First, he had to hit Engineering to talk to this Billy fellow--and cross his fingers and hope for the best. This wasn't Metrocity, he hadn't saved the day here and worked for the peoples' trust, and while he'd read that Constitution about people not being punished for past crimes that didn't necessarily mean there wouldn't be attitudes of distrust and the like.

There was, of course, the option of lying about his former villainhood, but good guys weren't supposed to do that, right? And with Roxanne not remembering that he'd reformed, all he'd need was for her to mention he was a villain, and then he'd have to explain the whole thing, and then it would get all messy.

It was better people knew ahead of time. It was better that got their judging...thing out of the way ahead of time, especially if he was trying to work under them.

So off to Engineering he went. Now that he was fairly certain he didn't have anyone to intimidate, he wasn't wearing his cape or the collar, hoping to look as normal as possible.

Of course, on the way there, and afterward, he nosed around into many a place on the ship to look around, often blurting out "Incredible!" "Magnificent!" "Do you see that? That is the coolest thing I've ever seen!" and other such exclamations at the wonders he saw. The ship was a beaut, a techno-organic masterpiece!

[ooc: You can catch him poking around just about anywhere on the ship, although his jaunt to Engineering comes first chronologically. Just specify where he ran into your guy.]</font

[ooc: Newbie Helpers List | Instructions: Post your character with one post establishing them as being podpopped. Tag each other in groups of 2's, 3's, and 4's, to get some interaction to start with. If a thread doesn't already have 2 or 3 people tagged in, tag it with your character's podpop popping near the other people, rather than making a new subthread. 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... )

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader - Garrus, Gwen MacKenzie, Jack Spicer, Jokimru, Paco, Chris Ramirez]}

Somebody's busy in Weapons & Possessions.

Jack's Super Secret Evil Project that he's been slowly working on, with much interruption, for a while now has finally come to fruition. At least, so he hopes. It all depends on what happens right now.

He activates the small, box-shaped device he's holding. It starts clicking softly. Jack grins.

Something's here.

He steps sloooowly further into the room and starts ranging along the stacks. As he approaches the end of one row, the clicking starts picking up.

He laughs.

"Jack," he tells himself, already gloating, "you really are a genius."

Somebody's in engineering, eating while he works. Jack's figured out that if he imagines hard enough, he can convince his brain that the slop is actually pudding for short lengths of time as long as he's busy doing something else while he eats it.

There's probably a rule against it, but that has yet to stop him.

Click, click, snap!

Jack puts down the little device, takes another bite of totally-pudding, swallows, and picks up his comm ring.

<< Hey, Indigo. You there? >>

[[OOC: This post is mostly so Jack can get those sonar beacons he was working on for Indigo to her, but if you want to tag in "before" that and talk to him you can.]]

Jack Spicer's in engineering at a workbench, repairing the probes the crew damaged when fighting their way through Stacy's immune systems. He has to admit, they're nicer than his own bugs and as he's repaired them he's seen how elegantly put together they really are.

He's a little jealous, really.

Click click click goes the probe in Jack's hands as he replaces broken parts, realigns ones that have been shifted, opens and closes movable pieces to make sure they work smoothly. Who knows what they might need them for again?

And in the meantime, he considers how he hasn't had time to get down to any proper evildoing since waking up here, how there's a guy here who's clearly an awesome villain that he needs to scope out, how there might be nobody but him left from his universe, and (this only occasionally coming forward, but still there) the fact that somebody he had known died on the last mission and that on some deep, human, and entirely unvillainous level he feels bad.

Jack is looking for somebody.

Loudly. And rather inefficiently, really.

"FENTON!" he yells, storming around the ship trying to locate Danny.

He has no idea it wasn't Danny sending him bizarre messages, but the ghost dog chewing on Danny's omnicom.

You have my sincerest apologies, but I have my mission.

The traps start. Rotating blades coming out of the walls and floors and ceilings, jets of fire, lasers, holographic enemies. The clear walls of the maze let them see what's happening to everyone else.

The traps start, and they have to stay alive despite them. If they stop avoiding them, it's their own fault, you see, if they die. That makes it indirect enough for Stacy's Anti-harming-the-crew protocols to be avoided, as Hal, despite his reprogramming, still has to follow some constraints.

Please commence with killing yourselves by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The only chance the group has is if they work together to stay alive, and somehow they have to take out the shield projectors creating the maze even though they themselves are shielded...

[ooc: Cooperation is key, people. Hal can only adapt to one power/skill-set at a time, not all of them.]

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?]

Jack Spicer has been having a problem. His omnicom is gone. He wants his omnicom back, and Leon has it. Not only does Jack not like Leon much, but he has to get authorization from the captain himself in order to get it back.

Not only is this absolutely horrible for his pride, it also means he has to ask a favor of the head Good Guy on the ship. At least, that's the way he sees it.

But... he misses it. And he's finally decided that sulking and procrastinating isn't going to make this any better.

After trying for a couple minutes to think of how to do this, Jack finally gives up and goes the simple and blunt route.

Hey, um... Captain? Sir? he asks hesitantly over his comm ring. He doesn't really know where Picard would be right now.

Since time immemorial (or at least since before any of the crew members have been awake) there has stood a massive...thing...against one of the walls in Special Weapons Division.

It looked like some sort of large, alien device, though none of the engineering crew could ever figure out what it was for.

However, since it wasn't really harmful, nor did it seem particularly useful, no one ever really paid much attention to it.

Or maybe the mods needed a lame excuse for what's coming next so STFU

However, it is not so much this strange device that was of interest to anyone in the area right now.

No, instead, they might find the sudden sound of whirring machinery and the general sounds of technology activating coming from the wall behind the device that might get their attentions.

...Hmm. Isn't that interesting?

Jack's kind of annoyed right now. Well, more than kind of. Leon took his omnicom! What gives him the right, huh? Jack knows he probably shouldn't have hacked Sam's, but didn't it turn out alright in the end? Heck, everyone should be hailing him as a hero for finding the guy's plans! Not that Jack much likes the idea of being thought of as a hero, but still. Is a little respect that much to ask?

So right now he's falling back on the oldest standby in the book for being frustrated with nothing to do about it: busting stuff up.

Jack has the sensorium set to replicate a particular room in his evil lair. It's mostly bare concrete with some lines painted on the floor, it's the room he usually uses for assembling any really big bots. Instead, he has five smaller ones sitting ready. He's set his helipack off to one side so he doesn't accidentally get it damaged. He holds the Monkey Staff in both hands.

"Monkey Staff!" he shouts, activating it. "Alright fightbots, bring it!"

The robots spring to life and come at Jack. Clearly, they know kung fu. Jack? Jack only sort of knows kung fu. But that's not stopping him, and he has the staff making him much tougher and more agile than normal.

"YAAAAHHH!"

If you look in on the loud crashing and random monkey sounds, he's bouncing all over the room beating the crap out of robots. If you watch one, you'll notice they pick up any broken off limbs, repair themselves, and return to the fray regularly. Jack seems to be just getting started.

Who knew he could actually fight?

Jack's skulking around the art hall. He's figured out that not a lot of people come in here, so it makes a great place to get away from it all, relax, and fiddle around with his omnicom. He's just told Leon where he is and expects him to show up any moment now, and he has a feeling he's not going to like how this ends.

Down in the city, sitting in one of the libraries in the Vatican, sat Sam Winchester hunched over a table with his eyes focused on the omnicom that lay on the table in front of him. His brow was furrowed and his mouth drawn shut as he stared intently at the information collected. His body was tense and there was a resolve and determination in his features that was unmistakable.

( I see trouble on the way ) Unfortunately, the omnicoms are not immune to hacking...especially by those with better computer skills than Sam...

[OOC: Feel free to post independent subthreads if you want your hacking characters to react--or to react to Jack's message. Once Sam is confronted, I'd like that to stay as one single subthread, so if you want to confront Sam, please do it in that thread with the others. Thanks:D]

He'd been deliberately avoiding people since they returned from the mission and Leela had been safely transported to the MedBay to recuperate from her injuries. Brainiac 5 didn't like to admit it, but even he needed some time to process things if the events were significantly large and life-changing enough.

And finding himself here, in this bizarre ship with no idea how he'd come here, then meeting an alternate counterpart of himself who was similar enough to be disconcerting, but different enough to make him more than a little jealous and defensive, and topping the entire experience off with suddenly having to be involved in a mission that he didn't understand his role in and with a group of people he didn't know? It was enough to make even his considerable intellect need a break, if only for a short while. Particularly when he factored in the... unfortunate circumstances before his arrival.

Fortunately Stacy had more than enough room for him to find a place to just take time to work things through in his head without being distracted by the presence of others.

And he'd since resolved to try and avoid sleeping in the 'bed' provided by the ship at all costs.

But experiences with the sleeping area aside, he's now feeling a little more accepting of what's happened so far. He's far from happy about being here, but there isn't much to be done about that - and it's not like he's particularly unique in that regard either - and he'd rather do something productive with his time, so he heads down to the laboratory in Special Weapons his counterpart had shown him around earlier.

After checking that the area is indeed currently empty by cautiously elongating his neck until his head could peek into the room without being too noticeable, Brainiac 5's body follows the rest of him into the room and his neck returns to its normal length. He's alone in what passes for a laboratory, and therefore feels a bit more at home.

And also free to poke through other people's projects.

It's not meant to be rude or anything. It's just that he's not used to having other people working in his lab back with his Legion and while he reminds himself that this lab is a shared space, he can't help but occasionally make a note on someone's equation or a footnote on a diagram to suggest a different idea.

He's just trying to be helpful, really. It doesn't really occur to him that others might not see it that way.

Part of the crew might be gone, but life on the ship goes on. In fact, new people have woken up and, eventually, they've been spat out into the mess hall.

Maybe it's better to introduce them to some of the worst aspects of ship life first, right?

Anyway, the word is out that there's new people, and someone should probably go say hello. Before the n00bs mistake the glop for crew.


[ooc: read before tagging, plz]

"What the HELL!!? What the hell are all of us then? Loose trash?"

Rose doesn't appreciate being manhandled by the tentacles EVER, but she appreciates being dismissed from the new and exciting stuff and stuck in this sentient prison thing while everybody else gets to go and DO something even MORE!

They sent the guy with the freaking STICK but not HER?!

She gives the wall a good punch in frustration and anger and a little pinging voice promptly informs her that she's just racked up a violation. So she kicks the wall and racks up a second.

( Yeah well... )

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.]

"ORGANICS!" Sentinel shouted, rumbling along in his vehicle mode as he sideswiped another wall. Damned change in size throwing off his sense of control; damned meaty ship whacking him when he hit the walls too hard, damned Decepticons and glitch-flunkies not listening to him!

"Organic Spicer, and Organic '5'! I require your barely adequate technical knowledge!"

Holly was treating this place like an especially dangerous Goblin black market bust. She walked quickly but quietly, constantly looking over her shoulder, hand on her gun. Really, the ship wasn't that different from Haven. Same small, narrow tunnels, same artificial lighting. But Haven was a bustling, living city. The ship felt... dead. Not to mention it was making her claustrophobia creep back into her mind ever so slightly.

But claustrophobia or no, she wanted answers. So she was slinking about the corridors, looking for anything out of place, anything or anyone weird and worth investigating. As if there was anything around here that wasn't weird.