For the most part, the groups reconvene without incident. There are some minor injuries and a few are battered, but overall, everyone is fine. At least barring poor Leela, her arm swollen, her breathing still troubled. Fortunately, when she's brought back aboard Obs Deck, Stacy provides something if a medical cot out of the floor, that she can be secured to by her caregivers for the return trip, as well as an oxygen mask.

However, as they all meet up again and climb back on board, there is one group that's a little late...

The final group, Mal, Prince, Blitzwing, Soundwave, Kaylee, and Elle went off in the direction of the sixth and final pod. They were very shortly out of the trees and underbrush, and there was something up ahead on the horizon.

Looked a bit like a civilization. But Stacy had said "no sentient life forms", hadn't she?

The door opens to a lush green place. They've landed in a forest glade of some kind. Deciduous in nature, but the leaves are somewhat odd in shape and very, very thick and tall. The grass is a green that's almost a blue.

The sky is blue like a normal sky, but brighter, more vibrant than on Earth. Two moons hang there, so close that they're visible even in the daytime.

The air is fresh and clean-smelling, like after a rain--in fact, the moisture in the air means it may have rained here recently. There's even a cool, light breeze.

Curiously, when they come down the ramp, they'll see that the pod--its umbilical cord spiraling up miles upon miles to meet the ship, floating visibly in the atmosphere--is floating about six inches off the ground.

The Meeting is interrupted.

There is a resounding mental alarum that sounds through the ship. Nearly "deafening." Lights flash from places for extra emphasis, making it impossible to ignore.

||Attention, Attention. All personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention. All personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention, all personnel...||

They can hear it through the meeting bubble and Jaime drops it.

It's entirely likely that she won't stop repeating the announcement until, well, everyone reports to Obs Deck. The mouth in the huge statue 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, marled blue and green, are as follows:

( Mission Dossier )

Allen should probably be working. But if he has to narrowly avoid another nigh-uncontrollable outburst of nerd glee at the fact that Jean-Luc Picard and Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock are walking around the ship, eating the same sludge as him, breathing the same fetid air as he is, it's distinctly possible his brain will overheat. No, I'm not even kidding. That's a possibility.

To that end, it's time to let off some steam! Which is why Allen is currently using the Sensoriums to do what his wife has strictly forbidden him from doing under any circumstances ever - rocking out on the roof of his house, amps turned up to an ungodly level to fill the valley with noise. With an electric guitar that was signed by Superman. Hell yeah.

While he's a bit indisposed to talk, or hear much of anything, there's also a banner hanging from the house which is probably not always there. It reads:

"Wanted: drummer and bass guitarist.
Keyboard, vocals, brass section, electric violin optional.
Sitar awesome.
Electric harp if you've invented one.

Requirement 1) Applicants must not be lame and
Requirement 2) Applicants must not be dicks.

Prior to application, please assure that requirements 1 and 2 are fulfilled. Either-or not an option. Okay maybe if you rock hard enough. And leave it at the door.

But seriously, don't be a dick.

Direct all inquiries above."

The sound of obscenely complicated guitar riffs echo across the otherwise peaceful valley.

Blitzwing has, rather enthusiastically, taken well to the Sensoriums. He's avoided the occupied rooms, preferring his own company (as usual). He's also been through the Media Library and at Icy's behest has spent most of his time there, occupying himself with whatever reading material he can get his hands on and that he actually likes. Random, much to his siblings' annoyance, has spent his share of time giggling happily and letting the pod read his mood.

This usually consisted of Caramelldansen and other energetic pop songs (most of them Japanese) playing constantly, and Icy and Hothead were in mutual agreement after the first hour to never let Random in here again.
When it was Hothead's turn, he spent most of it watching military films.

After that little adventure was over, the triplechanger , with Icy in charge, went off to the Sensoriums. He wasn't quite sure what he wanted, so he just said 'a place to relax.'
He really wasn't expecting this.

It's New Kaon, exactly as he remembered it, oh yes that was a vivid memory-all twisted structures of Cybertronian metal and glass, glittering in the light of a Cybertronian sunset.
Which is almost like an Earth sunset, really.

In any case, he's currently sitting on the lip of the balcony, legs hanging off the side and breathing in the ambience of the place.
(Random and Hothead are too busy complaining about the lack of explosions to bother themselves with looking up 'ambience'.)

There's a slight breeze springing up, and he can feel it. Oh yes.  He used to love the place, for different reasons; maybe he still does.

Even a Decepticon appreciates peace, and quiet, and maybe even beauty-once in a while. Even if the Decepticon in question is crazy. Blitzwing shutters his optics briefly and swings his legs idly, toying with the idea of going for a flight or even blowing things up please please please?

Icy refuses to let Hothead and Random run rampant, promising they can change it to something else once it's their turn, and continues to quietly enjoy the scenery.

The Chief found something out while fighting the Taxxons, and that's that his aim isn't quite as sharp as he wants it to be right now. Whether that's because of being in the pod for a while or what, he doesn't know. It's just a detriment to his survival odds and so he's going to FIX it.

The thing he didn't anticipate, however, is what the Sensorium did when he asked it for a gun range.

He's standing behind a rather futuristic if unremarkable firing line, a massive room with the walls heavily insulated to absorb sound with a control system along one wall for various courses of fire.

He knows this place, and it sort of knocks the breath out of him a little bit. He stands in silence, just looking at it for a moment like a man who's seen a ghost. Because... he sort of has. This room probably doesn't even exist anymore, it's the range on Reach. He was trained here.

It's a fragile reverie, though. The next thing that catches his attention will break it and business will be got down to.

Down in the city, behind a holographic wall, an epic battle for the whole of Stacy was taking place.

The Yeerks had dug out a portion of Stacy's 'brain' and built a machine that would let them wipe it clean, let them take her over and control her. It would also probably destroy the coordinates that would let the rest of the crew find their way home, but the Yeerks didn't particularly care about that. They knew their own coordinates, that was all that mattered.

Bumblebee, the Doctor, and the Master had found the machine, following the directions of the very unfortunate Yeerk that had wound up in the Master's hands. They'd brought an unconscious West with them and were shortly confronted by Sub-Visser 7, the leader of this particular batch of Yeerks. Scorpius had apparently attempted to first team up with and then betray the Sub-Visser -- what the result of that was, the Sub-Visser hadn't said.

But between two Time Lords and an Autobot, they should have no problems taking down one baseline human, right?

Well, that was before he'd brought out the Taxxons. Giant, flesh-eating alien centipedes, driven by a mad hunger to devour anything that couldn't run away fast enough. They weren't very sturdy, and they would immediately fall upon any Taxxon unfortunate enough to be injured, but there were hundreds of them. And they just. Kept. Coming.

And over all the fighting, the machine that would wipe Stacy's brain was slowly charging up...

((OOC note.))

There are three major things happening. One of them is that the crew is sweeping through the ship, scanning whoever they find, and shipping the restrained Controllers back to the MedBay with some crew members.

Another is Paco--or his Yeerk, at least--is leading Scorpius, who appears to have betrayed the crew, towards the machine, hidden away in an alcove in the city, attached to one of the fleshy walls near one of Stacy's nerve clusters. It took them quite a while to find it.

The Yeerks do so love collaborators.

The last thing happening is the Doctor, Master, and Bumblebee, with the last one carrying an unconscious West, are hunting for that same machine and closing in.

With all these thing happening at once, the shit is, as they say, about to hit the fan.

Cybil is currently talking with Jaime Reyes about the possibility of hacking the ship's systems. Just a normal day on the meatship, a normal conversation in one of the cold zones, where there are no working sensors, about getting the hell OFF the ship, or turning the big bitch around.

"Do you think we could have our resident tech nerds build something to bridge the gap from technological to the more organic parts of her systems?"

Ax had escaped the Controllers on board. Brainy had not been so lucky. Neither had Sam and Tim. And who knew how many others on board had Yeerks wrapped around their brains, controlling their every movement, pretending that everything was normal until the time came to strike.

Who do you trust, podlings?

The Master Chief, after some trial, error, and wandering, has managed to locate the "equipment locker room", as that strange girl called it. Or at least, he's pretty sure that's what this is if the STUFF lying around is anything to judge by.

He's busy roving along the front of the massive warehouse-like space, looking for his weapons and hopefully his armor. He's not aware of the fact it's locked away somewhere else with all the dangerous stuff, but he should be running across his guns and grenades soon.

Feel free to join him in the investigation.

||Pod Release Protocols Initiating,|| Stacy announced to the denizens of the upper levels. Down the the Pod Caverns, familiar sounds made themselves known:

Pop. Pop pop pop. Poppuhpoppoppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiiiissssss.

Mist sprayed from the cracks in the pods before the new crew members were summarily ejected from warm, comfortable stasis to their new chilly, damp reality. They'd either meet each other in the Caverns or in the upper levels, where the previously popped crew would also be waiting for them, if Stacy had anything to say about it.

This time, there were two pods spitting mechanical beings out of a more oily mixture, and one podling who was significantly smaller than most of the others.

Pop. Poppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiissss.