It was one exhausted, tired, alien puke-covered, acid blood-burnt group of people that trundled out of the hangar and into the ship proper. Their mission? Had sucked. Their intel had been wrong. Their lives had nearly been forfeit.

But they had survived, mainly by watching each other's backs and shooting or slashed or flamethrowing at every damn thing that moved.

Now it was off to Medbay to tend to their injuries, but after that, maybe they'd finally catch a break.

They had no idea of what had just conspired, other than what they'd learned from Stacy's messages--there had been a traitor, and that traitor had been taken care of.

They had sneaked into the facility and out of the nest. They had gathered whatever equipment they could use as weapons. Now it was time for the rescuers to fight their way in, and the rescuees to fight their way free.

There was only a whole horde of xenomorphs in the way, after all.

In the complex, deeper into it near the core, several of the away team were all strung up near each other, around a clutch of disgusting looking eggs. Two appeared to have already been hatched. The rest were waiting. They were bound to the walls by slime and ick, some sort of substance spit up by the creatures that may as well have been quick-dry cement.

Outside the complex, the rest of the away team had made it to the ship--only to find it damaged. Acid spit up by one of the creature had burned through part of the hull and into important inner workings. They would need someone mechanically inclined, that understood electrical work, to fix it like Jamie--uh oh.

Well, that was a problem wasn't it.

It was time for the one group to try to survive, and the other group to figure out what to do about their missing comrades.

They had all been Chosen. The usual story when it came to Stacy. They'd had no say over who went on the mission, but fortunately a group of competent individuals had been chosen, with Kang, an Away Team leader there to act as mission leader.

The mission: to repair some of the mining mechanisms that had run down in an abandoned terraforming colony, to gather some rare ore with minerals and other substances vital to Stacy's functions. One small chunk would last her for ages.

The planet: LV-428 was a very hostile world, a dead rock with a very weak atmosphere that was comprised largely of Nitrogen, Argon, and Neon. Terraforming efforts had introduced enough oxygen for it to support human life, but only just barely. Due to the violent nature of terraforming on the climate, raging electromagnetic storms often occurred, cutting off all communications.

The intel: Due to a war on Earth, the members of the colony had been recalled back home. The entire place was abandoned, but thought to be safe.

The Mission Personnel: Jamie Hemeros, Kang, Sokka, and Hiccup were on to handle the mechanics ends of the mission. Scarlet Levy was to be their medic, just in case of injuries. Reimi was their pilot. And on the security detail were Tobias, Hap Suriz, Rose Tyler, Setsuna, Kettch, and Stoick. Kang doubled as their away team leader.

Surely this group could handle anything thrown their way. For something as simple as an empty colony, they were almost over-equipped.

...Right?

[ooc: Don't post until I have subthreads set up]

[REMINDER, GUYS. No one is required to tag to have learned anything in these classes. This is why we have the handwavey thread, and we keep you updated on what was covered. We'd at least LIKE you to tag the handwavey thread just to say your dude was there, so that if it comes up in conversation in other logs, everyone knows, but you don't have to tag in to the other subthreads. <3]

The atmosphere this time was vastly different than it had been for the past couple of weeks. The most noticable difference was that it was outdoors; the sun shone brightly, beating down on the military parade ground. Several hundred feet away, a massive wall could be seen, at least twenty feet tall, and the sounds of a city emanated from behind it. Occasionally, a pair of draconians would be spotted walking the ramparts.

The shooting range off to one side looked very out of place in the obviously medieval setting, but it was a necessity; that portion of the training was all Ronon's, and Kang let him have complete control of it.

An interesting addition to the piles of wooden weaponry was a wicker basket filled with strips of multi-colored cloth.

Ronon turned to his scaled friend. "Everything on your end is ready, right?"

"Yeah. Hopefully this won't go as badly as I fear," Kang sighed, squaring his shoulders and raising his voice so that everyone else could hear him. "We've got a few surprises for you all this time. Those--" he pointed at the basket "--are blindfolds. You can probably guess what they're for. Admittedly, I myself don't have much, if any, experience fighting while blind, so you all won't be the only ones learning something new over the next few days. The rest of them, you'll find out as the day progresses."

( Handy-dandy cut to save your f-lists! )

It has been an odd week for the blonde in the Mess, and though she always looks a bit peculiar, her dottiness is rather more present than usual today.

Seated at her table (which happens to be rather awkwardly close to the very center of the room), she seems to be spending more time twirling her wand in her hand than eating, and her feet are bare under the table, which she doesn't seem to mind too much. Years of having her shoes and the like stolen by classmates has rendered her impervious to most states of barefootedness, though it has nothing to do with her shoes being stolen this time.

Don't mind her if she stares at you as you walk in--she probably isn't paying attention.

Well, no, that's not true at all--she is probably paying a great deal of attention.

Amaterasu could feel her heart sink upon seeing the “Plant Temple”. It had brightened her spirit thinking that there was some life on this meat ship. This was not what she was picturing at all when she heard ‘temple’! She imagined it to be a shine of lush green foliage with little song birds and colorful flowers, a refuge of untouched nature, but It was just a sea of vines and scruffy undergrowth. Even so, this was far better than having no growth at all. The condition of the rest of the ship was far worse than this place.

As she journeyed across the ship to reach the temple the sun goddess witnessed the extent of the defoliation. Amongst the twisted, mismatched buildings and houses were patches of brown scraggily grass and shabby shrubs. Hardly anything to rave about and it did nothing to brighten up the place. The ship felt so dull and stagnate. There was a river to break up the vast expanse of brown. Well if you wanted to call that a river. Sure, it flowed like one, but where were the cattails and the water lilies? It was just as barren as the rest of the ship. She wondered if the inhabitants could remember the feel of fresh green grass between their toes or the sweet aroma of a flower.

This was not expectable in the least. Something had to be done. The condition of this place was far worse than that of Nippon. The goddess would have to make everything herself. That was going to require great amount of her spiritual power, but she could do it. She had to.

Amaterasu narrowed her eyes with new found determination and she set off to work, starting with this river. With a flick of her tail there was an eruption of flora. The once barren shore was now covered in reeds, cattails, and weeping willows that gracefully arced over the water casting their shadows. This was only the beginning. Ammy raced through the ship as a tidal wave of green was left in her wake. Tirelessly she worked through the late hours. When the inhabitant woke up it must have been quite a sight. Seemingly over the night the ship had exploded with color. Where there were once bare patches of earth was now covered with grassland and trees of all shapes and sizes. And the flowers! Oh there were flowers everywhere! Around a nearly formed meadow was a ringlet of trees and sitting in the middle was an enormous cherry tree in full bloom. Its soft pink petals fell like snow in the breeze. Sitting at the base was one very tired looking white wolf. It had taken everything the deity had, but she did it. She panted happily as she lay in the grass, she just needed to close her eyes for a bit...

Since receiving a more thorough explanation of the situation from people who had been here longer, Kettch had been unsure what to do with himself. It was one thing to have been Chosen by a Great Spirit as a hero to save entire worlds... but it was another to learn that he had been Chosen at the cost of his entire world and all of his people. With the knowledge that the Ohm had destroyed Endor had come another realization as he'd looked around at the Meet and Greet.

There were no other ewoks among the crew. He was alone. His family was gone. His entire tribe was gone. Everything he'd known was gone.

Against all of that, even the realization that his Soul Tree had been destroyed only made his loss absolute. He was lost now, good and truly. Not only had he lost everything, but he would be lost. Without his Soul Tree, his spirit was doomed to be forever lost. Even now, before he had died, it felt as if his spirit had died along with his Soul Tree.

He'd been in a daze of grief for a while after that realization. For a time, he'd wandered lethargically through the hallways to the parts of the Great Spirit's body that he could reach without submitting to the horrors of being snatched and tossed about by tentacles inside tubes. Which meant he was still on Level 5.

Eventually though, his stubborn determination had reared up inside him. All was not lost yet. Some people had talked about how they could restore their worlds if they defeated the Ohm. And surely the Ohm had to be in league with the Night Spirit. They had to be stopped. And most importantly, he refused to just give up and die.

He slowly felt his spirit return to him from the dark places it had wandered for the past while, lost as he was. But maybe... maybe he wouldn't be lost anymore. Not yet. He still had a great purpose to fulfill. He had been Chosen, and the Great Spirit Stacy had faith in him.

Still weighed down by his grief and loss, but with a new determination, Kettch began paying more attention to his surroundings. He didn't want to stay lost.

She'd walked just to move.  Down the corridor, away, shivering lightly as she took yet another step, her expression firm and determined.  A twisting corridor here, a straight there.  Her fingertips caught the lip of the doorway.  She moved forward, swayed back.  The door unfurled and Dana Scully's hand found her mouth as she stepped through, torn between wonder and the fear she chose not to examine too closely.  Beyond this doorway it was the green and color of plantlife, bright splashes of exotic flowers, trees that only existed in some mad writer's mind.

The door sealed behind her and her fingers found her cross, tracing the hard, plain edges of it.

Her feet sank into rich earth and she took in a lungful of sweet, pure air.  Scully bit her lip and moved forward, cautious, careful, as if walking a crime scene, fearful of disturbing everything and inquisitive all at once.  She walked quite a ways before something stopped her.  A cry in the distance, the turn of the bushes, the rustling as something large came close--these things froze her in place, swallowing hard.  She had heard that sound once before, deep in the Mayan ruins of Xitaclan in the Yucatán.  She had heard them once with Mulder and Cassandra Rubicon.  Scully had watched it take Fernando Aguilar as he was about to kill all of them.
( A thing of the past, present. )

It had been a month since their last Warfare Training session and both teachers were worried that their students' progress would have suffered for it. But with everything that happened on Zokez II, Ronon and Kang were both certain that everyone could see the importance of learning how to fight and defend yourselves properly. Stacy had also a lot of new crew released from their pods not too long ago. Numbers for training were sure to increase.

One major change to training from this month was the venue. Previously it was held in the Drunken Dragon Tavern but now they were standing in a Sensorium replica of Atlantis' Mess Hall without the tables and chairs but instead benches to the side. As students made their way through the Sensorium doors and the lower, lobby part of the mess hall, they could see Kang and Ronon waiting on top of the 4 steps before the main part of the mess hall. Ronon was going over today's lesson contents in his mind when Kang leaned towards him, indicating to start.

Ronon straightened up and looked at the crowd, his task master mode on. "Welcome back to Warfare Training. I know some of you are new to this. I'm Ronon Dex," He then gestured to Kang. "And this is Kang and some of you may know him as the owner of the Druken Dragon Tavern and one of the Council members. We'll be your main teachers for these sessions."

Kang's wings rustled slightly, and he grinned. "I mentioned this already, on the channel, but I'm going to say it again: this is not going to be easy. You will get hurt. You will be sore for days on end."

He crossed his arms over his chest, "Remember, this class is voluntary. If you can't handle it, then leave; we don't tolerate whining or half-assing. We also won't tolerate any sort of discrimination based on age or sex, so be respectful to your fellow classmates, and to your instructors." There may or may not have been a pointed look at Grif with that last bit.

"Because we haven't met for a while, and we have newcomers, the next few days are going to be more about review. I know some of you continued training on your own, but not everyone, and we won't ask why. We know there were injuries.

"Let's begin."

[Things to be covered!

Revision of hand-to-hand, sword, knife and axe combat and firearms!

Previously!

April 26 - May 9: Basics of hand-to-hand, proper knife and sword handling. Important points: Eye contact with an opponent at all times, prevention of telegraphing moves, breathing, learning to read an opponent and spot weaknesses. Most of it so far has been defensive rather than offensive.

May 10 - May 23: More hand-to-hand, basic offensive moves with knives and swords, basics of guns.

May 24 - June 6: Basics of hand-to-hand, shooting practice with handguns and knife and sword training. It was the start of more offensive training.

June 7 - June 20: The beginning of Ohm training. Hand to hand as always. More Sword training. More shooting practice and gun maintenance. Gotta keep those guns clean.

Notes!

From now on, Warfare Training will come with a hand-wavey thread so characters can sign in and everyone knows who was there even if you don't reply to the main threads. Don't forget to tag yourselves in if you use the hand-wave thread too. Hope you enjoy~]