The Sensorium was (once again, for this particular occupant) reflecting the glowing opulence of an upper level in the Imperial Palace.

Mara Jade Skywalker's hair was swept up off the base of her neck and she wore a very flowy, light green dress as she leaned against a balcony railing, watching imaginary traffic sweep past her. Above, below, across, the speeders were just flashes of light.

Every so often, a servant or some nameless Imperial would wander by and she would tense, idly worried that her subconscious would prompt Stacy to bring in someone less savory. Like her former Master.

For now, though, it was just traffic and night air.

After talking to Ben, Luke had decided to go to the Jedi Temple and practice some of his lightsaber forms, working off some of the energy that had built up with a full night of sleep and a healing trance besides.  As well as to calm his mind, keep it focused; he had the sense that they were standing on the brink, watching the storm come swiftly in, and knew that he and the other Jedi would need to get together and work things out, checking in with all of them.

Focus.  Feel the Force, let it flow through you.

His green blade sliced through the air, leaving glowing trails behind, concentrating on those first teachings Obi-Wan had given to him on the Falcon, many years ago.  And gradually, Luke slipped into a sort of trance, the Force wrapping around him and supporting every simulated parry, every practiced strike.

Luke caught up to Mara, jogging across the sand to put a hand on her shoulder.  Worry was etched on every line of his face (and at over six decades, there were a fair few), and carried through a thread in his voice when he spoke.

"What's going on?" he asked, brows drawn together and blue eyes fretful.  "Mara, what just happened?"


[[ooc: post in question.]]

Vestara turned up the volume on her portable music player she'd picked up at a nearby shop even louder. The noise she'd chosen, very similar to the Keshiri temple choirs she'd grown up with, sounded like screeching female rancors accompanied with drums. She wanted to make sure everyone else sunning on the beach could enjoy it, too.

Ves lazily stretched out and applied more suntanning lotion. She acquired a local fowl at the open-air market and was dissecting it, wanting to know more about the biology of this planet's creatures. The innards were carefully spread around the young apprentice's towel.

She was wearing this green and white bikini.

It was nice to be out on solid ground, to breathe fresh and salt-tinged air, and to feel the real warmth of the sun on her neck and shoulders, Nanoha thought. She felt a very deep urge welling up within her breast to just take flight, to soar through an actual sky in the first time in months - and she had no doubt that she would.

But there were other things she had to take care of first. Like, for instance, swimsuit shopping with her best friend.

"Ooh, this store looks like it might have some cute ones!" Nanoha tugged on Fate's hand, pulling her towards one of the storefronts that lined this street of the bustling shopping district. Even if it didn't, there were still plenty of others to try, and plenty of cute outfits to convince Fate to try on.

(ooc: It might help to have just one thread for ALL YOUR SHOPPING NEEDS? Feel free to tag in and mingle, if you're shopping for clothes, groceries, games, whatever!)

It was a little disconcerting how Mara ended up in a different area than she meant to be. Of course, she couldn't blame anyone but herself, as she kept ignoring the little guiding tentacles that tried to get her to where she wanted to be.

Maybe she truly just wanted to get lost.

In any case, she ended up wandering the Statuary, stopping along a few select to flick the switch at the base of the statues and sighing as nothing happened. Of course, nothing happened.

She stopped fully in front of a statue of Luke Skywalker, of her husband, and she smiled to herself, snorting softly. Of course he had a statue...in all honesty, there were probably statues of him on most Inner Rim Planets (not that they existed anymore).

"Can't get away from you, Farmboy."

(Not that she wanted to.)

Arha did not care if he did not wish her there.  She came with her hair loose, clad in her plantsuit, barefoot, empty handed.  This was not a lightsaber battle, nor was it one of any blade at all.  She had peeled the plantsuit up to allow her feet to dig in against the deck of the medical room, should she need it.  There was no steeling in preparation, she came open, her shields dropped and baldfaced before Vader.

She studied him from the doorway, her head tilted and her blue-within-blue eyes half-slitted in contemplation.  He would be rude, she would ignore it, he would yell, and she would speak softly.  The poison in him, this Dark Side, it was just poison.  Arha had survived The Water of Life--so, too, would she survive the taint that flowed through him. 

Poison always burned.

She swept a cursory probe over the work she had done the day before and found it well and still healing.  It needed help, but this was why she came.  It was not easy to initiate contact, to push aside the darkness, but such a thing was to be done and she would get better at doing it in time.  She moved into the room and took a seat beside his bed.

For the moment, she sad nothing.

[[For this post I have music: Canvas.]]

Luke thought that he'd been doing entirely too much thinking since coming aboard Stacy.

He knew that since he'd taken on the task of rebuilding the Order, he'd become less inclined to act before he thought about it first; it was as though the words of Yoda (Adventure--tch!  Excitement--heh!  A Jedi craves not these things) had taken root in his mind.  That was probably Yoda's goal.  But still, it seemed he'd found himself out on the Obs Deck, staring into the Bleed, far too often since awakening from podsleep.

Nonetheless, there was a lot on his mind, and his father was foremost among it all.  As it stood, Vader was a huge danger to anyone and everyone who got in his way on Stacy, and as much as Luke hated the idea of locking his own father up or somehow otherwise restraining his movement on the ship, he had to think of the rest of the crew too.

Sighing, Luke shifted a bit on the squishy seat, blue eyes half-closed and faraway.

As usual Tycho had arrived at the designated meeting place at the debriefing room in Rogue Squadron's headquarters a little ahead of time. There was nothing for him to prepare really, but he'd called the meeting, so it was still good for him to be there first.

The room contained a semi-circle of chairs which faced a projector screen, and Tycho sat himself in one of them, looking something over on his datapad as he waited for the others to arrive. Someone who knew him well would see that his jaw muscles were tight, the only outward sign he was showing of how seriously he took this. Deciding what they were going to do about Darth Vader was a Big Deal.

Mara was a woman of action, one who liked to get things done sooner rather than later, instead of waiting around.

So when Luke told her she'd need to get a contraception shot for things, she decided to go ahead and get it done. She'd apparently been given a second chance with her husband and she wasn't going to waste any second with him, in any way.

Plus, check ups were always good, right?

She sighed as she sat on the chair. Eugh, doctors.

Stacy's voice speaks over the whole of the ship. What she has to say has become very familiar over the the podlings have spent here.

||Pod Release Protocols Initiating,|| she says. ||Please proceed to the Observation Deck to meet your new crew mates.||

Those crew members that don't head to the Obs Deck on their own are hurried there via gentle but insistent tentacles. A few people stop by Engineering to help bring and pass out omnicoms and comm rings to the new crew members as well.

[ooc: Only new characters and Command Staff can start new threads for introductions, to limit the number of threads. Everyone else, just tag in and have your guys greet the newbies.]

He hadn't realized just how much he'd missed tinkering on ships until he'd gone some time here without doing anything like it.  Growing up, Luke had always been up to his elbows in some project or another, fixing droids for his uncle or modifying the speeder he used; later on, the tinkering turned into working on real ships like his X-Wing, the Falcon, and then Mara's ships.  There was something comforting in it, in the logical way that components fit together--and right now, with so much having happened recently, Luke found that tweaking systems on his X-Wing to better than spec was the best way for him to organize his thoughts.

Jaina, Han, and Chewie showing up had been enough of a jolt to Luke's mind.  Jaina wasn't the only child of his sister and best friend now; she hadn't watched her twin fall to the Dark Side.  Chewbacca was, well, alive.  Han was years younger.  And then there was Jacen, who only had the tiny seed planted by the torment he'd suffered at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong and their insidious mental shaping.  And then there were those nightmares, and the strange surreal dreams that twisted aspects of his memories...

It was on Jacen that Luke meditated while he lay on his stomach, head and shoulders inside an access bay, using a hydrospanner to make adjustments to the shielding system and periodically sitting up to check the diagnostic readouts on the ship computer.  It wasn't going smoothly, and he muttered a very un-Jedi Huttese curse after checking it again, and sighing.

It was really bad when a Jedi lost his center.

The rest of the crew assembled on the Observation Deck to meet the latest editions to their numbers. After the revelation that their worlds are gone, many of them are even more eager to see people they knew from home.

Several people are set up near the doors to provide the new people with omnicoms and comm rings. New crew-mates might see a green-skinned alien and snake girl among their number. There are also several authoritative-looking figures ready to introduce themselves.

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

[ooc: Only new characters and Command Staff can start new threads for introductions, to limit the number of threads. Everyone else, just tag in and have your guys greet the newbies.]

Luke rubbed a hand across his face as he came out of the meditative trance.  The line between meditation and sleep had been blurred lately, his body needing one and his mind the other to keep functioning properly.  Just by looking at the dark circles under his eyes, it'd be pretty easy to tell that Luke wasn't getting enough of one, and healing trances only compensated for so much.

( Wherever I go, your shadow follows me )

The Sensorium had picked up on her indecisiveness.  Instead of just an X-wing, sitting in a hangar and waiting for her, there was a variety of ships.  The complicated B-wing, a sleek Hapan fighter, the safe and powerful Y-wing.  Mara rapped her fingers against her helmet while she looked them all over.  There really weren't very many ships she couldn't handle.  The dreams had her edgy, on guard.  At the oddest times, she would think that she could hear the Emperor laughing. 

Expression firming, she marched across the metal plates to the A-wing tucked off to the side.  She needed to get her mind off of things, and that meant a challenge.  The A-wing interceptor was the fastest thing around at sub-lightspeed, but very touchy.  The slightest mistake and the ship would spin out.  It was said that a pilot had to be extremely brave or insane to fly one, and being both probably helped.  It was perfect for the mood she was in.

Even in an artificial setting, Mara walked around her ship to inspect it before starting the power up sequence.  The rest of the ships sat in a row, waiting.


[ooc:  Anyone in the mood to go flying?]

It is that time again, meatship.

Once again, the King of Nightmares has deigned to spread his touch to all of your dreams.

This time, however, he has decided to give them a much more personal touch, sending his very own children to visit each and every one of you, slowly sowing the seeds of madness within all of you.

Such a kind and loving king he is, isn't he?

[ooc: Alright folks, Nightmare King is ramping things up a bit. These nightmares are a good bit more dangerous now, and he's sending in his minions to make things a little more real. The nightmares will be of a much more serious nature this time, designed to start driving the crew slowly insane. Characters are more likely to run into nightmare minions in the guise of someone or something that will tug at the edges of their sanity. Also, this time, the characters can have joint dreams, as these nightmares are of a more mystical nature this time. Once again, tagging in isn't mandatory, but if you want to, go crazy (literally)!]

[Additional Note: Any injuries won't be carrying over to real life at this point in the plot but don't worry, we'll get there eventually!]

New faces, new duties, new responsibilities.  All things that Mara had sorely needed, but not admitted to.  Since the Emperor had taken her from her parents, she'd had a job, a duty that she could devote all of her time to.  Before awakening here, she'd devoted all of her time and considerable will to her own company.  Then, suddenly, nothing.  There were missions, including the grand one to save their universe, but it was all abstract.  Removed.

The smuggler shifted, her legs protesting the piece of metal pushing against her thighs, but X-wings were designed for the comfort of the mechanics.  They were designed to be fast and destroy things.  Not a model she had a lot of time in, since they were almost exclusively the property of the New Republic's military, but Mara certainly knew her way around them.  This ship, Rogue 9, was now hers, and she intended to know every milimeter of it.

There was a thump as she knocked a hydrospanner with her elbow, sending it to the ground.  "Bantha spit," she muttered, pulling herself out of the access panel she'd been hanging down into, looking for her tool.

It was green, very green, this place she had constructed.  Green with bright red flowers and a cool, crisp wind that washed over the field in waves.  She faced the snow capped mountain and its still, cool lake that stretched along its low, rolling foothills in silence, each parcel bound in coarse string resting in the grass.  Four perfectly folded brown squares and one thinner, but no less neatly wrapped, green one sat spaced with an equal distance between them, as Arha turned her face into the cool wind.

( a time of thankful gift-giving )

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."

Arha had agreed to meet Mara Jade where the city itself began and they were to explore, then, for a whole day. It was possibly more liberating than she wished to acknowledge, but she had to concede that it was her own self that had placed herself in this box. She stood glancing along a long, wide street and rocked back onto her heels, plotting a course in her mind. There were many places to go, maybe nooks to get into as well, but there was an interesting structure that had caught her eye a few days prior. It was a funny sort of building, really, with a tall tower attached to it.

She had wondered if it were some sort of place where a culture went to worship its dieties or perhaps something else entirely. Arha stood, searching out the building with sharp eyes. It begged an investigation if only because it was odd, so, that was where they would wind their way to, then.

Arha was decided.