Sokka had found himself an open spot in the city that seemed it would do perfectly for what he needed it for, and then set to work. He laid his weapons out in the grass and sat, considering them. Sword, spear, knife, war club, boomerang, shotgun, and a newly acquired semi-automatic handgun. He let his hands drift over them a moment before he picked up the spear. It had been a bit too long since he'd really practiced with that, best to stay sharp and focused. He raised the weapon into a guard and set off into a series of lunges, thrusts, parries, and ripostes; advances and retreats against an imaginary opponent. The young man ended with a final thrust, then dropped the weapon back onto the grass, taking in a few deep breaths before picking up his boomerang and jamming it into his belt, then drew his sword. This was good.

When he practiced he didn't have to think about anything. Not Katara and her willing submergence into a strange and foreign culture. Not Aang and the Nightmare King. Not Kelly and...whatever was going on with her. Just the sword and the footwork. He slid forwards into a neat lunge, dropped and turned it into a down downwards slash before it merged into a rising jab with the point, mind focused solely on remembering everything he had been taught. Probably why he didn't hear anyone who approached.

Being from (Ar)Rakis, Sheeana's first thoughts on the dark dreams that had been afflicting her fellow crewmates had more to do with hurricanes and sandstorms than clouds. The metaphor was the same though.

That was her thought as she sat in the lotus position in front of Arha's door (she would not leave her if she had another such dream, but would not tempt herself into sleep by joining her either). Sandstorms. She missed them so, the beating, suffocating, gritty howl of them. Real weather, to rasp at the skin, to shape both person and landscape. Sand or rock crunching underfoot, screaming winds, danger that could be understood and grasped by human hands. I am a desert creature. I need the environment I was born for.

She longed for them as for the touch of a lover.

[OOC: Bendy timed to two days before mission]

After a long day and night's worth of preparation (raiding the possessions lockers and office buildings for sugar, nuts and coffee, reducing the slop down to a powder that could be used as flour in engineering, trying, failing, trying again, failing again, and then finally coming up with something edible, extracting Spice from the sandtrout to make spice-tea, then finding two more grey office curtains and stitching together robes from them), Sheeana stood under the Ghariba tree, satisfied at her handiwork.

A card table stood to the side, offering plates of Baklawa...not the best example of the desert dessert, but it would have to do. A pitcher of hot spice-coffee (this 'instant' coffee lacked everything that made coffee bearable, but Spice would compensate, she thought) complimented it. The sun was as warm as it was going to get and the plant life hummed with her enthusiasm too. Sparkling dew poised at the end of each leaf and blade of grass.

The preparations were complete. Two new full time students. Acolytes and Sisters.

She remembered her own initiation. After four years of being worshipped as a holy child by Leto's priests, it was a humbling experience. Her twelve year old self had felt shaken to the very core. Like her initiates, she had taken the oath after her world was destroyed. She had left her old identity to submerge herself in this new thing.

How would Qhatara and Tess Lee experience it, she wondered as she waited for the initiates and guests to arrive.

Those who have seen Peter Parker around lately will know that he didn't take the Daligig's revelation at all well. Hours spent in the sensoriums fawning over the New York panoramic, even more time spent in the media library trawling through records from Skip James to the Smiths, all of which acutely miserable.

But that was then and this is now. Now-- now he walks quietly through Stacy's corridors, a camera slung over his shoulder and a tatty shoebox in his hands. He scans the walls until he finds one that seems to satisfy whatever purpose he has in store for it and drops to one knee so that he can get at the contents of the box.

One by one he takes out the pictures of friends and family both past and... as present as can be. Being the photography nut that he is most were taken by Peter himself, but there are some from other sources. There is Peter as a kid at Coney Island with his aunt and uncle and photobooth snaps of him and Gwen posing ridiculously. Graduation photos with a begrudging Flash Thompson and one of Harry and Norman back when things were good. A photo of his parents that he credits to May. Shots of the Bugle staff. One of Felicia which he'd had to have been very sly to take and of course, the inimitable Mary Jane Watson.

He takes each of these, looks them over fondly, and tacks them up on the wall. It was a start, the beginnings of what he hoped the rest of the crew would add to. There they were, all the people he'd known and loved over the years. All the people that gave him the strength he needed to face each day were laid out in front of him and in that moment he knew that there was no way in hell that any one of them was gone.

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."

Kate, Nathan and Xander were already familiar with the sadistic AI, and her idea of funtimes in cake-less mazes but it was a new experience for Dean.

As it was, Dean was cursing loudly as they all emerged in the city, and stomping or flying away depending on who it was.

Dean for his part? "Where the f#$%&* cake already?!"

Kate sighed, and shook her head before looking to do some target practice in the Sensoriums, and catch up with her friends.

Xander was making his way to the Vatican to check over the supports and structures. He was still checking to see how much can be salvageable. And what can be repaired.

Nathan flew off to stop by Medbay to see his brother before heading to the Media Library. He was also going to check his commlink for messages.

(ooc: back from hiatus, and distractions sorely needed. Just note which you want in your tag, thanks!)

Anyone who knows Luna, either as a fictional character or as a person, should be well aware that she's a fairly bubbly, active person. Which, honestly, should render it very, very peculiar for her to be seated in the Obs Deck, not doing anything, protuberant blue eyes fixed on the floor. Her wand lies forgotten on the ground beside her, robes a bit off-kilter. On rare occasion, she blinks.

Luna is thinking about the Inferi, and at the same time thinking about nothing. She is thinking about the first meeting of Dumbledore's Army, and at the same time thinking about nothing. On rare occasion, she blinks. Wrackspurts cross her mind vaguely, but she disregards them with nary a thought, knowing somewhere underneath her numbness that her lack of cogent thought has nothing to do with invisible creatures floating through her ears.

Honestly, she'd thought she would get over this by now. You know, the fact that her entire Universe is gone, all of those lovely things that she has yet to discover. She hasn't even learned how to Apparate, or taken her O.W.L.s, or... well, there are a lot of things that she hasn't done. She isn't particularly concerned by a lot of them - the main issue is that her friends are gone, as far as she knows, along with her father. The only good thing in the situation is that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is most likely gone with the rest of them, but even as she tries to make such light of the situation, the reality sinks on her head like a pair of fluffy, black earmuffs, and she realizes yet again that she won't see her rook-shaped house in Ottery St. Catchpole again, won't ever finish that mural on the ceiling. She'll miss Harry's birthday every year for the rest of her life.

And as she thinks this, she is thinking nothing at the same time. On rare occasion, she blinks.

Many things have been on the minds of the crew lately, and many things have happened.

There is, however, one happening which might go completely unnoticed by all but the most astute members of the crew.

Lately, all across the ship, in different rooms at different times, there is a strange feeling of unnaturalness. It happens slowly, so slowly one could hardly notice the change until it was entirely there.

The air, normally temperate and vaguely humid, begins to become chilled and dry.

The faint sounds of voices can be heard, whispering as if conspiring together, just far off enough to be unintelligible.

The shapes of objects in the area seem to subtly change, forming almost impossible angles if one watches long enough.

The last, and perhaps most noticeable to some, is the feeling of being observed. Not in the same way Stacy watches over the crew, but rather as if something is looking directly into you, straight into your soul.

Eventually, these feelings will fade, moving on to some other part of the ship.

However, they do seem to last long enough for one to attempt to investigate, should someone manage to work up the will to remain in the area long enough.

In a day of many surprises, Goliath has found another. The ship that has stolen him from his home - or rescued him from its destruction - did not take him alone.

It took his castle, too.

There is no breeze in the city to fly on, so Goliath stands in the middle of the street he has walked, staring at what is either a very convincing replica of Wyvern Castle, or the real thing. It comes complete with clawmarks and laser burns from the battles he and his clan have fought there over the ages.

The reminder of his clan draws his heart into sorrow again, but morning is coming, and he will not have time before the sun rises to think more on their fate. He puts his emotions behind him and climbs the castle wall in the light before dawn, coming to rest atop the highest turret.

Almost unbidden, the memory rises again, as he retakes the place where he had it. His last clear memory of Earth - his last clear memory of anything before waking in the Statuary. The sun on the verge of rising. Elisa at his side.

You know how I feel about you, right?

How we both feel. Yes.

Good.

Without his heart in it, he takes his position for sleep - wings spread, talons on display, snarling furiously to discourage invaders.

The sun rises . . . and nothing happens.

Goliath lifts a wing to shield himself from the brightness of the artificial sun. When it becomes clear that he is NOT going to fall into a stone sleep, he jumps from the main turret, spiralling downward to the street again, where there is more shade.

He growls as he stands, looking himself over - still flesh and blood, and nothing close to happy about it.

Katara had her time to laugh and her time to cry after finding out about her world. She'd had fun with her Outsider friends, she'd broke down in front of a person she would rather have not done that with and she was still adjusting to recent events. Throughout all that had happened, there was still the silver lining: Toph was here, and now there was only one more person she was waiting for and all of her team, would be back together again. She knew that joining the Outsiders had been a step in the right direction: she felt like she was missing something, like a part of her was just going through motions. Her friends fulfilled that, and she was glad, but there was a little part of her that wasn't filled.

So Katara found herself back in the Sensorium's, specifically the Northern Water Tribe Spirit Oasis, one of her favorite places. It was the second time she'd been here, and she was glad to be there: it was the only place in the Northern Water Tribe not covered in ice, and it was known to be a gateway to the Spirit world. The lush, quiet place never failed put her in a quiet state, and she sat there now, cross-legged and breathing slowly.

She could deal with this: she had to. But it wouldn't happen if she wasn't grounded and quiet, willing to center herself and contemplate her role in this place that would now be her home.

Gore dripped from the magnificent body of the worm, running in warm gummy runnels down the thick leathery hide. It wasn't its own gore; the creature's body was mineral. But water was poison to it. Its internal fires burnt out of control to compensate, raging and magnificently hot. Celluler water, black and stinking but still dangerously wet from the zombies....

The pearl of Leto Atreides' consciousness within the scaly body reached out. Sister...daughter...wronged one...

Sheeana arrived just in time to see the great body dissolve into sandtrout. She dashed onto the sand in the converted swimming pool. She could only hug the body of the magnificent dyer. She collapsed onto her side as the last of it flowed away.

No. Not like this. No. What if it's poisoned the sandtrout? They'll try to encyst the necrotic water and...then i'll...be... This had been the man/worm/hybrid who had taken her village from her, had been her constant companion, who she had mothered back into existence in those years on Chapterhouse, who had looked out with her from portholes at the burning of her homeworld, who had accompanied her into exile. Without Leto and his Golden Path, it had all been for nothing.

She let out the Fremen wail of grief: Lalalalalala... a repeated 'no', painful to the ears.

She shed water for the dead.

The conversation between the bridge crew, Stacy, and the Admiral is broadcasted where the rest of the crew is in the MedBay, and gathered right outside. Even in the bridge itself, the sound echoes over the monitors so that anyone resistant to psionics can hear Elfangor's side of the conversation.

They have now been told why they were brought to the ship.

Their worlds are gone, destroyed by the Ohm. They are refugees in an unforgiving Omniverse.

Transmigration 9 is an ark.

While Stacy is partially restored, including her core personality (which is far more personable), she is still severely damaged, and running on automatic somewhat. Until the ship can be repaired, podpops will keep occuring and they will be forced to go on missions to undo the damage the Ohm have wrought to the Omniverse. The threat of the being in Escherville is still a threat, one with no immediate solutions.

But they have allies out there, they have an AI watching over them, they have the smallest glinting traces of hope. Their loved ones are (hopefully) on board, and even beyond that, there is may be a chance, however small, of restoring their home universes.

Stacy broadcasts to the entire ship when it's all over, when all has been revealed.

||The bodies of the individuals that died today are being prepared for funeral services. A list of their names will be made available, though I can assure you that none are individuals any of you know. The funeral will be on Obs Deck in several days, and will be announced.||

||Those that wish to have their memories of their rescues restored, as proof their worlds are gone, will have a chance to request this after the services, but without grief counselors on board, I strongly recommend against it.||

||In the meantime, all of us must heal and recover from our ordeal. New areas of the ship have been made available, such as the Crew Lounge, and I have opened up the Crew Quarters for use, and cleared out the belongings of--||

Here she falters, sadness creeping into her voice.

||--of my original crew, so that all of you may sleep more comfortably. These quarters fit two people to a room, and have actual beds and sonic showers. Dining will still be provided in the Mess Hall, with periodic days of real food in the Lounge--they must be spaced out until my food stores are replenished with fresh food products.||

After a moment of thought she says: ||And because I think you've suffered enough, fornicative activities are now allowed--however, both parties must stop by the Medbay for a Contraceptive shot or this will not be allowed. These shots will provide protection for six months and do not protect against venereal disease, but all of you, barring several individuals with certain conditions--|| Like those, say, infected with zombie viruses, Steve ||--are currently disease-free.||

||The ship is now open, and the bridge team can relocate back to the Living Areas. The doors will remain open after they leave the bridge. I must now engage in heavy repairs. My AI will not be quite as available as usual. Please, take time to grieve, rest, and have your wounds treated. We will discuss more when everyone has recovered from this ordeal.||

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'.

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.

Some things Khel still could not bring himself to do with others. One of these things was combat practice. One could not get in a full practice when one was holding back to a mere fraction of one's potential. Even against the undead he could create, Khel frequently found himself relenting purely for the sake of saving himself the trouble of raising yet another several dozen skeletal warriors. He had all but given up hope that he would ever again be capable of completely letting go, and allowing his full power to surge forward.

The Sensoriums solved all that. He was reliving (to borrow the phrase) the battle that had ensued shortly after his raising, when the newly christened death knight had butchered thousands of orcs and goblinoids, and razed their tent cities to the ground. It was happening again, this time with greater trouble. Khel had asked for more, more to challenge him and more powerful foes to test his limits. Though he had no physical limits, even his magical 'life', such as it was, had a peak it could reach.

Giants flung large hunks of rock that the undead warrior's blade sliced through with ease. Rock and debris was not the only thing the death knight's sword slid through, and gore and viscera rained down upon his armor and skull, painting the normally bleached white skull a menacing reddish black. "Cower before me, filth!" he cried out, his hollow tones nonetheless carrying across the battlefield. "'Tis a night thou shalt not live long enough to regret!"

Meet n' Greet, smell my feet, gimme something good to eat! Unfortunately, the newbie meet and greet takes place the same time the command staff is congregating, so they might be a little late to the party.

But the crew is there to welcome the newcomers and explain their situation. At the end of the milling and spilling about, the command staff is going to start a general meeting to apprise everyone of their situation and discuss their next course of action:

Getting off the damn ship.

"Alright, boys. Fan out."

Meatship? Welcome to Gotham. Today the sensoriums echo with the clapping of rain on canvas. Eleven men in standard League of Assassins' field garp file slowly through an old, disused fairground. It's hard to believe people actually came here in the recent years before it was abandoned, let alone when it first opened during Gotham's heyday almost a century ago. It's hard to imagine one of the city's own police commissioners was once held hostage here. It's hard to imagine its last owners, the rather astutely named Circus of the Strange, actually had it refurbished to look like this. Like a David Lynch movie.

The ninja detachment spread out into the soaking morass of tarpaulin and amusement rides long since rusted under decades of rain like this.

"HUTT--!!"

That's the noise of one of them disappearing painfully. There's further groaning, albeit the groaning of old machines, and the ghost train rattles into life. When it spits the first cart out, the rest of the men can see their unconcious comrade bruised and broken, strewn ominously in the seat.

On the other side of the causeway, there are three quick thudding noises. One of the men edges his way over, only to find the coconut shy, the coconuts in question having been systematically knocked from their poles.

The second man cries just like the first as he's dragged into the stall.

The game plays on and the men are picked off one at a time. Only two of them are good enough to see him coming. A few of them go down without a sound, but most do so screaming. If they're lucky, some may walk again.

Meatship? Welcome to Gotham.

Luke sat in the observation deck, watching the light of multidimensional space reflect in the silvered fittings of his lightsaber.  His blue eyes were alert and focused, watching the cylinder and listening to--something else, something beyond that.

Then, his hands came up, and the lightsaber sprang away from his lap and hovered in midair in front of him.  Slowly, it slid apart into its component pieces, each perfectly in line.  Luke surveyed them all, checking power pack, light, green crystal, and emitter.  A lightsaber was the distinct weapon of a Jedi and was their life; he instructed those just building their first lightsabers to have great care for them, and keep up with their maintenance regularly.  If if failed at a critical moment, it could mean not only the life of the Jedi wielding it, but the lives of many others as well.

In some ways fainting had been a blessing to Chaucer. Medically, it was nothing but a nightmare, but he hadn't had to deal with the doctors or healers, or whoever had patched him up in the end. Whoever it was had done a brilliant job; Geoff had been terrified that he'd lose his arm at the very least, probably die. Instead he'd woken up to a splint and some heavy sort of wrapping. He couldn't move his arm, but it wasn't missing. A few minutes of checking it over had passed before he'd even noticed the odd pulling in his side and noticed the bandages there.

The relative lack of pain was a marvel in itself.

He needed to find out who had helped him, thank them, eventually. When he got out of the medbay. For now he was propped up slightly in his bed, struggling with the stylus for his comm. Left-handed writing was ridiculously difficult, made even more awkward by the unfamiliarity of the surface, but it was something to do. A way to write Philippa, one he could transcribe into legibility later.