She'd given it a few weeks, waiting to see if Leon would contact her about the Strike Team after the Major had vanished. Normally, she wouldn't have waited that long, but the Captain had his hands full, what with the missions, backlash from the Punishment, and the sudden arrival of the Lensmen.

However, she'd allowed herself to become distracted, let it sit for too long. Unacceptably so. And now, it was time to get things hammered out once and for all.

After meeting up with Dean and dragging him away from whatever he'd been doing at the time, she heads for his office. Taking a breath, she closes her eyes and mentally pats herself down, making sure she looked more composed than irritated. Once she'd collected herself, she opened the door and stepped into the office.

...Or, rather, waiting room. Squinting at his door, she looks over to his secretary. The cute redhead. She claps her hands together and points her fingers at Pepper, offering a friendly little smile. "Potts, right? Is the Captain in?"

Pepper enjoyed working for Leon. A much easier boss than Tony, he was polite and professional. Rather like if she worked for Rhodey instead of Tony, come to think of it.

Today started like the others, but she always anticipated something out of the ordinary, being a long standing habit of hers from years dealing with the quirks of Anthony Stark.

Dressed in a black dress and her precious heels, Pepper immersed herself in paperwork, but ready to greet visitors as necessary.


[Feel free to bother Pepper either on her own or if you wish to see The Captain. Each thread is an individual action!]

Sometimes it was one thing after another with this crew. Other times, it was several things at once, as evidenced by the most recent series of events.

But Leon had to handle all of it. He was in the big chair now, literally in this case. He was in the Captain's Office, located just off the main bridge. It was fairly sparsely decorated, but had one hell of a view of the Bleed.

Not that Leon was taking too much time to enjoy it, he had a lot of work to do.

With everything that had happened recently, and especially after GLaDoS and his chat with the Prince, Ratchet had been feeling... well, he supposed 'homesick' wasn't a very good word and 'lonely' just seemed too morose. Restless was probably better, so he'd made his way out to the Sensoriums. He'd been avoiding them for the most part simply because he new that the minute he opened one up, something like this would happen.

Massive spires reached up into an inky sky, skyscrapers on gargantuan levels, blue, gold, grey and covered in lights. Bridges and expressways connected them from top to bottom, reaching down to the alleys far below. There was no sun or moon in the sky to be seen, but the lights of the city provided something close to an artificial daylight regardless of the cycle. It was crowded and even if Ratchet still knew that this was all just Stacy's illusion, the other mechs around him felt real enough. The road under his feet was hard and well worn and when he moved out of the way to rap his knuckles against the side of a building, it answered with the satisfying clang of metal on metal.

There were certainly other, more beautiful places on Cybertron; or more important or more poignant, but East Iacon was a place he remembered well. He supposed when he thought about how it used to be, this was what his memory banks provided: one idealized little block to represent an entire chunk of history. ...Oh well, it wasn't a bad block at least.

He tried for a while to remember that this was all just some glorified holomater projection, but he gave up the moment he started seeing familiar faces in the crowds around him. A part of him still hung on to the idea that it wasn't right doing this- trying to relive the past through illusions- but the rest of him was remembering that he was pretty sure ol' Maccadam's was just down the street...

((OOC: please note that even though this is Transformers!world, because it's being scaled to Ratchet's height inside Stacy, all buildings and robots are more or less human-sized.))

Pepper waited, perched on one of the couches, what were they made of?, a bag holding clothing next to her.

She used habit of years of working for Tony Stark as a way to cope with the new turn her life had taken. Pepper had adjusted well, making new acquaintances, yet having some semblance of normalcy soothed her nerves, if the new normal was sitting on a throbbing couch after having been fitted by a floating dressmaker.

Tony's revelations during the entire pop out of a pod ordeal were kept forcibly shoved in the back of her mind, as she wasn't ready to deal with the fact that he nearly died from the very thing he needed to stay alive or that he thought she had forgotten things, something she had never done in her years of service.

Crossing her legs, Pepper kept an eagle eye out for her boss.

Anyone paying attention in the City today will notice a bizarre sight-- a small lump of garbage, roughly a foot and a half in diameter, rolling up and down the streets. It's mostly made out of bits of rubble, broken glass and garbage, the odd misplaced or discarded item, the occasional loose cobblestone that's been dragged up from the street. Several crew members innocently dropped something they were carrying and found it suddenly snatched by the trashy menace and on its way down the street.

Behind the ball of garbage, pushing it along, is a well-meaning but rather misguided little space person with a pad of paper and a magenta colored pencil strapped to him like a backpack. On the paper is written a message:

-----------------------------------

WE ARE SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE!
WE WILL HAVE YOUR PLANETS RESTORED SOON!

-----------------------------------

He looks hard at work, but he would be happy to stop and chat with his subjects.

Rein was hard at work mass producing a few costumes when her information post got a wealth of replies. So she had fired up the sewing machines and was hard at work itemizing things. An appointment here with Arika, a few more there, and that nervous sounding young man for after hours.

She was humming as she moved to make a suit of fantasy armor, one of that undoubtedly cut for females but she had been playing a LOT of Monster Hunter on the PSP.

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.]

[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... )