||Attention, Attention,|| Stacy's voice rang out suddenly throughout the ship. ||Will the following personnel please report to the Obs Deck:||

||Michael Blanc,||
||Kazami Shiro,|
||Andrew Davis,||
||Aibghalien Marsai,||
||Spiderman--616 universe,||
||Julian Keller,||
||Nanashi,||
||Katara,||
||Lash,||
||Wags-Tail-Alot,||
||Phillip,||
||and Vita.||

||Attention, Attention...|| The message repeats over and over, until all of the people she was calling reported to the Obs Deck.

Once they get there, they're greeted with an unusual sight. The mouth in the huge statue on the wall opens, revealing a screen. On it, the dossier for the mission flickers into display, understandable to every person there. Smaller copies of the dossier appear in holographic form in front of everyone.

The planet's stats, right next to a rotating picture of it, a dusty brown orb with orange clouds overhead:
( Read more... )

It wasn't often that she got injured to the point where she was stuck in the med bay for more than a day. Steven managed to do a number on her though, and there was still things inside her that were fixing themselves. Her lung was still punctured, likely because there was probably a bone or something keeping it from actually closing.

As much as that hurt, what was really bothering Nanashi was being stuck in bed. At the very least her normal schedule didn't allow for free time, even if there wasn't an entire country hinging on it. As a result, she was slightly cranky and desperate for conversation.

Beastboy had to admit, it was kind of difficult to stay indoors at a time like this.

But he had his orders, to keep the Outsider's hotel open for refuge from the Tyrant and keep it safe should he stumble in their direction. As much as his hero instincts begged him to run out there and look for a fight he stood his ground in the front entrance way of the hotel scanning the street for people.

Every now and then he'd turn into a bird and circle the building watching and listening for trouble, the city was alive with it today and he just knew with their luck it wouldn't be long before trouble found it's way to their front door.

[ooc: PLOT POST IS HERE! Read it!]

He stalked through the hallways like a shadow, moving too quickly for anyone to keep a bead on him for long. There almost seemed to be a purpose in his movement as he made his way through the dark corridors of the ship, though it was impossible to tell where he was headed. Perhaps the young man whose body had been hijacked was exerting some kind of control, or perhaps Veronica was doing the driving.

Whatever the case, the Tyrant made his way to the City.

He emerged from the tunnels and into the wide open space, at last free of the cramped hallway. He took a few steps into the streets and sniffed the air, smelling human blood. He roared, a horrible and twisted noise, then headed into the streets.

She demanded they all bow to her. They were little more than prey for the Queen in the grand scale of things. These thoughts rang hollow in a primal mind, though, but he knew what he had to do.

They would all die.

How long has he been on the ship, a couple of weeks? Three? Time's flown by for the dorky little troll, and he's stopped keeping track. It doesn't seem to matter much, anyway. People go about their business, drama rises and falls, and for the most part he stays out of it.

As much as he's gotten to know and like this mostly-human crew, he has to admit it sucks being the only Alternian on the ship. He'd love to see another grey face or be able to talk about his custodian without having to stop and explain what they are. And of course, there's the matter of the evaluations. He has no idea what to expect or what's going to happen if he fails. When he fails, maybe. Conversations with Alex have made it obvious to him how different troll culture is from the basic human one that governs the ship. Are they going to judge him by their standards? Will he be culled if he answers wrong?

But enough of these depressing thoughts. Alex has been spending time with Luna lately, which has left Tavros free to explore the ship by himself. Today he's decided to see what these sensoriums can really do. First comes the easy part, reconstructing his hive and the area around it purely from memory. Barn, cliffs, and far below, the strip of beach and glittering dark ocean beyond. He's done this before. The darkness is just as comforting as it was the first time.

Now for the hard part.

Tavros closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Happy thoughts, that's how it works, think of good things, and...

He doesn't open his eyes until he feels the wheelchair drop away beneath him. He's still amazed to find himself suspended in the air, nearly seven feet off the ground.

He's flying!

He can't help it. Even homesickness and evaluations can't bring him down now. Grinning happily, Tavros takes off, swooping this way and that, only stopping near cloud level to have another look around. The forest, the ocean, the distant glow and thrum of a city just beyond the horizon, and above him...

Tavros smiles. He's spent enough time staring at these stars to replicate some of the constellations without Stacy's help. And let's not forget the moons, the huge baleful green one and the other tiny and pink.

None of this is going to fix any of his problems, but as far as distractions go, rearranging the stars is a pretty good one.

((OOC: Feel free to hop in! I'm never too busy for another thread. And don't worry, your character should be able to float or "walk" on the open air near him, unless you particularly feel like having them drop like a stone, in which case Tavros will do his best to save them. XD))

 it didn't take long for Nanashi to get to Sam's lab. She moved at normal speed, brushing past any of the slower residents of the ship. She stopped at the door, and knocked  before venturing in.

She looked rather upset as she walked in, but more hurt than angry.

Wandering the halls was someone who hadn't been around for a little while.

Cargn silently walked through the halls of Stacy, typing intently on a datapad. Nearby floated his grim looking little helper, carrying several other datapads for him.

"The third one, Sigmund," he says somewhat absent-mindedly while holding his datapad up to the little drone.

++That is not this Unit's registered designation, Master,++ it replied, taking the datapad while switching it for another one. ++This Unit's designation is Unit XXVI. You are aware of this.++

"Yet you still respond when I use it anyway, Sigmund," Cargn says with a chuckle as he began typing again. "It might as well be your name."

The two continued walking down the hall, looking quite the odd pair as they continued their conversation.

 It was the night of the ball, and Nanashi was in high spirits. She had recreated her castle in it's entirety, though it was devoid of residents. Instead there were several servants, half of them vampires and the other half human. Some of them had the sole purpose of escorting the arriving guests into a sort of small cocktail room. The walls were lined with tables with various dishes- and room for the guests to think up more if they so desired- and plenty of drinks both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Once some people arrived, the double doors were opened to reveal the Grand Hall.

The hall itself was spectacular, rising several stories high with silk tapestries depicting dragons and legendary battles decorating the walls. Every so often along the wall one could find a sculpture, many of them busts of apparently famous people from long ago, others showed more dragons, while some were full-sized and somewhat resembled the great statues of Greece.  Paintings both in oils and in inks could also be found where there were no tapestries. There were large oak tables with intricately carved legs and borders so it almost seemed as if the carved leaves had grown naturally. The tables were, like the ones earlier, covered in finger foods and drinks, while smaller tables were off to the side with more servants standing at wait where one could sit and be served a meal if they so wished. The room was softly lit by a great multitude of blue-flamed candles lining the walls and hanging from crystal and stone chandeliers above. A full orchestra played behind a partition, though clearly it was just a formality, as they somehow played some of the music she heard while wandering Zokez II as well. Another servant sat by the partition and was taking song requests. Above them was a balcony with a staircase that sloped down in such a way that the side closer to the hall curved away from the wall.

Normally, Nanashi would enter from the balcony, but she instead slipped in among the guests, wearing  a white dress with the hem just brushing the ground and a pair of angel wings that looked a lot more realistic with the help of the sensoriums than they would look in her world. She also wore a silver mask to match her wings and dress.

Above even the balcony there was a giant clock that quietly ticked away the minutes. A chime would sound when the hands struck midnight, but hopefully no one would be losing a glass slipper tonight.

It was night on the ship - or at least as close to night as the ship ever got.

But while most of the crew slept, something had been released from within the ship. Something invisible, something undetectable, and something very, very dangerous.

If you passed through parts of the City, you might start to feel a little sick...

Despite how long Trudy had been awake, she'd never really been tempted to use the sensoriums, not like the rest of the crew did. Of course flight training was there, but creating the worlds the Ohm had blown up? That was too depressing.

But when she stepped in this time, Pandora grew up around her. She stood on a wind-whipped cliff of the Hallelujah Mountains, overlooking the sunset over the jungle. As darkness touched the undergrowth, neon lights began to shine out. Pandora wasn't dark for long.

Trudy settled on the edge of the cliff, closer than most people would be comfortable with the long drop below. Behind her was a Samson helicopter with a tiger painted on the side - Trudy's copter, the way it used to look. It even had the Na'vi war paint on it. One very important thing was different - she wasn't wearing a respirator. Stacy had made the Pandoran air breathable.

She squinted into the sunset and down at the jungle, her thumb running over her cross in thought.

Maybe Kang was right. Maybe it was the end that counted, and you learned from the mistakes along the way.

 Nanashi had been pushing her students daily, training them rigorously in all sorts of basics, but finally she had come to the end of what she had been formally trained in. It was here that she had lost her teacher to the war. The rest she learned years later on the battlefield.

Of course, this would reflect in her teaching. Her students just didn't know quite yet. She sat cross-legged on one of the chairs in the entrance hall, waiting for Katara and Edward. She had a few training swords made from wood a while back when she had dropped off the junk furniture at that craftsman's place. She had them using their steel weapons with protective seals on the blades for that first part of training, but now they would be turning their blades on each other, and she had to keep in mind that if something was chopped off, it could not be stuck back on and held there to heal. Hence the wood swords.

With that prepared, all there was left was for her students to arrive.

Night in the City led the Overlord to discover a grim and horrible truth:

Getting your mope on as a book is pretty darn difficult.

That knowledge frustrated him -- and since the prime source of his frustration was his frustration, it fed into the horrible cycle of irritation that had at last boiled over into a grouchy Overlord perched atop a pillar he'd had his minions haul over specifically for the purpose of perching upon as a suitable location to be a grouch.

The Overlord simply didn't have a nature that lent itself to frustration. From the beginning, he'd set his goal and fought for it -- and had done so for well over thirty thousand years. He had, in fact, achieved a goal beyond that of anyone else in the universe, and it had felt good. Damn good. Like nothing else imaginable!

"And now here I am!" the book said, out loud to the black and empty sky. "It's not being the damn book that bothers me. I can deal with that. I'm still the most badass freakin' Overlord in the cosmos. But give me a damn ENEMY to fight!

"Agh, this sucks!" Zetta made a motion that didn't work as a book, wobbled, and nearly fell off the pillar. Some choice words filled the air in place of his formerly magnificent monologue.

He hated this. He hated feeling frustrated. He hated feeling grumpy. He wouldn't stand for this sort of feeling in someone else! Go out there and DO something, he'd say!

But damn it all, he was already the most badass Overlord to be had! And a book! Where was he supposed to go from here?!

((Edit: Posts in the Giant Rumble thread cover the time period in which Zetta and Nanashi have gone off to brawl; characters who are spying on this should post there. The post in general still remains open.))

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.

In the aftermath of the hostage situation, there were four funerals to be held. One for Major Charles Kawalsky, Cassandra "Stature" Lang, Private William Hudson, and the pod Stacy identified as Galaxy Blaster. There were only the remains of Charles Kawalsky and Hudson to be dealt with. The corpse of the parasite, Shiva, was given to Luis Sera.

They were gone now. All that was left was to say goodbye.

(OOC notes: This might be kind of complicated, so I apologize if I mess something up: Basically, the middle section, for Visiting Hours, is open to anyone and everyone who wants to tag in: The first section is a flashback for Tsukasa, Nanashi, Rei, and Security, while the third is for Tsukasa and Nanashi to snark on one another. And now, with all that out of the way: Let's...Go On!)

Nighttime aboard Stacy: Folks, for the most part, snug as a bug in their beds. Except for a few, of course; like one Tsukasa Kadoya. He was up, taking some nighttime photos, enjoying the darkness. He browsed the city, taking pictures of things that seemed interesting. In a city, though, one can find many interesting things if one looks around. This is a tale of such an instance of looking around.

 Nanashi led Fletcher into and empty sensorium, summoning up the same garden she had after the elections, and immediately walked to the far wall by the cliff face. The wall was just as covered in small white flowers whose leaves, stems, and exposed roots on the stone were covered in this shining gel as it had been the last time she constructed the garden.

Nanashi pulled one of the little flowers from the rock by the base of the stem so that the roots came with it, and held it out to Fletcher, "These are the moonflowers that grow only on the mountain face. For flowers so little seen on the rocks in exploration, they grow amazingly well with the slightest aid. The water used to keep these other plants make it more humid here, and the one moonflower that was on that cliff," she pointed to the sheer rock face over the door, "turned into all of those quickly. Knowing that, it was easy to move then over here as well."

Vanyel was unaccustomed to sitting still for long - and unaccustomed to feeling so alone in his own head. The solution to both, he had decided, was simply to not sit still long enough for either feeling to sink in.

Puzzling out the communication device he'd been given kept him busy for a little while. It was unlike anything he was familiar with from his own world, but not incredibly difficult to grasp, once he'd figured out the basic workings of it. After that, though, he found himself at a bit of a loss, and ended up sitting at a table in the mess hall for some time, staring blankly at the screen of his omnicom, before he managed finally to drag himself out of his thoughts with a shake of his head and a sigh.

I've gotten too used to Yfandes kicking me when I start to brood, he thought with a faint smile. It's a lot harder to avoid when I have to drag myself out of it... And he knew very well that left to his own devices, he tended to relapse to a sulky teenager all too easily. Not a state of affairs even he was particularly fond of. Right. I could do worse than to learn how to find my way around this labyrinth. If nothing else, I should be able to navigate by the ley-lines here...

So anyone wandering the ship that day might have run into a Herald as he explored, tracing a path through the ship seemingly random but blazingly obvious to anyone with the Mage Gift. That "running into" was... probably not literal, though from time to time Vanyel was considerably more focused on his magical surroundings than the physical - staring into thin air, from a non-mage's perspective - so a collision might not have been entirely out of the question.

[[OOC: Feel free to run into Vanyel in the mess hall, or anywhere in the ship he might reasonably be - he'll probably end up somewhere in the City, eventually, but he's going to be wandering for a while before then.]]

The City; to be more precises, a square therein, some fifty-by-fifty meters, not to this point used.

That poor piece of land would never be the same.

The tome stood in the center, laughing like it was in the finals for the Biggest Ham in the Cosmos Awards (which at some point in time it very well might have been). Around it, several vacant-yet-cheerful people, his loyal (created) constructs, puttered about, cleaning up debris and generally making the place grungy-yet-livable.

"Hyaaaa ha ha ha ha! Clean, you battle-monkeys! Clean, like you've never cleaned before in your lives!" Which they hadn't, it occurred to him, but he wasn't about to let that derail a good monologue. "Make this plaza a suitable domain for the great and powerful Overlord Zetta!"

One of his people piled a variety of stuff Zetta had, after an extensive amount of metaphorical arguing as to what exactly qualified as biometric data for a freaking book, requisitioned out of the armory. Why on the ground instead of in the locker it all ought to be in? Zetta was used to it that way. Technically his loyal mooks had these things all equipped anyway, but here in their 'permanent' home they had no need.

"You!" he said to the 'leader', the green-haired girl that normally served as a transport. "Paint a portrait of the magnificent Lord Zetta! Then get me a throne! Hyaaa ha ha ha ha!"

I really need a castle. Every Overlord should have a castle. That thought came dangerously close to, I miss my castle! -- but Zetta didn't look backwards! He WOULD get his stuff back! He WOULD get his Netherworld back! And he WOULD get his body back.

"Hyaa ha ha ha! Mark my words, Ohm!" Zetta said, with the impression that he was shaking a fist at the ceiling. "Your days were numbered the moment you chose to mess with THIS Overlord!"

Let's hope no one was trying to get some sleep anywhere near this raving loon.

Ed had told Nanashi that he wanted to introduce her to Al. This reunion of brothers was a momentous occasion, and Nanashi fully intended on treating it as such. She had taken a sensorium room and turned it into the private dining hall- meant for entertaining the most important guests. It was smaller than the main dining hall, though that was not to say that the room was in any way small. There was a long table placed in the centre of the room, long enough to entertain at least 40 people. All along the table stood candelabras with wooden sticks rather than candles, burning with a blue flame. Even with these, the light in the room was still less than a human would generally use. It was a little on the bright side for Nanashi, but at least she did not need her sunglasses.

The chairs around the table were ornately carved and padded with plush velvet cushioning. Only three seats at the tabled had plates, but they appeared to be fine china with gold trim. The goblets were finely wrought gold bases with crystal cups, with matching gold utensils. There were fine silk black napkins folded on the plates, with Nanashi's on her lap, her goblet already filled with a dark red liquid. 

There was a door off to the side, aside from the entrance, with a young female vampire with green eyes and blond hair tied in a bun. She wore a black and white kimono, holding a black towel over her arm, standing completely still. Nanashi too, was in formal wear- or at least she appeared to be. She was wearing a silk dress, much like the one she usually wore, but it had rubies sewn into the hems. She wore atop this dress a  dark red kimono robe that was loosely tied around her waist. Embroidered into it  with black and silver were dragons, some looking more European than others, but they all maintained a grace among the silver clouds. Her cloak was draped over her shoulders as usual, with the crest of the snake killing the hawk as the hawk grips the snake in it's claws embroidered onto the back. Her long hair was also tied up, braided and twisted into a complex knot, netted with a net that was dotted with crystals. Even pulled up, her hair fell past her shoulders. 

She sat with her elbows on the table and her fingers folded in front of her face, listening to the flute player in his red robe, waiting for the boys to arrive.