Welcome. Check.
Shore Leave? Check.
Now it was time to get acquainted with her new home! And what better way to do so than to dash around in er fox form with the occasional break here and there in her humanoid form just to enjoy the feel of the environment in a different light~

If you venture into the city today, you might find yourself seeing a shadow, or a blur, or sometimes even the full visage of a majestic while fox with nine tails dashing quickly through the City. You might even simply run into the nine tailed maiden just dancing around in an abandoned building, or at the park.

Wherever it may be, do you approach her? Or observe her from afar?

Gods could be too arrogant. Such was the case of SHODAN, who had turned the Pods into a nightmarish zone where she could freely amuse herself and torture those that had come here.

But arrogance breeds pride which breeds mistakes. Instead of killing everyone off, she had decided to do this more slowly – watch them suffer in a slow agony, and, therefore had not expected them to fight back.

It had been a lucky shot, really, one in a million, But one of the people present that day had accidentally shot a tiny, insignificant object. A tiny little drone, that, once it had been the source of the power damper, had fallen. The tables were turned, and the goddess had been forced to retreat from the pods.

Now she was on a panicked mode, not only because some of the other people on the ship had managed to work their way into her system files, using another AI to send pointless images and sounds to her, distracting her from her task, but they knew how they could defeat her and gain their powers back.

It didn't take long for the message to be sent out, as the word quickly spread. Find the tiny little creatures, and shoot them down. SHODAN couldn't work their shields properly and once they were found, it was only a short matter of time before the powers returned to an area.

It would take time, but, finally, the tide of the battle was turning on the side of the crewmen and women. In vain, she was throwing her all; even more strange robot creatures, attacking in packs, but with hope on their side, they could win this...

[OOC - OKay go for it! NPC players, feel free to NPC as many robots as you like. Players, once your powers return, feel free to make as much scrap metal as you like, no need to have people NPC for you if you just want to write tags of them kicking ass.]

Chancy as it was to move between levels, it was still quite often a necessity. Especially when there was more to try and get out of Medical and the nearby Science Department, before the cogs and wheels hands of SHODAN ran amuck over everything.

It didn't make for easy transitions, on the otherhand. Those traveling upward found themselves abruptly diverted to the second level, at the hub of the pod caverns. This unintentional side-effect of something the wired fiends were doing made it both necessary to stop off and stay out of a larger group's way, as well as finding immediate progress elsewhere inconvenient. Getting down to the MedBay again would be easiest, and with a safezone set up in Contagion it wasn't a bad bet.

The problem primarily being they still needed some contact and transfer of supplies between safepoints, if that really could have been left in more organized hands. Things the ship needed to work on? Possibly a sense of coherency, but Sakura was admittedly biased. It's what she expected from folks at home, and what she'd been made to act on and with during the war. Her war. Her world's war. Might as well apply it to space.

Whatever poor sods had also gotten the shaft and ended up in the hub to the pod caverns had similar options to what Sakura was facing. "They were headed this way. We need to move." Finding someplace to either be out of the way and line of attention, or to use as a stronghold if they needed to, would be important. If the metal and plastic minions were following them into the caverns, they'd hopefully leave soon afterward. If not...

If not, they had even more of the many problems SHODAN had dropped in their deliciously frail buggy hands.

[ ooc: Any and all who wanted to be around before the Pods were known to be under attack/to witness the Pods coming under attack, get in here! Trudy's rallying for a drive of robots out here -- SHODAN will be killing pods in this log. ]

The City; the Great Wall.

The last time Orochimaru had stood atop an ancient defensive structure, he had annihilated it gratuitously. This time, things would be different. This time, he could use his arms.

He was, at present, using them by folding them over his chest as he waited.

Most inconveniently, not a single shinobi loyal to him appeared to be aboard this ship. And several stood against him, many of not inconsequential ability.

Not that this bothered Orochimaru, but it certainly set back a number of his plans to no small degree and made initiating more quite problematic. Unquestionably he could draw circles within circles around their foolish ideologies and beliefs, but so far his limited contact with the remaining crew members of the ship had led him to believe that most of the people aboard, or at least enough to be problematic, followed their hearts over their heads enough to embrace folly. Whatever the case, the other ninjas had made themselves clear: despite the worlds being destroyed, they would sooner end Orochimaru than ally with him. What a peculiar sense of morality they had, that would slaughter the most potent ally they could have simply because the alliance would not last past their victory.

So he had taken certain steps to prepare for inevitable confrontation. The first was the acquisition of two hideouts in the place known as the City. This one, the one he currently inhabited, was in the deep basement of an otherwise crumbled building. He had furnished with various items taken from other nearby buildings, till it almost resembled an office -- though one room over was his experimentation room, which he had yet to use (to his great dismay). Orochimaru had taken painstaking care to be seen attempting not to be seen while entering this building. Making its location as his headquarters known was important and necessary -- because so long as they looked for him here, they would not look for him at his other hideout. That one he made sure no one knew about. That one would remain secret.

In his rather comfortable chair, he sat with his fingers steepled and his eyes closed, thinking.

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... )

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. They are also told they must read information about their current situation and a survival guide with their new omnicom. New crew-mates might see a tall dragonish guy with wings (but don't call him that) and purple 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.]