She wasn’t sure where she wanted to be, but it wasn’t on this ship, which was as dark and strange and desolate as the Galaxy of her childhood. The Sensoriums – well, they were fake, but it was fine to pretend just for a little while, wasn’t it? As she stepped into room, it flickered between a handful of scenes she knew well: a stage humming with strings and gears, a small apartment in the city, a porch in front of a quiet koi pond, the flight deck of Mihoshi Academy, a recording studio overlooking Galaxy… but she dismissed each as quickly as it formed.

The shift of scene and color halted on a sprawling bedroom. It was unmistakably a young girl’s room: there was a pink-canopied four-poster and a matching vanity, with an impressive collection of stockings and dresses spread across the floor. She took a well-worn stuffed bear off the vanity and sprawled across the bed, fingers running over the familiar fabrics of the bear’s heart-shaped eyepatch and the bed’s soft cotton.

She had loved all those other scenes, but this was the first place she had fallen in love with, her first real, comfortable home. She half-expected Grace to walk through the door and scold her for the mess…

Sheryl pulled the bear into her arms and curled into the soft bedding. It was wrong to want Grace here with her, wasn’t it? She remembered, with painful clarity, Grace’s mocking Sheryl Nome is going to die, and her echoing orders from the Queen’s form. But Grace would know what to do, what Sheryl should do, in a place where her voice was useless.

She put two fingers to her throat and hummed, feeling the vibrations shiver down her fingertips. Lynn Minmay and Nekki Basara had it easy, didn’t they? Sing, and the Zentradi found culture. Sing, and the Protodevlin had left. And alongside Ranka-chan, her own voice had reversed Grace’s control over the Vajra – but it hadn’t done anything about that thing’s control over the man who’d died today.

And if it couldn’t do that, what would it do to the Ohm?

It wasn’t hard to find her venue – there were always people in a bar in the evening, or hanging around outside one, and obviously a place like this wouldn’t have live music.

Until now, anyway.

She scanned the place quickly; there wasn’t any complicated sound equipment, but the ambiance was fine for a certain sort of song. She’d worked at this sort of place often enough during her last weeks on Frontier, in small, quiet places pulling in a bit for people from the jettisoned islands, and already had a repertoire for a little sad, a little hopeful.

She pushed herself up to sit on the bar, grateful, just for now, about the plantsuit’s flexibility, and glanced around at the tavern with one quick smile before starting into a gentle song.

“When I loved God,
I didn’t think this parting would ever come.
If I had known I could never feel your touch again
I would have hoped to be embraced just one last time...”

( ’It’s long, long goodbye.' )

She let the last note hang in the air, eyes closed and one hand over her stomach. She wanted to hear something in return – the eerie lovesong of the Vajra reaching across the dimensions, an irritating guy with fold quartz at his ear – anything.

Whisper that I’m not alone…

Well. If something had happened to the people of Frontier – if something had attacked that could take out the superdimensional Vajra, too – then she had her work cut out for her, didn’t she? These people would need something to help them save all those worlds, and she was ready.

[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... )