It was over.

The Nightmare King had been defeated. Two previously unknown crew members had been freed. Entire sections of the city were in ruins. The crew would have to spend the next few weeks just cleaning up the mess that was left in the wake of the battles that had raged in the lower sections of the ship. But before he enlisted in the clean-up crew to get the city cleared of rubble and safe to walk in once again, Remy was going to do the one thing he'd been dying to do ever since he'd been tossed out of the maze by GLaDOS: sleep.

No nightmares. No fits. No terrors. Just a long night of relaxing sleep.

Unfortunately, after the hectic events of the last day, despite being physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted, Remy collapsed into his bed only to spend the next two hours tossing and turning. His side hurt, so he shifted onto his back only to end up staring at the ceiling for twenty minutes, his eyes refusing to stay closed. He tried his stomach, his other side, his back again then on to his stomach before finally cursing and giving up. He'd gotten so used to not sleeping that even when he could sleep, when he wanted to sleep, he couldn't.

Swinging his feet to the floor, he stood up, crossed over to the 'sink' and quietly pulled his long hair back into a ponytail before slipping on his brown duster and heading out of his room and into the corridor. A walk couldn't hurt. Maybe if he taxed his body, drove himself to complete and total exhaustion, he might be able to finally get some sleep.

Another hour passed, he'd walked a small portion of the ship, and he was still wide awake and the walls--the same meaty walls--of the ship had long ago grown tiresome. Just not tiresome enough. It wasn't until Gambit found himself in the media library, reclining in one of the chairs with his feet resting on the top of the a table, watching Bogart and Bacall, that sleep finally found him. His head was tilted back, the movie playing on repeat in the background, with his mouth open and a small dab of drool creeping from the corner of his mouth, and snoring--loudly.

The effects of the Nightmare King have faded, the battlefield is gone. Stacy is rebooting her systems, and will be online again soon. It's over, it's finally over at last. They've won. They're all alive!

Except that it's not over.

Through the city, a wave of destruction spreads out from where a teenage boy rockets out of what's left of Escherville and floats in the air. A shockwave of air shatters the glass in nearby buildings; the stone foundation that serves as the overlay of Stacy's flesh that most of the city rests on cracks where he passes over it. Eyes and tattoos glowing, long hair whipped around by the winds he's creating, Aang is a force to be reckoned with--and not one to be reasoned with.

This is the Avatar in his full fury, angrier than his comrades have ever seen him, nearly thoughtlessly so.

He's overwhelmed by such senseless rage, the world breaks down around him--at the whims of the elemental forces under his control--stone cracking, water condensing out of the air and freezing over surfaces, wind whipping rubble around in a deadly, gouging tumult, fire crackling through the air.

Aang's voice is many voices, old and young, thousands of them all intermingled, as he cries out:

"WHERE ARE THEY, STACY? WHERE IS THE CREW? ANSWER ME!"

Stacy tries to reason with him. Some of her systems are damaged, she is awake and aware, but her security measures are not back up yet. And even when they are, what then? She can't hold him down forever. In this state, he needs to be calmed, and the AI knows that's something she is incapable of.

So she tries reason. ||Avatar Aang, the original crew is dead. Only refugees from podsleep are awake--||

A building is swallowed up by a sinkhole that appears in the stone.

"YOU'RE LYING!"

He doesn't remember what Leon and the others told him in the dreams, about the original crew being dead. His consciousness had been separated from his body for a very long time, and to have it snap back so suddenly to a physical form at the height of an adrenaline surge, that had been trapped in the Avatar State for more than a year...

A whole year trapped as he had been is enough to unsettle his mind, to make him angry. Now that he's free, everything contained over that time--kept stuffed inside so that he could maintain composure--is bursting free in a frenzied maelstrom of emotion and destruction.

Not that most of the crew will know this--for all they know, if they didn't hear his words, he could be the Nightmare King.

"THEY'RE NOT DEAD! THEY ABANDONED US! THEY LEFT US TO HIM! WHERE ARE THEY?!"

||They are dead. Avatar Aang, you must calm yourself. You have been forced to endure a tremendous physiological and psychological strain--||

She isn't answering the way he wants. She isn't telling him where they are, so Aang reacts by destroying her city. A wave of his arms and there's a blast of air that destroys a temple. He's going to continue until he finds them, finds someone to direct his rage at, or until something manages to calm him down first. The latter is entirely possible, given some time--but at what cost?

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.]

All he had wanted was some peace and quiet. First, he had found a way to rig the TVs in the hotel to link to the ship's library. Second, he had convinced Stacy to just let that be, and explained how odd "pulsing walls" were to most of them. Finally, he had found a couch on the far wall in the lobby that had the best view of the big screen TV the lobby had, and marked it. Above it on the wall was a plaque that read as such: RESERVED FOR FORMER YJERS/TITANS WHO WERE DECLARED DEAD IN THE LINE OF DUTY.

However, these were not exactly detractors in everyone else's mind. Every time he tried to relax and just read his back issues of "Crazed Merc" magazines, someone came in, sat down in the nearest chair, and asked him about... whatever was on their mind. He couldn't stop it, he knew it from the first. When the crazy japanese kid who he had previously lead to the sensoriums had shown up asking him about whether he should go to a dance, he had given advice. Then the priest showed up, asking about what the Outsiders were about. Now, Slobo was just waiting for the next person to come asking him, of all people, for information or advice. So he was more waiting than relaxing...

Sofia entered one of the Sensoriums and called up a large ball room, the kind she would dream of dancing in as a child. High ceilings, large windows that let the sun stream through, paneled wooden tiles for the floor. All that she needed was-

Music, of course!

She asked for, and was given, a DJ and stereo system, stocked with all the music Stacy had available.

And, to top it all off, the last transformation was of Sofia's plantsuit. It morphed into a bright red dress that clung to her body, showing off her curves.

Now the fun could begin.

Carol really didn't know what she was doing as she made the post to the com. Sure she had been sick and tired of all of them dancing around each other, grouping off, being just people rather than heroes from the same world. She'd noticed the other heroes forming a team, they got on so well it made her sick to think about her own world.

"God Steve, you'd be pulling your own hair out if you saw us all like this." She knew talking to the dead in the Sensoriums wasn't a good idea, but she couldn't help it. As she moved into the room, she looked around herself. Her first thought was to form the Avengers memorial garden, but the mutants on board wouldn't like that. She'd been at Xavier's plenty of times, but the Avengers weren't connected to that place.

"Central Park please. Add in the memorial garden from both the Avengers mansion and Xavier's." She didn't know if it'd work to help connect them all or not, but maybe it would. As she stared at the statues she moved to an empty section and stood, her Ms. Marvel costume appearing on her body as she stood at attention.

She wasn't Captain America, or even Captain Marvel. But she'd led the Avengers before, and damn it she'd do it again.

He'd been avoiding sleep just like a lot of other people. But everyone had to sleep at some point. The body demanded it. There was only so long someone--anyone--could stay awake before the body, the mind, rebelled and gave in to its most basic necessity. There seemed to be no way of escaping the Nightmare King. Sleeping meant dreaming, which meant terror being inflicted upon them by the beast that grew stronger with passing day. Staying awake, however, brought its own dangers. The mind wasn't meant to be pushed to such limits. It needed to rest. It needed the time to recuperate. Without it, hallucinations would begin to form, driving them crazy just as easily as the Nightmare King was.

It was the hallucinations that pushed Gambit to go to his quarters and get some rest. He'd stripped off his plantsuit and climbed under the silk covers and was out before his head hit the pillow. It was not meant to last. Deep sleep had been evading him ever since he'd been released by GLaDOS. He sometimes wished she'd held on to him. Even she was better than this.

Remy had no more than fallen and sleep--only for a few minutes really--before the nightmares began. He thrashed in his bed, his body jerking back and forth as he tried to fight against the terrors being forced upon his dreams by the dark entity in the city. He groaned in pain, mumbled incoherent protests against the darkness that had pervaded his subconscious. Each movement, each groan grew in intensity, becoming stronger and more violent than the last until the Cajun's eyes flew open and he shot up in bed and let out a shout loud enough to be heard throughout the crew quarters.

He sat up in bed, his body covered in sweat and his chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath. It was as if he'd just put himself through a grueling work-out. His muscles were tense and sore. Sleep, itself, had become an enemy that needed to be fought. But how did one fight that which you needed to survive?

Tossing his sheet back, Gambit swung his feet to the floor and cradled his head in his hands. "Get outta my head!" he hollered out at the Nightmare King.

Sitting on a bench under the shade of a large tree within a garden of the Vatican City, Ghanima Atreides was slowly reading the large book that sat on her lap. She had found an old Roman Catholic Latin Bible in one of the rooms of the 'Casina' of Pius IV that she, along with Alia and Duncan - or Hayt - had claimed as their own.

She had needed time to herself, time away from worrying about her aunt, and how her aunt was taking the news of how Hayt had no recollection of his marriage to Alia. It was sad, though she was sure that time would only lead the two on the path they both belonged on - such was the way of life.

She had chosen a small garden as her refuge, and had found she enjoyed the silence that surrounded it. It seemed as though the Vatican City was not a place that many ventured to, and for that Ghani was indeed pleased.

While many from her world had forgotten the old Earth languages, Ghani had always enjoyed speaking, and using them as a way to communicate with her twin brother, Leto. It had been their secrect way of communicating when they didn't wish others to know what was being said. It was one of the gifts that having so many Other Memories had given them. And it was a gift that provided useful now as she read over the Latin words.

"*... melior est enim sapientia cunctis pretiosissimis et omne desiderabile ei non potest conparari. Ego sapientia habito in consilio et eruditis intersum cogitationibus." Ghani read aloud and couldn't help but agree with the small two verses.


*Proverbs 8:11 and 8:12
11 "For wisdom is better than jewels ; And all desirable things cannot compare with her."
12 "I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, And I find knowledge and discretion."

Jonas was not usually the most sociable of the crew members to begin with, and he had been lying even lower than usual since his encounter with the Scarlet Witch.

Right now though, he was making use of the Sensoriums to do some training. There were drones and blades and electrified rods, and the floor and ceiling shifted suddenly in strange directions. A few people on board might recognize that Stacy was simply replicating the Avengers' Training Room.

Jonas dove right into the thick of it, punching and phasing and tumbling his way through all of the obstacles in his path. A knowledgeable observer might notice that his cape seemed more than capable of keeping itself out of trouble -- more than normal cloth should be able to.

Having one's cape actually being a part of one's body was very handy, as it turned out.

He catapulted himself through the last of the drones, remaining just solid enough to utterly destroy its inner workings as he passed. He rolled to his feet and dusted off his hands, smirking to himself as the drone toppled to the floor for a delightfully cinematic finish.

Then he finally looked up to meet the eyes of his audience. "[Yes?]"

"Fine!" a loud male voice with a noticeable Cajun accent echoed down the hallway of the ship. If one were to come around the corner, they would notice a tall, brown haired man with fiery red eyes, and wearing a brown duster of his plant uniform, standing in the middle of one of the ship's hallways, shouting at--the wall? Some may recognize and remember him. Other, not so much.

"Be dat way!" he continued to shout at the wall, pointing at it as if to emphasize his point. "Gambit dun want none of your cake anyway! You find somebody else's head to toy wit, 'cause Gambit done wit you!"

Being on board the ship for as long as he had had begun to wear on Remy, making him incredibly stir-crazy. He'd been down to the city. He'd seen the statuary. He'd perused the media library. But there was only so much exploring a man could do before it became tedious. Only so many statues he could look at. Only so much sitting on his butt watching movies and television or listening to music that he could do. Even practicing his skills in the sensorium had become boring. Remy needed something to do. He needed...to go out...to socialize in a more comfortable setting (i.e. one not made out of pulsing flesh).

But since there was no way off the ship, there was only one way to actually 'go out.'( El alma se me fue... )...and Gambit now stood alone in the middle of the dance floor.

Jonas stood alone on the Observation Deck, quietly staring up at the statue as he waited for the arrival of his new teammates. He wasn't entirely sure why he had been named the team leader, but he was capable of the position when it came down to it; and so he wanted to deal with the potential problems before they became actual problems.

First off, he needed to talk with Gambit and Spider-Man, and make sure they weren't going to have any difficulties with his leadership. They were both adults after all, and Spider-Man was...Spider-Man. After that was dealt with, he needed to meet the rest of the team and get an idea of their skills and temperament. He already had a head start, as he knew and had already worked with Kate and Cassie.

But, first things first: Gambit and Spider-Man.

Red Snout roamed the halls of the ship, muttering to himself. His attempt to win leadership had failed (failed!) against the old human, who had proved more formidable then he expected.  It was no shame to lose, he knew, not against a chief (he knew now why the old one was chief. He was wily, tricky and even possessed some physical strength) but the humans did not see it that way, he could tell. They laughed at him. And the one thing Red Snout hated was to be laughed at. He was a skilled warrior, a good hunter, and enjoyed a decent position of respect at home. Here? Here he was a stranger among strangers, made even more different by the fact that he was a raptor and not human.

It angered him so to be laughed at. He must rectify his humiliation, he decided, and soon. Preferably by beating up another crew member where others could see and then they would know his abilities were not a joke. Then they would know why the Swiftclaw tribe had lived in the same land for generation on generation, why nobody, not even a T-rex, had driven them from their hunting grounds. Yes, they would learn to respect Red Snout.

"Stupid humans..."

Kate had done a patrol in the city earlier, and she debated on stopping by the Media library for something to watch. Something to distract her from the encounter with Ir.. no, *Nathanial*. Otherwise now mini-Kang in the making. All that work he did, everything to stop it, and asking for their help. Well, mainly Eli, Teddy, and Billy's help since Cassie and her came late into the game there. Still. They tried to help too. Until they found out what that help would mean.

She sighed, and her steps took her to the Sensoriums. But she wasn't going to use it for sentimental reasons. Oh no. Even if the surroundings resembled the training room of the Clubhouse, it was for function and practice. Not to get lost in nostalgia, there's a clear difference as she sighted her target and fired another arrow.

Wasn't there?

In the corner of one of the sensoriums, the meatship's resident Cajun stood at a table rotating a glass of half-drunk bourbon with his fingers. The loud thump of bass echoed throughout the room and even, perhaps, beyond into the hallway where it might attract passersby. When Gambit, bored out of his mind with nothing to do, had asked for a nightclub, he hadn't expected it to be so complete. The room was dark, the bar and lounge area lighted with low blue lights, while strobes flashed violently over the dance floor which was full of gyrating bodies. Hell, it even came with it's own cigarette smoke-filled air--although it, like the 'alcoholic' drinks--wasn't the slightest bit harmful.

It was the epitome of 'just a good time', complete with the lack of consequences that were likely to kick some in the butt in the morning if it'd all been real.

"Now dis what Gambit call a good time," he noted aloud, lifting his drink to his lips.


[OOC: That's right. It's a club. Don't feel that you have to reply to Gamibt. Treat this kinda like the meet-n-greets. Just throw up a subthread--or tag into one--with your character dancing, drinking, playing pool, darts, whatever and have fun with them. Just look at this as one big CR opportunity!!]

Panting heavy, the man dressed in to many layers and more than a little dirty rested his hands against his knees. So far he had managed to run through the entirety of the last three hours of Serenity Valley for his unit a grand total of three and a half times. Rubbing the sleeve of the torn and grimy jacket over his brow Captain Malcolm Reynolds ignored the advice to stop and rest for the tenth time. "No, no, no. Gorramit no!" he snarled forcing himself to stand straighter with a wince. Around him the sounds of gunfire echoed off the rock walls of a valley, over head warbirds roared in greeting causing explosions to light up the night sky. The only person that wasn't in a rush was him. Mal knew the next events by heart and that was not what he was aiming for.

"Stacy. Stop the simulation and rerun it back to the beginning of the three hour mark. Run the calculations again at the rate of speed that the Alliance is advancing to the orders that I've told you." When nothing happened a dark scowl crossed Reynolds face. "Don't make be beg, sweetheart. I'm not in the mood."

When the simulation seemed to stop and fizzle out the former Browncoat turned and walked back to his starting position. Kneeling he shifted the rifle in his hands, closing his eyes and counting. The feeling of heat rushed over him as the sounds of battle started up again. There had to be a way to how this thing could have gone different. There had to be.

It was the best distraction that Mal was able to obtain for himself.

Earlier, somewhere in the Vatican's outbuildings:
Carefully, Murphy poured a little of the precious liquid into a dish, then placed the bottle far, far away. He nodded to his brother who then, with great ceremony (and from a safe distance) lit a match and tossed it in.

The flame burnt fast, bright, and blue.

The twins grinned.

******

The next flame burnt a decidedly different color, and distinctly higher. The boys jumped back, laughed, and Murphy pointed at his twin.

"You're trying it first!"



( Now, nearly everywhere... )

[ooc note]

[ooc: Read this bit.]

Something happens outside the ship. There's a concussive noise like something docking, and then the doors to Obs open again, to reveal a mostly intact, but somewhat bedraggled away team. One of them is injured, and part of the group works to get her down to MedBay, some of the others look stoic and a touch upset with what they've learned.

Some look pissed off that their various morphers and power suits have been stolen away from them again by Stacy's tentacles or dampened.

Something happens INSIDE the ship. A handful of individuals are released from their pods after quite some time of running imaginary mazes.

After sampling what passed for food around here--Stacy really needed to get her hands on some cayenne pepper, maybe a little garlic, some parsley, oregano and bay leaves---Gambit found himself wandering around the city by himself.  After making the rounds, he eventually stumbled upon the statuary, a large hall full of a various statues from a multitude of different worlds, times, and realities.  Some of the events or people being commemorated, he recognized.  Others, he did not.  But, with nothing better to do, Remy wandered into the hall and began to look over the statues. 

He was more than half-way through his little tour when he finally noticed something strange at the base of one of the statues.  It was, what appeared to be, a switch.  Furrowing his brow, he knelt down in front of the statue and eyed the device for a few moments.  Looking back over the statues he'd already passed, he realized that they all had identical switches on them.  Feeling rather adventurous--much like the proverbial cat that got killed by its equally proverbial curiosity--Remy flicked it.

...nothing.

"Now dat's silly," he thought aloud to himself.