Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Cameron Mitchell, Daja, Kazami, Lister, Tony Stark]}

The crew will see them slinking off, disappearing around hallways--shifting shadow shapes and the backs of heads ducking around corners. They're always people they think they know. Dead loved ones, perhaps, or loved ones they're not sure are dead or alive. They lead crew members into dangerous places, sudden drops, parts of Stacy where things can go wrong.

And they do go wrong. Floors drop out. Ducts become damaged somehow, invisibly, and suddenly spew hot steam. Around the children, items slam into walls--poltergeist activity.

Whether these are really those lost souls, or just illusions, is hard to tell. Either way, those that are part-ghost or have supernatural powers will have a helluva workout. The upside is the presence of the ghosts might disrupt the Waking Dreams to allow people to escape them more easily.

Which is good because the dreams will start to cause injuries now. Real ones.

And refusing to go to sleep doesn't save you when the dreams can happen while you're awake.

[ooc: Waking dreams will continue--and start causing injuries. Furthermore, ghostly apparitions will start to cause poltergeist activity and lead the crew into danger. Start to raise the alarm, meatship. It's starting.]

Pressing her lips together, Doctor Temperance Brennan's forehead furrowed as she stared intently through a pair of rather ridiculous glasses at a shard of alien bone. While they might have been old lady's glasses, she had actually found them more useful than some of the microscopes she was use to handling, and she didn't need to be hunched over for quite so long a time.

Turning in her chair, she placed the bone in an advanced bone cutting machine, switched it on and waited while it sliced the bone into different sized pieces. She'd already examined several different types of alien bones - she had been lucky enough to find a storage unit full of hundred of different types of alien bones. Now she just had to familiarize herself with them all.

Turning the machine off, she pulled out the different containers the machine had separated the slices of bone to. Now she could get down to work.

Some cheer was definitely needed on this ship. Whatever chance meeting had brought Kaylee and Claudia together in mechanical mischief had also set their minds to turning over what they could possibly do to get some smiles back on the faces of those onboard.

A costume party.

Claudia had come up with the idea, really. She knew a bit more about it than Kaylee did, but she explained it all in such a way that Kaylee really couldn’t resist wanting to throw one. It’d be a good chance for everyone to let loose and have a good time in the midst of the nightmare madness. Who could resist that?

The sensorium had been melded to an image from Kaylee’s mind, though. A grand ballroom, with marble floors and painted ceiling. A large buffet table stood against one of the walls, covered mostly in fruit, but in some other hors d’oeuvres as well.

[[ OoC: Party style!! Costumes aren't a requirement, but they are fun. If you've got questions about anything, ask Cheryle or Holly. :D ]]

Overall? Today was a good day.

Barring the Adria mix up, he'd been having a pretty good time since the mission to go save Christmas, really. Getting out, stretching his legs and making a difference? It'd felt good. And even with the eeriness of the woman, Inara, and the sobering fact that Adria could be in those pods somewhere, the fact was Adria wasn't awakened.

As long as Cam kept moving, he didn't need to think about the possibility that his world was gone, either. So far, he seemed to be doing pretty well. Lately, when he had slept, his dreams had been full of death raining from the sky, of the Ori and Adria and feeling the universe unravel around him (how, he could only explain when his head was clouded with sleep).

Today, his dream had been good. Maybe he was on the right path after all. Cam Mitchell Therapy 101.

But he wasn't about to dwell on that right now. He was feeling good. Good enough that the Sensorium didn't even creep him out when he set up something home-y. Mind, nothing that would compromise homeworld security, but home-y all the same.

After going to that mission, his desire to just see Earth was somewhat quenched--although it certainly was not his own. But familiar still sounded nice, it brought back to his mind thoughts of his dream. Not that he was one to dwell on dreams, but still. Familiar faces.

He didn't program anyone he knew--that would have been a bit creepy--but the familiar trill of a bird he had no idea what was echoed through the spring air, and it was...nice. He meandered over to a makeshift wooden seat, and grabbed up a power bar from his pocket. It was sort of...pathetically simple, really. He'd almost programmed in a village over the hill, but...he found he liked the silence. There was always some sort of humming sound or people on the ship.

Not that the sound of critters or the brook running a few feet ahead of him really counted as silence, but it was...cleaner. More like home.

Cam gave a sudden laugh, and shook his head. "Still not a nature guy." It was just refreshing next to a living alien spaceship.

That was entirely unfortunate.

Entirely.

Someone could have mentioned before that people arrived who looked exactly like people he knew, but weren't. And not in the method Sam would have said. It was hard to say whether it was worse learning this way than if he'd gone up and hugged a Sam-who-was-not-a-Sam. Whichever way, it made the future days like this even worse. Familiar faces wouldn't cut it (although this was the first so far).

He refused to believe he was the only one from his universe and time. He refused to believe it as fiercely as he refused to believe his universe was gone.

All-in-all, it didn't really put him in the mood to apologize to the woman...but it wasn't her fault she looked like a genocidal maniac. His better nature refused to allow him to leave it where they had. Which left him wandering and looking for the woman. Preferably without using his side arm this time.

The new people will find themselves ushered out of Obs Deck, so it can be shot down to the planet again, to pick the crew up. Eventually, the crew members on the mission are brought back up, and the doors open to let the two groups meet.

The newbies are likely not expecting their new crew-mates to come back bearing presents--which some of them are.

[ooc: This time anyone can post in. REMEMBER TO TAG OTHER PEOPLE, THO. This is set after the mission so mission peoples can meet the newbies. Latecomer newbies, if you want, you can just tag your guys into this one to make things easier.]

There is a whole world out there to spread holiday joy to. A world of flying cars, and massive towering skyscrapers, of quiet, cold deserts, of snow-covered cities. Everyone in it is either holed up in their homes, hooked into the Links, the network run by Macrohard, abstaining from human contact, or they're poor and destitute, in the streets, and in parts of the world that are ailing right now.

Some of them are due to stop in on specific parts of the world during their journeys. Others are just going to be show generosity to anyone they meet. Every angle has to be covered, every holiday that celebrates generosity and unity, to help stoke the fires and revive the Holiday Spirit.

Pick a place, Meatcrew. Grab some crewmates to help. Make some noise and entice people to leave their VR sets and come outside with their fellow man.

With the magical sacks, containing last of the Spirit's power, they can give anything that's wanted OR needed to the people of this world, and with the enchanted flying cars, they can get anywhere in the world to do it, in no time.

[ooc: Special holiday groups, tag your assigned subthreads (and keeping them in one thread would likely be best, since those groups are small). Whoever feels creative can pick an exact location and set up details--we wanted to give you some freedom to have your characters find where to go. Anyone else, doing Christmas or general gift-giving, tag and make new subthreads for each situation of gift-giving. These can stand alone as vignettes, but we encourage everyone to thread-hop and tag in to random threads. Don't worry about the organization of groups, they'll probably be switching groups all over the place throughout the night.]

Trying not to pout too much, Temperance found her way to the media library so she could spend countless hours watching Zombie movies. Now she liked movies, but Zombie movies? They just didn't appeal to her tastes any. She much preferred classics - like Casablanca and old John Wayne movies. But Zombie movies? And having to watch them with Cameron Mitchell of all people? She was not a happy camper.

Stepping inside, she looked around and didn't see anyone at first. Maybe he hadn't even shown up yet. BETTER! Maybe he'd forgotten and she wouldn't have to watch them. That would work perfectly fine with her. Perfectly.

Looking around the different piles of data padds, she picked one up and brought it over to one of the fleshy couches and sank down. Well since he was probably going to end up not showing, she might as well get a little research done on different alien skeletal structures.

Something...odd is happening on the ship. Plant-like protrusions are occasionally sprouting in places throughout the ship.

They look like mistletoe, but this is purely coincidental. It's not like it's the holidays on the ship, right? It might be for some people, back home (if they still had a home), but others were grabbed from different times. No, it's just coincidence that these little devices look vaguely like mistletoe, and coincidence what they're being used for.

For you see, when this "mistletoe" is overhead, a crew member will be trapped in an invisible forcefield, and won't be able to escape until someone has kissed them or otherwise showed them some equivalent of affection. (Cheek kisses and sloppy puppy kisses from the canine crew members count). The "mistletoe" spring itself is shielded itself and can't be destroyed, the only way out is a kiss.

Why is this all happening? GLaDoS is performing whacky behavioral experiments, that's why. Each time, it happens, she intones messages like the following.

"Please express affection for your fellow crewmate to free them."

"This is of the utmost importance, and part of ongoing Crew Coherency and Cooperation Studies."

"Please do not attempt to leave the vicinity until you have participated."

"Participation is required. Why wouldn't you want to participate?"

"The Transmigration9 AI Complex thanks you for your participation in important research. Unless you don't want to participate, but not participating would make me disappointed. I suppose you just want to disappoint me."

And of course, sometimes she even outright lies.

"There will be cake."

The rest of the crew assembled on the Observation Deck to meet the latest editions to their number. After the recent revelation, many of them were even more eager to see people they knew from home.

Brainiac 5 and Sensor were set up near the doors to provide the new people with omnicoms and comm rings.

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

He appreciated having a room to himself, even if it was clearly designed for a second party as well. For now, it was his alone. He appreciated that.

The room was about all he really appreciated since the attack of the crew-zombies. The idea was far more cool on paper than it was actually sitting on the roof of the Vatican, mowing down potential crewmates. Still, it was better than mowing down familiar ones. He appreciated that, too.

He appreciated the cute, glowy new look for Stacy, too.

He didn't appreciate the idea of his universe destroyed by something they'd never even gotten the chance to see--let alone fight. He didn't like the idea of being one of the last survivors of his own universe. Whether or not Ronon and Jackson counted as his own universe or another. He appreciated the cute voice. He didn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it, even if she showed him the destruction. None of this was necessarily real. He functioned within it as he needed to, but he wasn't about to fall for something SG-1 already fell for before. The zombies didn't exactly make the place more credible, either.

He frowned, studying the food goop in front of him.

His home-his family. Everyone and every thing he cared about was not gone. He wouldn't leave it to chance and hope that some of the people he cared about might have been alive--he wouldn't accept that their survival meant the deaths of an entire universe were acceptable losses. He wasn't about to accept a 'might' for saving all of them, if they did someone else's dirty work for them. That wasn't how he did things. He wouldn't be manipulated, and...he refused to believe that SG-1 failed. That Stargate Command, and all of their allies failed to protect not just their galaxy, but their universe.

He refused to believe he'd failed to do the one thing that mattered. He couldn't. Not now...not ever.

A mass of zombies has laid seige to the Vatican.

Time to fight for your lives!!!

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!]

Lister has been blissfully unaware of any going on in the City. Yes, the beds aboard Stacey may be creepy, but they're warm, comfortable, and there is a nice breeze that stops Lister's random claustrophobia kicking in.

So he's missed much of the going's on at the Yeerk Trial, the Yeerkball contest, and the general bad times down in the City.

Anyone passing the Sleeping Halls will be hearing some weird noises.

|| Dave Lister, you have spent the optimum time asleep. It is now time to get up.||

This is then followed by a loud, and drawn out snore.

There is then a squelch, similar to that made by tentacles as they come out of the walls. Then there is a thud.

"Smeg!"

There is then the sound of bare hands scraping along a squishy floor, then a damp thump, and a deep, lazy breath.

A few seconds later, the whole process starts over again.

Lister, Stacey has decided it's time for you to get up.

He'd quit counting the days since the mini war broke out, but it hadn't been long. Not long enough to forget or be anywhere near remotely alright with it. It wasn't even long enough for him to have come up with a decent rationale that he could just...forget it and move on.

Basketball was an amazing game. One could play it solo, doubles, quads...or any number of people up until the court was too full to feasibly play the game anymore. With the Sensorium, you didn't even need an even number of people. It was a good outlet for stress, and a good distraction. It taught valuable skills, and it could teach perfect strangers to trust each other.

The ball he tossed missed the hoop completely.

He could go down and scold Ronon and Wright. He could scream at them until his throat bled, really. It wouldn't serve any point. It wouldn't make things any better. It wouldn't make it any easier, any more valid to trust the rest of Team Papa, or any of the rest of the ship.

This whole situation was screwed up. There wasn't any making it better. He wasn't in charge, he didn't get any say in how things ran. But that wasn't even the point, was it?

The ball didn't even make it close to the hoop, it smashed against the fake wall of the court, instead.

Even if they could undo all of it. Even if everything worked perfectly, and nothing went wrong? Even if everyone on the ship was the living embodiment of what it meant to be a member of Stargate Command?

They weren't. None of them were members of Stargate Command, save Doctor Lam and Doctor Jackson, and Ronon...wasn't Teal'c. This wasn't home, and he was no closer to figuring out how to get back there, or what he was doing here at all.

The hoop probably didn't even exist anymore. He'd forgotten all about it in flinging the faux-ball against the imaginary cement barrier. If he got lucky? Something might break and alleviate his frustration.

More likely than not, he figured Stacy programmed them indestructible just to piss him off some more.

About a full day had passed since the Yeerk mess, when Leon called all of Security together for a debriefing. He wanted to give everyone a chance to get their wounds treated and to rest up. To say that it had been a rough day yesterday would be an understatement. He also wanted to give his people a chance to get their heads clear. Emotions run high after a battle, so he wanted to let everyone cool off and let some of the things the Captain said sink in.

Leon himself, though, wasn't able to take advantage of the time off, though. He looked like shit, less from the physical injuries than from the physical and emotional fatigue wearing on him. With Claire still out cold from emergency surgery, he hadn't slept at all, and likely wouldn't until he knew she was all right. Even now, his thoughts didn't drift far from her.

But with his team assembled in the briefing room, Leon stood front and center to address them.

( Read more... )

[Instructions: Here.]

The fighting begins in earnest, as bystanders get dragged in, have to duck out of the way, or join in to help out, but with more people entering the fray, there's even more chaos.

Buildings have been cracked, a nearby fountain has been smashed, causing water to pour over the ground and make things even more of a mess.

Can anyone, Security or the Conspirators, keep the situation under control?

[Instructions: Here.]

Mahatma Gandhi once said: "In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place."

It was entirely likely that the crew would be very split on interpretation of that quote. Some thought the right thing was punishing what they saw as a mind-slaver for a crime with the ultimate penalty. Others thought that if a trial had dictated that imprisonment was punishment enough that it truly was.

It was time to move the Yeerk, in its containment unit, from the Precinct in the City, to its secure prison in the MedBay, where its prison sentence was to take place.

It was also time for the conspirators to move and make sure that it never made it.

There was quiet, and then Ronon was unceremoniously flung out of a vent that wasn't there before, before it disappeared again. "... The test is over. Come back," Could be heard before the vent shut itself. Goodness knows how long it's going to take Ronon to get the stupid rolling tests and that stupid song out of his head. What was the point of rolling things up into a ball to make a bigger ball? Not to mention having to do only that got tiring real quick. Ronon hated GLaDOS and never wanted to encounter her again.

Getting up, Ronon surveyed the hallway he was in. He found himself in the hallway leading to the Sensoriums from the Obs Deck. Great! He was starving, but at least he didn't have to wander far to grab a decent bite. And by decent bite he meant Sensorium food. Stretching his arms - hey, rolling sticky balls around for a month is way more tiring than you'd imagine - he made his way to the Sensoriums.

As soon as he got a free room, Ronon set up a cafeteria identical to Atlantis' cafeteria. He then took a tray piled with gloop disguised as meat and a pitcher of water, and sat down at a table outside overlooking the ocean. The sun was setting and a nice cool breeze was blowing. Ronon started digging in, working on relaxing himself. The ambient sound of waves crashing were definitely helping.

(( OOC: Ronon's just come back from hiatus so everyone's memories of him have now returned. Feel free to run into him in the hallway or come and join him at the Sensoriums. It's peaceful in there and he may not seem like it, but he'd love some company. I'm pulling bendy-time for this so Ronon comes back just before the security meeting XD

And just for reference, here's the tune in his head XD I may or may not have been playing this game during my time without internet.

))