Selene didn't dream. She hadn't been able to dream on her own since she got her power. However, that didn't mean she didn't have fantasies or daydreams. She had plenty of those. Dreams of going to college and getting her license. Actually being able to help people beyond just drunkards. Not the superhero kind though.

The normal kind. More than anything...Selene really wanted to be normal.
( Even the dreamwalkers have dreams. )

Marco attacked the PlayStation.

Attacking was a good word for it, too. He certainly looked more like he was trying to smash everything in the game into oblivion rather than play it. He certainly didn't look like a guy who was just relaxing and having fun.

The fact is, Marco had not been a happy-go-lucky guy lately. Nothing out of the ordinary - just more snappy. A little angrier. Harsher.

Ever since that Yeerk's arrival, he'd been spending his time carefully avoiding contact with Ax and Tobias, keeping tabs on Tom, and generally making sure that he did nothing that could get back to Tom and make him think that Marco wasn't really a Controller like he'd claimed.

But, Marco could deal with that. He and the other Animorphs had spent three years having to keep everyone from finding out about them during the war. And he knew that Ax and Tobias had nearly finished their preparations, so they'd be dealing with Tom soon enough. No, that's wasn't the problem. The problem was what Tom's arrival meant. Because Tom didn't just arrive - the Yeerk had come with him. The same with Karen, and Aftran. And if they could wake up with Yeerks, other Controllers could too. And he knew people could be brought from any time, so it wouldn't even matter if they'd been freed in the end.

Marco knew his mom would be in the pods - but now she could still be a Controller as well. And Marco wouldn't know.

He wouldn't talk to anything about this, of course. Not even Ax and Tobias (though, he wouldn't be surprised if they figured it out). Instead, he'd just take out all his anger and hate on whatever video game he could find.

Waterbending by herself. Fighting several people while being overlooked by Kang and Ronan. Bene Gesserit training in the morning. Worrying about the Outsiders. Fussing over Zuko and Sokka. Visiting Haku. Joking around with Jamie. Learning new dishes. Listening to music. Being curled up with Negi. Seeing Carol when she could. These were all things that were a part of Katara's life on the ship, and things she did gladly. She'd almost forgotten her episode a few months back, when she'd felt a part of her mind go missing. She'd reconciled that, so she thought, and threw herself into anything that she could. It wasn't so much about forgetting, but finding a way to keep herself happier, to make things a little more tolerable. During the days into the afternoon and evening, this was pretty easy. But Katara had little to say about her dreams, and in her dreams she was reminded of exactly who it was she was missing the most, the person that she wanted to see for months but to no avail.

She could see that loving smile of his, that look on his face that told her what she had somehow secretly sort of knew: how much he cared, how much he loved her. That connection had never left him, even when he was trying to master the Avatar state and sensed she was in danger and went to her. And when she stopped lying to herself and stopped pretending everything was okay, she ran toward him, forgetting everything. But this was a dream, and it was as if she were moving in slow motion, and he seemed to be getting farther away.

I'll wait for you, he seemed to say. I don't care how long it takes. And he started to float upwards out of her view.

"NO AANG!" She called out, practically screaming. "Please! I need you! Come back! Come baaack!"

In her sleep she tossed and turned, mumbling, crying softly. "Aang..."

Selene was in the Sensorium for one reason and one reason only. She needed the space. She didn't ask Stacy to make anything except an empty white room. A big one. While she had been hopping dream to dream, she hadn't been really PRACTICING. And she needed practice.

She needed to improve. She could usually keep her body somewhere safe in the City while she did the hero thing, but now, this wasn't the case. She had to be better prepared. Thus, training.

First off, she was hoping to get someone with psychic abilities to help her with mental shielding. Next, she'd get someone to reach her to actually fight. More than just the occasional bar brawl she's done.

Before that, however, she needed a good refresher course. Her hopping was fine. Putting people to sleep was harder to do without a volunteer, but illusions? Well, they were naturally easier in a dream. Things just warped with them and maintained themselves. In reality, she had to picture EVERYTHING and keep it maintained.

So this was a mental exercise. How much could she make and maintain and keep it together. So, she began her work. "Let's try...a storm," she muttered and soon she had altered the room, a grassy field forming around her and the sky above her turning gray. Wind seemed to blow everything around her. Of course, everything on her was still, but it was just to up the difficulty level for her. Details were important, after all.

Nicholas Angel was, by nature, not the happiest of men. There was no doubt about it from anyone that knew of him that he loved his job, that he was married to the service. Official vocab guidelines say "the force" is seen as too aggressive. The notepad was the greatest weapon any officer could ever have—that was one of his most fervent beliefs about his entire training, all of his school, you could catch lies if you wrote everything down.

He'd managed to put Danny to the back of his mind as he took in the new surroundings, hated the organic, living, undulating, pulsating, sick and twisted and disgusting suit that was apparently the only thing he had to wear. Or anyone had to wear, for that matter. He had no pocket to put his notepad in. This meant he felt silly just walking around in the ugliest thing he could ever imagine without a place to put his greatest weapon.

There was a deep exhalation of stiff breath as he came to an area he didn't know. As a matter of fact, he didn't know any of the areas around this place. He hadn't asked, too busy taking in all the surroundings and memorizing them for later. He'd know his way around this breathing, moving, living "ship" in a few hours if he walked around even more.

He put his hands on his hips and stared up at the "ceiling" if it could be called that, not oblivious to the sounds of the ship and any others who might pass by, but completely lost in thoughts of...a Greater Good.

Not too long after his introduction to the rest of the crew, Lex slipped away to head back to the Lounge area. That particular part of the ship had been his main workspace for several months now. He knew he would have to share that space one day, and he was certainly prepared for it.

Lex was, at the end of the day, a businessman. As any good businessman would tell you, the biggest deals are never negotiated in the board room. They're done on the golf course, the tennis courts, but more often than not, in the smoke filled backroom of a high end bar. Alcohol was always good for soothing frayed nerves, loosening tongues, and getting people to agree on things they normally wouldn't.

And now Lex had his own bar to conduct business. Actually, he had his own bar and lounge as a business now. Yes, a business. That meant that the booze and smokes that he had were not free anymore.

This is Lex Luthor here, did you think he'd give away all his booze for nothing?

Luckily, he was aware that people are running low on cash, but money isn't the only thing of value around here. His asking price was simple. He'd make any drink you want, even non-alcoholic ones (and given that he had spent some time mixing and matching liquor and juices from different universes, he can mix dozens drinks you never even thought of), and all you have to do...

"So, tell me about yourself."

...is have a conversation with him.

Stacy jerks and shudders to a sudden stop, likely upsetting more than a few things already upset because the comms have stopped working. And deep down inside Stacy, on the first level, a little section thoughtfully titled "Contagion Containment and Quarantine" spilled open.

Hal 9000 had opened it up. And the things that had been kept there were still alive.

Or at least, they were moving...

Their groans echoed through the lower level as they spilled out of Quarantine 1, shambling and shuffling toward the Hub. The Hub would take them where they wanted to go. And what they wanted to do first was make some new friends.

So they went to the Pod Caverns. Then, after that, the zombies started heading up to the City...

[[OOC: Holy $#%&, Team Left Behind, ZOMBIES. Going to set up some subthreads, please wait until I do! INFO HERE, FIRST SUB-THREAD GO GO GO!]]

The Vatican had a lot of ground to cover. Normally covered in expansive gardens (just empty plots on the ship) and comprised of a multitude of buildings, holing up there meant holing up in simply a part of the Vatican. The group was therefore in St. Peter's Basilica, which had had most of its entrances sealed off. Now they had to work on small windows and a few other entrances left neglected, but overall, it was a very defensible position. There were no exits other than the ones leading to the sacristy and treasury--which was their main avenue of escape, and heavily guarded. The prisoners were being kept in this area, and guarded by the rear guards, as leaving them in the prison was deemed too dangerous for their safety. As bad as they'd been with the Yeerk conflict, they were crew, and no one wanted them to die.

The courtyard was a chokepoint. Gunners could sit on the roofs of the buildings running alongside the courtyard to strafe St. Peter's square from the sides.

The various chapels and vestibules along the sides made excellent areas for food, medical, and weapons supplies to be gathered, and most were clustered in the middle of the basilica. The Medical area was in the Chapel of the Column, the main weapons and ammo caches, and Food storage areas were in the two Transepts, respectively, to the sides of the Papal altar. Pews all in the main areas had been converted to sleeping areas, right in the center of the whole place.

There was still work to be done, before the other group could leave. Last minute barricades, blocking more windows, moving the last of the medical supplies, inventorying the food, and so on. Then it would be time to hunker down.

So push up your sleeves and lend someone else a hand, folks.

[ooc: Read instructions for these threads here!]

Jaime Reyes voice sounds over the comm-rings--all of them--and it sounds very urgent.

« Everyone on the ship, listen up! This is Jaime Reyes, your local 'Blowing this pop stand' coordinator and escape facilitation engineer. I need everyone on the ship to come to the City, in front of the Precinct, immediately. Grab people who don't have their comm rings with them--and tell them to grab their comm rings, people who are sleeping, whoever you find, and try to make sure everyone on the ship knows to come. This is very important. This is "getting the heck out of here" important. »

When they arrive, they arrive to find the Command Staff waiting, and a tiny, tiny young man standing on stone ledge from a fountain, waiting for them.

Here goes nothing.

She hadn't kept track of the days much anymore. She did know that when she tried to sleep though, it wasnt a nice fitful sleep. She hadnt expected as much to begin with, considering she hadn't had that kind of sleep since being here, but somehow, her dreams had gotten progressively worse. Now there would be glimpses of things, bits and pieces of a memeory she was only starting to unravel, a secret fear she had that would make her feel apprehensive and uneasy when she woke up. She alwaus seemed to wake up the same way too: with a start, tears running down her cheeks. She couldn't figure out why she would wake up like that in the first place, but she would somehow get the feeling that she was forgetting something, and for a moment, there was an air of somebody she cared about sharing her pain.

It was a memory she grasped at, almost had then lost again.

This time, she just sat up, wiping her face and taking an exasperated breath. Not much had changed: they'd gotten a new person is the brig, who was just as likely to be here a long time like anyone else. Besides, Katara was curious as to who were the new arrivals on the ship: would they be anyone she knew?

(Open tag for Katara for visitors/cell mates, but also a general cell post if any visitors might want to drop in on the detainees.)

Selene, at the moment, was standing in a bar. Well, not standing. More like working. With a bunch of made up patrons and her co-workers and boss all made up by the sensorium as she walked around, serving drinks and having idle chats with regulars. She knew all the faces in her bar. She always did. She watched and studied most everyone who came in, as well as those she worked with.

After all, they were 'reality.' Selene lived in a lot of strange. Half her life was in the strange these past few years. Honestly, it was too much for someone like her who has been NORMAL for most of her life. To be in one of the few cities where things were NORMAL. Sure, Bastion was running around, but he passed so fast his strangeness never really affected her.

So even after she became a superhero, she maintained her secret identity. It wasn't her ideal life, working in a bar, but it was something that brought her normalcy and helped her keep 'dreams' and 'reality' separate in her mind.

So, being on Stacy these past few weeks? It was getting to be a bit too much weird for her. So, being as she was perfectly willing to accept 'pretend' as 'real,' she made her bar and started her shift. Serving drinks, saying hello to old faces, it was nice to just be normal for a little while.

Today should have been weeks ago. Truthfully, he hadn't been ready for it--even on a temporary basis, it was a strange sort of betrayal to take the responsibilities of another team, when there wasn't even any members of SG-1 on it. Leading a team was always a tricky business, and it was often something Cam preferred to tackle only after long deliberation and planning. This was compounded by the fact that Stacy had essentially tossed a group of random strangers together without preamble, and chosen a leader just as arbitrarily.

Of course, the ship wouldn't have just messily thrown anyone together as was convenient, or he wouldn't have gotten an addition to the team later on. Clearly the AI had some way of gauging their skills and finding a complementary combination. However, he did not possess those personnel files. Aside from Dr. Lam, who should not have been on the field, he had no idea what array of strengths, talents, personalities, vices, and weaknesses his impromptu team possessed. That by itself was a recipe for inevitable disaster. The fact that he had no way of knowing whether they were military, or whether they would accept an arbitrarily chosen leader (presumed skills or no) meant that the disaster would very likely happen far sooner rather than later, as soon as they were expected to act as a team.

In lieu of personnel files, buying rounds of drink, and early, rhythm setting missions, Cam would have to come up with alternatives to allow the team to become familiar with one another before they needed to be. He needed to find a way to see how the team members interacted with one another, ferret out peeves, judge where they could be pushed, and determine what unique skill Stacy chose them for before they had a giant alien breathing down their necks.

Most importantly, the team would have to know to trust each other without hesitation, and how to operate together harmoniously, before someone's difficult past and stubborn nature got themselves or someone else killed. On Stacy, there weren't very many ways to prepare a team for that, especially if the team was composed of civilians unused to what would likely be expected of them, or worse, the kind of military men who'd never learned flexibility.

In his own experience, the easiest, least trauma-inducing possibility, was a game of basketball. Many, in fact, but they could start slow, especially if some of them were like the woman he'd met earlier who didn't know the game. The learning of the game could do what he needed just as well.

For now, Cameron stood outside the Sensorium, leaning against a wall and waiting. The sad fact was, he couldn't say for sure when the others would arrive. Even if they all tried to be on time, timekeeping wasn't the most accurate thing on Stacy. Or anything close to that. However, they were in a fairly visible place. He had hope for the best. Even if their watches were off, there was still a good chance they'd all migrate to the right place mostly on time.

Provided they read and listened to the announcement. Apparently it was his turn first, to trust his new team.

[OOC: Despite the fact that Cam has set this up for Team Papa members exclusively, there's no reason someone couldn't just crash the game. He wouldn't prevent them from joining, it. Still on the same side, after all. Sensorium-generated players will augment any uneven teams.]

Now Chris at this point was a bit annoyed. Even though he knew he shouldn't get his hopes up every time new arrivals came, but he couldn't help it. He came to the sensoriums to let out some personal frustration. And there was the 'person' responsible for much of it. An image of Xaviax appeared in his human guise, a seemingly normal man.

Chris formed a tight fist and just stood staring at the image.

Yes, Sam Winchester was still secure in his cell, sitting on his bed, still writing in John Winchester's journal as he had been for much of the time since he'd been locked up. A stack of uneaten slop trays sat outside his cell, a sign that he was still not eating. The only nourishment he would take came from the silver flask of water that sat on the floor near the head of the bed that he had refilled periodically by either Dean or whoever was in the Precinct at the time.

He'd had several visitors, many of them trying to convince him to back down, to start eating again. But each time he had refused, defiantly resisting any and all efforts to change his mind or sway him into thinking he was wrong. He wasn't wrong. He knew it.

They say you can't smell in that state, but Yuri smelled it long before contact. Sure she heard the Chuff...Chuff... of its breath like a small steam engine and the click of its killing claws against the bulkhead, saw malevolent eyes with slits down the middle hover disembodied in the dark, occasionally snapped over by quivering nictating membranes...But first was the smell. Like a slaughterhouse filled with nothing but racks of human armpits. It made her gag and wince and stumble as much as her fear did.

And so she did. She opened her mouth to scream but somehow knew noone would come.

Click click click on the floor as it runs.

She was never going home.

Click click click.

Nothing would ever be OK again.

Click click...Then a pause as it lept. There was a force and weight and she was on her back. Stained teeth like uneven rows of steak knives wasted no time in closing in on her...

She sat forward with such intensity that her scream was cut short by her face hitting the top of the little sleeping pod. For a while she just lay there, clutching her face and sniffling as a small stream of tears and snot made her nose and eyes raw and moist.

She found she could not go back to sleep. Or rather, she was afraid to. So, clutching her Borg under her arm, she hesistatingly walked the corridors. Maybe there would be a good book or she could have a midnight snack in the sensoriums.

Selene was used to weird. After a year of what she had thought of 'extremely lucid dreaming,' she had started to become accepting of most things. It'd be why she thought she might have had a mental problem when she had problems with college when, as she'd later find out, she left her body at home. It probably also helped her when her doctor posed the idea she was leaving her body. After another five years of wandering other dreams, her definition of what was 'weird' was hard to reach.

Not even Stacy was weird to her. The tentacle stuff was creepy, but again, something rather common. The suit was new and it took a bit to adjust to that, but not what she thought was long enough for a 'normal person.' Which she was posing to be. She didn't know what was going on for sure and having this ship being an ORGANIC ship, she couldn't get through the walls. She didn't know why she could go through tech, go through living people, but when it's combined into an organic machine, she can't get through. Probably something with it's mental frequency being like that. She'd tried it a few times, but it was a no go.

So she'd explore the ship she could go to first, alternating between reality and the dreams of the pod sleepers. At least she was pretty sure it was their dreams. It was a bit hard to determine where she ended up relatively as her body was always moving with the ship.

She did find this place though. The art hall. The statues would have been disturbing if she was easily disturbed. Instead, she just found them interesting and was quite happy to study them. Then there was this one.

A statue that was always shifting. If first caught her attention because it had changed to a shape she had seen in one of the dreams. It wasn't anyone on the crew, at least as far as she knew, but it had been a rather unique scenario, some wearing what looked like boxers on their head and attacking with a huge sword to what looked like a humanoid cat. She only saw it in one dream, upon the ship, and that's what caught her attention.

So she came back when she was awake again, watching it with interest. "I wonder if it shows things from the minds of the people on board, or if that was just a fluke?" She muttered.

For the newbies, there are people waiting for them in the Obs Deck. A whole gaggle of people. Behind them is the nasty statue, and the beautiful sight through the windows of the stars streaming past and the swirling vortex of collars that was interdimensional travel.

There are more questions than answers, but the crew is willing to help, especially the Command Staff and greeters.