reasons, he didn’t exactly frequent the area you know—but, as per usual, it wasn’t much different from what he was used to. The landmarks were certainly of a different constitution, the language was…new, to say the least. At least the parallels were simple enough to draw.

The Media Library proved a good enough place to conduct this series of translations, which the Doctor hadn’t expected at first. This explained why he’d downloaded the charts from the allocated console onto a portable data pad; regardless, the cushy (fleshy) chairs nearby were worth the effort and time of otherwise unnecessary transfer. The celery-wearing Time Lord settled into one of the couches, set up some extra screens, and very soon he was completely engrossed.

It didn’t take much longer, therefore, before the entire set of chairs was taken up by screens and scribbled bunches of paper, and the Doctor had settled into his usual groove of quietly muttering to himself and pacing around his various work surfaces. Given time he might take up the entire Library.

Unless, of course, parts of it were already taken. In which case he might run into them first.

Thrawn had gathered and reviewed every scrap of information Stacy had about the disastrous battle with the Ohm--every after-action report, every camera angle. Now, in the Sensorium, he was watching the skirmish unfold in three unsettling dimensions. It was a reconstruction, only as good as the crews' accounts and his own tactical skill. The latter, at least, was formidable.

Parts of the battlefield were empty, grayed-out in a literal "fog of war," where Thrawn had too little information to fill them in. They shifted and flowed as the fight progressed, crewmembers and Ohm disappearing into them and then popping back into existence where the records picked up again.

Gradually, however, the blank spaces were disappearing, as Thrawn ran various scenarios and decided on the most likely. Combat would pause, reverse itself, and then resume with tiny differences, again and again, as bit by bit, with infinite patience, the Grand Admiral recreated the battle to his satisfaction.

If he had any say in the matter, no confrontation with the Ohm would go so poorly again.

For the past few days, Cargn had made himself more scarce around the crew than he usually did.

Not that many would notice. He rarely spent much time among the crew, instead usually spending his time busying himself with things only a few might understand the significance of.

Yet now, just as quietly as he had slipped away, he had returned. For the moment, he was training in the sensoriums with his Nemesis Halberd, his robe pulled down to his waist to allow for better freedom of movement.

It was easy to see the countless scars he had earned over the centuries, though there were two wounds in particular that looked fresh from the previous battle. One was in his stomach, which appeared to be healing well, despite the fact that he had been impaled.

The other, however, was more glaring. His right arm was gone, replaced with a technologically crude yet masterfully crafted cybernetic prosthetic. The polished surface was intricately etched with devotional prayers and holy symbols inlaid with gold. In time, the luster would fade as the arm would be worn down with age and use, but for now, it was a rather odd sight.

Silently, he stood in the sensoriums, striking at holographic targets while wielding his massive halberd in only his new, metallic hand. It was obvious he had been at it for a good while, as blood began to seep out of where the arm connected to his shoulder. Every so often, he would stop, allowing the Larraman's Cells in his blood to rapidly build up scar tissue in a matter of minutes before starting again, each time slowly building up the connection between flesh and steel.

There was a dark look on his face as he trained. It was obvious he was deep in thought, yet as usual, it was impossible to gauge what he was really thinking.

Any other day, maybe, the Doctor might be wandering the ship, looking for something interesting to pull apart or poke his nose into. He still hasn't had a chance to inspect the brain of the ship, after all, and there's that great big city he'd like to explore as well...

But right now, he'd rather not. He's tired and annoyed, and any place he could wander, it wouldn't be far enough. So instead, the Doctor has sprawled on his back, halfway upside down, on one of the couches on the Obs Deck. It seemed as good a place as any to sit still for a while - maybe not the place to go if he wanted to be alone, but he'll take company over quiet just now.

He doesn't actually seem to be paying attention to anyone who might be in the room, though. Instead, he's playing with an unidentifiable bit of patched-together technology - it's got buttons and flashy lights and a little dish and there is absolutely no outward indication of what it actually does. It's... entirely possible it's not meant to do anything, at least at the moment; he just wanted something to do with his hands, though someone to talk to (or talk at) would undoubtedly be a better distraction.

By all rights, he probably should have been fixating on the Ohm, but the people he knew well on the ship all seemed to have made it out in fair shape. He’d try to get hold of the debriefings when they were all in, then ask questions if he needed to. But for now, he was more interested in what had happened to Steve during shore leave, partly to figure out who in the crew was messing with people’s heads, partly to find out if the ship had any particular limitations…

He would have liked to hold this conversation semi-private, but, barring locking himself in the Shadow or the Falcon, there weren’t a lot of places no one could sneak into. He settled for second best: somewhere he figured most people would be too busy to stop by, the Room of a Thousand Fountains. He sat nestled in a circle of stones in a cross-legged, half-meditative posture. “So Stacy,” he called casually, “do you have a few minutes?”

Morale was high, and everyone had their share of fun, but now it was time to part ways with Zokez II.

As everyone made their way back to the spaceport to be picked up, they could see the Obs Deck waiting for them with ramp open, and large tendrils eagerly moving vehicles and cargo back aboard.

It's about time to say goodbye to this planet...but fate, it seems, has other ideas.

[OOC: PLOT BEGINS! Here's how it goes: A handful of techies and a couple fighty people (as escort) will be on the reactor end of this part of the plot, while everyone else can help out with the evacuation.]

[OOC pt 2: Also, sorry, it apparently wasn't clear that they hadn't actually gotten back onto the ship yet. Plot is obviously taking place on the planet.]

Vestara turned up the volume on her portable music player she'd picked up at a nearby shop even louder. The noise she'd chosen, very similar to the Keshiri temple choirs she'd grown up with, sounded like screeching female rancors accompanied with drums. She wanted to make sure everyone else sunning on the beach could enjoy it, too.

Ves lazily stretched out and applied more suntanning lotion. She acquired a local fowl at the open-air market and was dissecting it, wanting to know more about the biology of this planet's creatures. The innards were carefully spread around the young apprentice's towel.

She was wearing this green and white bikini.

It was nice to be out on solid ground, to breathe fresh and salt-tinged air, and to feel the real warmth of the sun on her neck and shoulders, Nanoha thought. She felt a very deep urge welling up within her breast to just take flight, to soar through an actual sky in the first time in months - and she had no doubt that she would.

But there were other things she had to take care of first. Like, for instance, swimsuit shopping with her best friend.

"Ooh, this store looks like it might have some cute ones!" Nanoha tugged on Fate's hand, pulling her towards one of the storefronts that lined this street of the bustling shopping district. Even if it didn't, there were still plenty of others to try, and plenty of cute outfits to convince Fate to try on.

(ooc: It might help to have just one thread for ALL YOUR SHOPPING NEEDS? Feel free to tag in and mingle, if you're shopping for clothes, groceries, games, whatever!)

Arha did not care if he did not wish her there.  She came with her hair loose, clad in her plantsuit, barefoot, empty handed.  This was not a lightsaber battle, nor was it one of any blade at all.  She had peeled the plantsuit up to allow her feet to dig in against the deck of the medical room, should she need it.  There was no steeling in preparation, she came open, her shields dropped and baldfaced before Vader.

She studied him from the doorway, her head tilted and her blue-within-blue eyes half-slitted in contemplation.  He would be rude, she would ignore it, he would yell, and she would speak softly.  The poison in him, this Dark Side, it was just poison.  Arha had survived The Water of Life--so, too, would she survive the taint that flowed through him. 

Poison always burned.

She swept a cursory probe over the work she had done the day before and found it well and still healing.  It needed help, but this was why she came.  It was not easy to initiate contact, to push aside the darkness, but such a thing was to be done and she would get better at doing it in time.  She moved into the room and took a seat beside his bed.

For the moment, she sad nothing.

[[For this post I have music: Canvas.]]

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>

Luke thought that he'd been doing entirely too much thinking since coming aboard Stacy.

He knew that since he'd taken on the task of rebuilding the Order, he'd become less inclined to act before he thought about it first; it was as though the words of Yoda (Adventure--tch!  Excitement--heh!  A Jedi craves not these things) had taken root in his mind.  That was probably Yoda's goal.  But still, it seemed he'd found himself out on the Obs Deck, staring into the Bleed, far too often since awakening from podsleep.

Nonetheless, there was a lot on his mind, and his father was foremost among it all.  As it stood, Vader was a huge danger to anyone and everyone who got in his way on Stacy, and as much as Luke hated the idea of locking his own father up or somehow otherwise restraining his movement on the ship, he had to think of the rest of the crew too.

Sighing, Luke shifted a bit on the squishy seat, blue eyes half-closed and faraway.

Stacy's voice speaks over the whole of the ship. What she has to say has become very familiar over the the podlings have spent here.

||Pod Release Protocols Initiating,|| she says. ||Please proceed to the Observation Deck to meet your new crew mates.||

Those crew members that don't head to the Obs Deck on their own are hurried there via gentle but insistent tentacles. A few people stop by Engineering to help bring and pass out omnicoms and comm rings to the new crew members as well.

[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.]

The chairs and cushy meatseats in Obs Deck have been arranged in a wide circle. Between those and the floor, there should be plenty of places for the crew to sit and attend the meeting.

Aang has asked Stacy for several things from the archives that he has access to. There isn't much she'll let him see, but there are one or two things he can share with the crew.

There he sits in the center of the circle, legs folded in a lotus position, waiting for everyone to gather around him. Cargn stands near him--although it would be more accurate to say he looms over the bald monk.

"Hi everybody! When everyone's here, I'll get started."

[ooc: Comment under the Intro subthread to establish characters being there and have them talk, and then Aang and Cargn will talk in the Answers thread. After that information is up, have characters ask new questions or start new discussions by starting a new subthread for each discussion/question.]

Ben Skywalker was trying to meditate, and failing spectacularly.

The Room of a Thousand Fountains – or, more accurately, on the ship’s reproduction of the room at the Temple, which was itself a replica of the Old Republic’s Temple Room of a Thousand Fountains – was designed to be as relaxing as possible, filled with waterfalls and shallow pools that rippled in the soft lights. But even in this familiar pocket of the ship, his mind remained stubbornly unblankable. His emotions, he knew, were an open book of pain, regret, confusion, loss, and even fear and anger toward Coruscant’s invaders. Jedi Knights were meant to have control of their feelings at all times, but, then again, most Jedi Knights didn’t have to relive the destruction of the galaxy.

He sighed, and admitted to himself that meditation was out of the question. There was too much to think about – could the Ohm be stopped, how was this crew supposed to stop them, should they be stopped at all, should someone talk to them, why were they doing this, how were the Daligig resisting them, why were the Daligig resisting them, where was Vestara anyway, what was the ship meant to do, why was the ship revealing memories now, had that really been his memory, had it really happened -- to put it all aside. And more than that… Ben needed reassurance from the Force. It was unquestionably childish, but after reliving that much death, what he wanted more than anything was the comfort of feeling the lives left on board this ship.

Ben closed his eyes and reached out in the Force, searching through the Force for his family, for the survivors from his own galaxy, and for the beings he’d met since his release from hibernation. He brushed each of their minds briefly, just enjoying the fact that they were there, not caught up in the cracking of a planet or smashed by enemy starships. They were alive and luminous in the Force – and that, more than anything in the Room of a Thousand Fountains – let him begin to relax.

Sometime during the regular comings and goings aboard the meatship, an announcement rings out across all portions of the ship.

||Attention crew,|| Stacy's voice says, ||As significant interest has been shown for it, and enough time has passed since the Nightmare King incident to prevent unnecessary mental issues, the procedure to unlock the memories of the destruction of your homeworlds is now available to all crew members. If you are interested, please proceed to any empty sensorium and I will begin the process.||

A slight pause, then...

||If you have a history of mental issues, please use extra consideration when deciding on whether or not to take the procedure. That is all.||

Should anyone decide to take her up on her offer and head to the sensoriums, they'd find a clean, clinical-looking white room with a dentist-style chair (sans scary drills, of course) in the middle.

||Please, take a seat.||

[OOC:Instructions.]

(After this)

Dean had got some sleep, and now he was lying out in the Impala after having some beer from the Drunken Dragon tavern. It helped a little.

Not really.

He sent a comm to Sam earlier when he was more awake saying where he was, and that it was true.

Apocalypse canceled. No more angel condoms, no more Michael, no more Lucifer. The Winchesters were free from destiny's hold.


...No more Earth.

They failed. He failed.

Today, as Ben entered, the Sensoriums shifted into the bowl-shaped chamber of the Coruscant Temple's sparring arena. The vault was scattered with balance beams, swings of all makes, repulsor-levitated balls. On Coruscant, the arena's control chamber could simulate most environmental hazards in the galaxy, from shifting gravity to extreme temperatures. Here, Ben was fairly certain the ship could handle it.

"Start at class two," he called. "Gradual increase to class four."

And now for his opponent...

A door opened at the opposite end of the arena, and out stepped a YVH droid, its heavy footsteps ringing across the room. Built at the height of the Yuuzhan Vong war to take on Yuuzhan Vong warriors in hand-to-hand combat. Their glowing red photoreceptors and grey-black laminanium armor were supposed to be reminiscent of the Vong in full voduun crab armor, but to Ben, who had grown up with a modified YVH droid babysitting him across the galaxy, they looked more like gaunt humanoids.

Well, gaunt humanoids with serious firepower.

"Begin."

The room and the droid moved at the same time; the repulsor-lifted wobble balls began swirling around the chamber in random patterns, while Ben's opponent opened fire with its right arm's blaster cannon. He ignited his lightsaber and intercepted the bolts -- but found himself staggering backward. Stang. He'd forgotten how much energy it required to take a YVH droid's assault head on. He shifted his blade to catch the bolts at an angle, sending blasterfire spraying into the room's various obstacles. The droid's assault was still pushing him backwards; continuing to fight defensively would have him backed up against a wall in minutes.

Ben grabbed one of the wobble balls with the Force, sending it at his opponent's extended arm, altering the trajectory of its blasterfire for the few seconds he needed to start an attack.

Kyle had decided to actually try to food for what it was this time rather than have the Sensoriums disguise it as something else. It wasn't as bad as he expected, just extremely bland. That put it one step above some military rations he'd had. He could live with bad food. It was the lack of caf that was annoying. He'd thought somebody would have picked some up when they'd stopped off at a planet. No such luck however. So he had to put up with working on training exercises for the Rogue's commando component without any delicious beverage.

Tapping on his Omnicom he started to organize his notes. Demolitions training, marksmanship, and of course stealth all being laid out in a schedule. Preliminary of course. It would still need Wedge's approval. Considering that some of team were civilians he had to alter the normal framework of the training. Overall he felt they should be able to get everyone trained, and ready to go fairly quickly. The Sensoriums did simplify the logistics of training a great deal. Not to mention saved him a lot of prep work. Not to mention all the benefits of live fire training without the danger.

Deciding it was time for a break he set the Omnicom down and lay his head down on the table. Closing his eyes he focused on listening to the sounds of the ship. Slowly he reached out with the Force getting a sense for what the norm was. This massive ship, and it was alive. It certainly was a unique feeling. At first it was almost impossible to sense anything else. Soon he was able to separate it from others in the Force. The ship becoming a comfortable background noise.

The food was bad, the situation was even worse, but for the moment Kyle felt at peace.

[bendytimed to soon after podpop, after this conversation with Katara]

It was a fairly normal reaction, when a new crew-member first learned about the sensoriums, to go and want to create something familiar, something from home. Haley was no exception. She had gone, and stood in the middle of the empty chamber for a bit, trying to decide what she wanted to make though, when to her surprise the mats and equipment of the old gym at VGA started to take shape around her.

Gymnastics was what she missed of home? Not f**king likely. Still, after her conversation with Katara, she did kind of feel like a round in the gym, and she could certainly use the work-out to help take her mind off things. Haley looked down and noted with surprise that she was wearing her standard training gear- a sports bra and cut off sweat pants, with guards on her hands for using the uneven bars. Where the hell had that freaky plant suit-ish thing gone? Haley tugged at the edge of the sports bra, and it snapped back into place as if it were made of real elastic. Huh. That was ... actually kind of cool. Well, she was all ready to go for some time on the uneven bars, so let's do it.

Haley stepped forward, dusting her hands in the familiar chalk bin, before launching herself up at the low bar. And around. And around. Now leap over to the high bar. And around. And around. She let herself get lost in the familiar motion, let the pull and stretch on her muscles sooth. Momentum built, as she went around, and around, and around.

Haley was so lost in what she was doing she didn't notice she'd left the door open a crack; anyone could just walk in.