The Defacto Rearguard of Team GTFO hadn't gone too far away from the doors that had separated them from the rest of the team. They were fortunate -- Mei Ling was still unharmed, and the rest of them were of no interest to the zombies, possessing none of the meat that their stumbling attackers found so attractive.

They were going to have to move soon. They could only hold the zombies off for so long without some sort of fortifications, and they were very much without those here. They had a blank expanse of fleshy wall where there had used to be a doorway separating them from the rest of GTFO and multiple hallways teeming with zombies.

The lights were still up and looking just fine. Which meant that they could see the hoards coming for Mei Ling. Fortunately, they seemed to have no objections to sticking together.

While events unfolded on the other side of the door, the Rearguard team would soon find that things were going to hell in a hand basket for them as well.

Not long after the Quarantine section was opened, the lurching, prowling, and mostly-rotting figures began pouring through the ship, a significant portion of which found their way to the Hub. This, of course, meant the zombies were now being sent to nearly every level of the ship.

Which means that now, they were making their way to the upper level where Team GTFO were, coming through the team's only way back.

Life's a bitch sometimes, ain't it?

They'd soon start to hear them approaching, some moaning and shuffling slowly towards them, while others could be heard growling and gibbering madly as they quickly rushed forward, running the whole gamut of zombie archetypes.

The 'bots and Khel didn't have too much to worry about from them, though, as they couldn't be infected, but they weren't what the zombies were after.

No, they were hungry, looking for the nearest source of fresh meat.

Mei Ling.

They'd best get themselves ready for a shitstorm, 'cause there's some clouds a-brewin'.

Team GTFO gathers in the Living Area Level, near what appears to be a blank wall near the Sensoriums, and now it's time to distribute equipment, go over the specifics of the plan, and get ready to commence Operations. With a capital 'O'.

There's a multitude of robot drones and other equipment about.


[ooc: Read instructions for these threads here! Edit: Srsly. Read 'em. Try to keep all the subthreads as one consecutive thread. Please?]

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.

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.

"Stupid slagging diode-blooming meatship downgrading meee-eeeeee!" Sentinel roared his displeasure as he veered around another corner. He was still getting used to the different sense of balance with his reduced size. The change in mass was playing havoc on his handling. How did the damn Bumbler deal with the change?

He clipped another corner, not slowing down as he refused to give up. Hopefully none of those skittering organics would get in his way this time.

It doesn't take long at all for Yoshimi to become overwhelmed by the large crowd in the Obs Deck.  Frown lines etch themselves deeper and deeper into her face before she finally makes a break for it, spotting an exit across the room.  Rather hurriedly, she shoves through the groups of people, muttering apologies as she elbows and steps on people.  She has always been a titch claustrophobic, and the combination of a large mass of people and the peculiar, anxiety-producing situation of being abducted seems to have amplified the feeling tenfold.

When she finds herself alone in the hallway, she exhales heavily, leaning against the wall and sliding to the floor.  She doesn't even feel compelled to explore the ship as she would have had she been feeling any differently.  Though she wouldn't admit it to herself, she was intrigued by the entire situation.  A talking ship named Stacy floating around kidnapping people from different dimensions and places in the time stream for some Great Purpose, capital-G, capital-P.  It was like something out of a sci-fi novel, something that Yoshimi would have enjoyed reading.  She wasn't enjoying it very much now that she was part of it, though.  A sigh escapes.

"Stupid meatship," she mutters, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes.  At least the people were nice.

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.

It's big meeting time! Word of mouth gets everyone gathered in the Obs Deck--everyone. New, old, the entire crew is there and that makes it clear that there's close to a hundred of them, if not more.

When they've all arrived, a blue bubble pops up around them, courtesy of Blue Beetle, to block them all from Stacy's sensors. Most of the new people were given the basic rundown by Cybil or Chief when they were first released. Some of them have already joined a discussion with a the Commanding Officers and department heads. Some have had a chance to explore a bit. Some were only just recently released.

[ooc: READ THIS BEFORE TAGGING.]

||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))

There's a lot of people that mill around after the crew returns. Jaime Reyes, also known as the Blue Beetle, stays suited up for now, just in case, especially after getting fried with a Dracon beam twice.

He's trying to get through to the MedBay, where Paco is, because he doesn't want him to have to go through his de-Yeerking alone, whatever the Yeerk said or tried to do to him.

But the blue-suited, alien symbiote-powered teenager is willing to talk to or help any new person that needs it.

"Everybody okay? I know you new guys got all confused and shaken up by this, too."

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.))

It was the worst possible time for it. The crew was about to be embroiled in a battle for their lives. Half of them were infested with alien parasites and restrained in MedBay.

||Pod Release Protocols Initating,|| Stacy's familiar voice sounded out to all the podmates.

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

There was condensation and mist spraying out from cracks in the pods, as the people inside slid out onto the floors, covered in slime.

Pop. Poppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiissss.

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?

"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... )

In the pod chambers, there is a late release, a hideous creature that crawls its way out of the slime and gasps for air, confused. A horrible monster, its species known for its barbarity, spreading disease, and occasionally, for being cannibalistic.

It's a pestiferous beast, a hideous--and intelligent--monster and after getting a suit and its tangled fur cleaned up by Stacy, it quickly goes on the hunt.

There are smells all over, some of them very strange, and the overall smell of this...thing, the creature is in, but there is one it zeroes in on.

One scent.

Its prey.

It moves, running along the ground on all fours, jumping and clinging to outcroppings on the walls. It finds its prey in a large room full of people, looking at the little square in his hand, but despite the people present, the strangers there, it will not be denied.

It zeroes in...and then LEAPS!

By hook or by crook or by avoiding hook and crook, the crew assembled from the previous podpops eventually made it up to the Living Area to greet their new crew mates. The creepy sculpture was also there, though less to greet them than it was always there.

The strange, fleshy seating had multiplied. You really, really don't want to know how.

'Phillip' was in the Sensorium, all by himself. Yes, it was against Prince Cybil's orders. However, he felt that this was the sort of thing best done without bystanders.

Namely, learning how to shoot human guns without allowing the weapons' recoil to knock him over.

He hadn't bothered to learn this when he was back on Earth. There was never any reason to. The Animorphs didn't have shredders, and Dracon beams were usually in the hands of Controllers. And using human guns was out of the question -- the last thing they wanted to do was create any connection between humans and the 'Andalite bandits'. So they relied almost strictly on their morphing capabilities and their wits.

Here however, that was less of an option. He had been able to sneak off and demorph this time, but there was no guarantee that he would be able to do so in the future. He needed to be able to defend himself in his human morph as well. So he had requested that Stacy create facsimilies of the hand-held weapons currently in use aboard the ship and set about teaching himself to use them.

Ax carefully positioned his feet and aimed at the target Stacy had set up for him and fired.

Things can happen without Stacy knowing, that much is apparent now. The damage to her sensors is significant. But the fighting clued her in.

After it's all over, after those captured have been rescued, after the injured have been tended to, only the nest is left, and Stacy takes care of it.

||Infestation of Cluster 42, Level 4, Sector 7, Sublevel 12, Zone 37 has been detected. Triggering internal defenses. Decontamination commencing.||

There is a pause.

||Decontamination complete.||

Simple as that, once she knows the problem was there. Her internal sensors are damaged, especially in the city, and so are some of the systems monitoring them. You have to know what's broken to know to fix it.

Such a simple thing and it only took one man dying to make it happen. (His body is gone, by the way, ripped to shreds and eaten. There's not even a spot of blood on the floor. That's the bugs' doing. The bugs' bodies are gone too--that's Stacy's doing).

||Any injured personnel that still have not received medical attention, report to the nearest lift, and you will be transported to the MedBay. Any uninjured personnel, report to the Living Area, to the restroom facilities to undergo decontamination of xenobiological material. Then report to the Obs Deck to meet your new crew-mates.||

Said crew-mates--and the Doctor, who'd skipped out and miraculously ducked and weaved his way to the lift when he'd realized the Master was there--are there and waiting, and just a tad confused.

[ooc: read this first]