She stepped into the little pool slowly, but the ripples still sent the fish at the edge of the pool darting away in flickers of silver. Hydroponics, which had never been as noisy as the fields of a real planet or an agricultural colony, was even quieter than usual; the rustle of people moving between leaves and the clamor of voices had noticeably faded as more of the crew disappeared into quarantine. Quarantine. For several days, she hadn’t been able to shake a nagging feeling… that she ought to have entered the city to help, somehow. But the idea of falling sick again was more frightening than the idea of the Ohm. She couldn’t let her body betray her again. She wouldn’t let her body betray her again.

And then something new had swept the rest of her worries away: Ranka was gone.

She moved deeper into the water, reveling in its coolness after so long in the hangar’s heat. It seemed to right to come here after she’d realized that the girl had disappeared. There was a cluster of bright yellow ponpon there, just across the pool, that she’d always associated with Ranka, and besides, Hydroponics was the closest Stacy had to the beautiful colony Ranka had lived on, or to the vast blue planet they’d landed on together. In away, Sheryl took the place as a promise that they’d see those places some other time. Ranka… Alto… everyone from Frontier… places like this still exist. And I’ll do whatever it takes for us to see them again. Sheryl breathed deeply, taking in the smells of thousands of plants from hundreds of worlds. If this place had sent Ranka to sleep again, there was one last thing Sheryl could do for her.

Brera had said, once, that humans were alone wherever they went. But Ranka didn’t have to be. Sheryl remembered sitting in the Saotome mansion, the sound of a warm lullaby that had never reached her ears. No matter how far below Ranka was in those caverns, this particular lullaby could reach her, too. She placed her hands over her stomach, trusting in the bacteria there to carry a million calm, warm feelings, and opened her mouth to sing.

“Aimo aimo
Neder rushe
Noina miria
Ender prodea
Fotomi.

Drift with me, the ocean’s soft and warm.

Lulei, luleia
Waves dance across the ocean like birds in the sky
Lulei, luleia
Sleep now, sleep now, the sea’s here for you.

Aimo, aimo
Neder rushe
Noina miria
Ender prodea
Fotomi.

Drift with me, the ocean’s soft and warm.”

She felt heavy, tired, and more than a little alone, but, standing shin-deep in the pool, she also felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Until later,” she murmured to the air with a sad smile, “sweet dreams, Ranka-chan.”

The entire hangar was nearly shaking from the power of the subwoofer. Loud rock music, possibly centuries or more outdated for most here, blasted from a single source in one side of the hangar. Obnoxious and loud, anyone who'd met him already could probably tell who was causing this ruckus- if their ears weren't already ringing from being situated right by his Gundam.

"Don't mind her playing a demon
Long as it's with me!
If this is hell then you could say
It's heavenly!"

The braided self-appointed deathgod screamed along with the scratchy tones of Bon Scott (may he rest in peace), thumping and drumming on his Gundam's console as he worked on weapons calibrations, among other things he'd had on his to do list- such as upgrades that he'd learned in the Sensorium were sorely needed.

Any of the mobile suits, or even other machines a little ways from the grouping of mobile suits, were probably rattling from the decibel level. Duo himself remained completely oblivious to the possible annoyance he was causing, sliding out of his pilot seat to air guitar on the cockpit's open platform as he checked on a connected laptop sitting out by the edge- he was even wearing shades. Inside a ship. In a cockpit.

He was just that cool.

With the little house she’d been fixing in the City quarantined, Sheryl had made it her business to become intimately acquainted with the Quarter, and had happily discovered that it had a serviceable mess kitchen and crew bunks in the dustier parts of its bowels. A few hours in Hydroponics later, she’d assembled the materials for a serviceable break from ship-goo dinners, and now a respectable soup was finishing up on the oversized burners.

She let her hair down and sent off a brief omnicomm message and started pushing the worst of the dust off the little lounge’s tables before anyone from off Frontier could arrive.

[[ Dated to after podpop and during contagion plot, open to all. ]]

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 tall man in green armor 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.]

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.

Things were on their way up.

That wasn’t to say that they were necessarily there yet, but the dual parasite horror shows were over, at least. She’d generated a true stroke of cultural genius by proposing the transfer of the Miss Macross pageant to Stacy. And, most importantly for the next two hours, she’d raided Hydroponics for enough vegetables for a completely fresh dinner. It wasn’t an idol’s life on Galaxy, but she wasn’t dying from an incurable disease, being held hostage, or eating goo.

She pinned up her long hair to alleviate some of the sticky humidity and slung her bag of produce over a shoulder. There was no reason to bore herself on the walk back to the cute place she’d been battling dust in, right? ( Now what was a song that hadn’t had a place in a while…? )

So what if she was being noisy? People who were busy paying attention to anything else needed to drop it and listen to her song anyway!

There was something different about the tavern. Typically, the mood in it was cheerful, almost homey; for the past few days, however, it had been... solemn.

It could have been blamed on a number of things. Because of the recent strike against GLaDOS, people were remembering those that had been repodded, and Hisk, the previous helper, was among that group. Kawalsky, Cassie, and two of the people in the pods had been killed. And lastly, though it was public knowledge by that point that Hiccup and Rose had been hurt, it wasn't yet known exactly what had happened or how bad it was.

Kang knew, though.

All of that combined equaled a somewhat mopey draconian behind the bar.

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?

[[OOC: READ ME FIRST]]

Shiva was still in the city, surrounded by nothing but rubble. If here were not holding a hostage, he would be pacing. He was tired of waiting. He was tired of his hostage. Above all, he was tired of hiding.

"Where are you! Show yourselves to your god!" He yelled.

Shiva spoke through the comms (not the omnicomms) directly into the minds of the crew.

«I am Shiva. I am the destroyer of all that you know and the creator of a grand new empire. For months you thought of me as my host, Charles Kawalsky, but now you shall see me in all my glory. I have positioned bombs throughout this vessel, including the pod caverns. I need but press the trigger and they will explode. I also have one hostage of my own, Sheryl. You will not be able to stop me. I am fully equipped with a power dampener, and a forcefield. I am untouchable. You have one hour to surrender yourselves to me and begin your new lives as my slaves.»

His eyes flashed gold and he held his hostage firmly. He did not wish to wait, but if he tired of this he would amend his demands. For now he stayed in one of the areas in the City hidden from Stacy’s view, in the middle of a pile of rubble, with not a landmark in sight.

Still, he knew they would come.

They’d trucked in one of the Valkyrie’s speaker pods and hooked her up. It wasn’t quite home, but it would have to do. She stepped onto a high ledge in a nice central location in the city, and had to admit, her “hack a plantsuit into a bandeau and leggings” outfit wasn’t the worst she’d ever performed in. No one could deny that the stuff clung nicely.

She hummed into the microphone, out of habit rather than nervousness. She already knew what to say, since most of it could have come word for word from The Galactic Fairy Defends Her Homeland. “People of Stacy,” she called, a hand on her hip, “do you want to help protect your friends and loved ones? Do you want to sign up to make a difference? Do you want to push back against the Ohm?” She flashed a confident, daring smile, then pitched herself off the ledge into open air.

Michael caught her a breath above the ground. He was in full EX-Gear, the metallic exoskeleton and extended wings VF-25 pilots wore to connect to their machines. He leveled off, then helped her to her feet. She gave him an exaggerated wink, then watched him tear off into the sky, corkscrewing away with practiced ease. She pulled her eyes away from his stunt flying, then beamed back at the passers-by.

“Ladies and gentlemen of Stacy, you’re in luck, because Skull Squadron is on the prowl for all kinds of staff! So what do you say? Ready to reach for the stars and save the world?”

Hydroponics is the most relaxing place on the goodship Stacy to Nura. She can easily sit up in the branches of the trees and close her eyes and relax. She'd already fallen asleep in here once or twice before, and she'd actually finished Frankenstein in Hydroponics, since everytime she'd tried to find a place to relax, she'd encountered crew members.

But now she's here because she has nothing else to do. Well, that she wants to do. She's feeling lethargic today. Putting aside The Odyssey and the urge to call Ben up on the comm, to come to Hydroponics to...do nothing, really. Her head has been hurting recently. And she doesn't quite know why.

So she thinks that maybe sitting up in one of the trees will help her.

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.

Perhaps he wasn't quite as bad as Alto or Ozma, but Michael did have the heart of a pilot - so when he heard that this mysterious hangar bay had ships of all types from a thousand different universes, he had to check it out.

And the description didn't disappoint. He wasn't the gaping type, but boy did he gape at the thousands - no, tens of thousands - of craft all smartly lined up in rows. How big was this place?

There were fighters, some that looked like his trusty VF-25 but others that looked wholly alien, there were bipedal craft that vaguely resembled the Battroid mode, and then there were bestial creations that... well, he'd never seen anything like that before.

But no sooner had he taken a step or two into the room than something happened: A huge section of the far wall began to... he couldn't quite explain it. It seemed like a membrane that was dissolving away to reveal a separate section of the hangar beyond - and the sniper's eyes went wide. Because in that new section was a shape he was entirely familiar with.

At 400 meters long, the bulk of the Macross Quarter dwarfed pretty much all of the other craft in the hangar. But that was impossible - how could the Quarter be here? What the hell had happened back home after he'd ... well, died?

He pulled out the omnicomm he'd been issued and shot a quick message over to Ozma.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Once they'd defeated the Vajra -- no, once they'd defeated Galaxy -- everyone was supposed to live a long, happy life on that blue new world, with the grass and the sky and the sea stretching further than the eye could see. Instead, she was back on an ugly colony ship, with dim ceilings where there should have been a sun and stairways where there should have been clouds. She hated it, even more than she'd hated Galaxy as a child. She’d been spoiled by the Frontier fleet, and then by the rolling plains of the Vajra homeworld. She longed for blue above her and for the fresh smells of a biosphere, for a warm breeze and a boy tossing planes into the wind. Galaxy had ceased to be her home – when? When Grace had tossed her onto the street? When she’d enrolled in flight training? On that first sunny day with Alto…?

And Alto hadn't woken up at her side.

He was in those pods, she was sure of it. She wouldn't believe it any other way. She'd fought for him before, and for Frontier before, and nothing in a million, trillion dimensions could stop her from fighting for them again.

She put one hand to her stomach and one to her left earlobe and took a long, deep breath. There was no way she could sit around and mope. She was Sheryl. She'd learn, she'd work, she'd struggle, and she'd see Alto one more time.

And right now that meant not dying from starvation before she had a chance to save her home. She picked up the fork and started to peel back the wrapping of the refugee rations the ship was handing out.

Her mood switched from stoic determination to disgusted at macrosspeed. "What -- what's this supposed to be?"

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... )