Nehaalista stood back and admired her handiwork. Warsong Gulch lay spread out before her, each piece carefully and slowly laid in from memory. She was a little hazy where exactly one side of the gulch turned into the Barrens, but that was neither here nor there. The fact was it was big enough to move in, and that was all that mattered.


In addition to the usual look of the Gulch, Nehaalista had added a spectators' area to the north, nested securely in the branches of one of the incredibly tall trees that lined the area. So long as no one decided to knock the spectators over into the woods, Nehaalista was satisfied.


She crossed her arms and looked around one last time before nodding to herself.


((OOC: Welcome! This is a chance to play Capture the Flag as our Warcraft Denizens are used to playing it. It is permissible to post! No, guys, this does not go towards your Silverwing Sentinel or Warsong Outriders' reputation. OOC Plotting-planning-lololols are here)

Katara was happy to have Zhin accompany her as she went about her busy work: she'd had an idea that this would take a long time to complete, so she'd spent the last few days she would normally set aside for training or meditation to bustling around the Marriot hotel, getting things to be as they'd been when she first approached the original leaders of the Outsiders. She'd gone to Weapons and Possessions locker and had actually found the spray paint she needed to put up the big banner in front of the hotel:

OUTSIDERS
COMMUNITY SERVICE
FIELD TRAINING
PEER COUNSELING

FOR OUR OLD MEMBERS: WELCOME BACK! FOR OUR NEWS ONES, GOOD TO MEET YOU!

For her part. she'd tried to keep things as well as they'd been, although she took the presidential suite now since there wasn't any leader at the moment. The monitors inside needed to be reconfigured again, but she was sure Billy could help with that if she asked, or maybe even Matt. There was still a sign on the big couch inside that said "RESERVED FOR FORMER YJERS/TITANS WHO WERE DECLARED DEAD IN THE LINE OF DUTY," although she'd forgotten why it had said that in the first place. The part that had needed her attention most was the pool though: with all of the things that had happened in the City, it had gotten pretty filthy, and Katara had to work on it for several hours before it was back to its regular clean self again.

The outside had required little work, save for polishing that statue of B5 and assembling a table out front where she'd arranged several sandwiches and desserts for people curious. She'd gotten out her writing pad while Zhin was lying on her front paws, staring out and looking imposing.

List of The Outsiders
Advisor: Nightwing

Katara
Haku
Mai(?)
Sokka(?)
Ben Tennyson
Toph
Starfire
Suki
Alex
Beastboy
The cooking boy(?)
Shadow the hedgehog
Maydril Van Mandrian
Laurie
Luna Lovegood
Kate Bishop
If one of the members were not on the list, Katara hoped they would swing by so she could put them in.

"This is way harder than I thought," Katara said to herself, and Zhin vocalized a low "Rrrf" in agreement. "Whoever becomes the leaders are going to have a lot to keep on record."

Now that Nehaalista could work a little bit more naturally (her leg still ached, but at least it wasn't hard to walk on), she'd set out to find a forge. And found one she did, recently used, if the embers in the forge were any indication. With a little, strange sort of almost-grunt, she dropped her box of ore on the ground beside and relit the flame, stoking it until heat boiled from the red mouth of the forge.

While on shore leave, Nehaalista had been able to purchase some ore. To not do anything with her hands while stuck aboard Stacy would have driven her crazy, and Nehaalista wasn't about to let that happen to her sanity. After all, what would happen if she did go crazy? Start gyrating wildly while standing on a mailbox?

She wasn't a night elf, for Light's sake. Sorry, Choline.

Nehaalista prospected half the box, pulling away a few dozen uncut gems and setting them aside. They were strange, and Nehaalista couldn't think of names, but had arranged them by color. The rest of the ore was melted down into bars, one of which Nehaalista hefted in one hand.

Now, what to make? She pushed away a limp, sweaty curl and swished her tail against the chair, thoughtfully.

While her room, the W.I.T.C.H. bus and the Sensoriums were all places that Katara tried out for her new puppy, Zhin still felt more at home in the Hydroponics bay. The flora had agreed with her, and the alien dog missed all of the friends she'd made. Some were still here but most were gone, either a pet of the crew or simply brought to a safer place. Zhin understood this, but likened the start of her new life with her owner as starting the moment she'd been brought to this place. Zhin was wise for one that had lived such a short life so far, but she also made Katara understand that she would not talk about the things she'd been through all at once. Katara respected this, and in turn Zhin accompanied Katara on the tasks she went through without complaint. One of those was meeting the guys right now: Sokka, Zuko, Toph and Mai. She'd asked to meet them in the Hydroponic bay, but if anyone else came, they'd have a sight.

She'd chosen particularly brighter spot in the bay, where the flora seemed to give off a bio luminescence all its own. Katara, for the occasion, was dressed in the glowing club clothing she'd bought on their offshore leave: a little expensive and certainly bright, but enough so that she could be seen, and the plantsuit was still underneath anyway. She had prepared several different foods for the guys too: some meat and fish for Sokka, fairly spicy food for Zuko and Mai, and a dish of vegetables and poultry for Toph. She laid all of this out on a tablecloth on the ground which Zhin helped her set up.

Now she would wait, and play host.

There'd been so much to worry about, to run from, to fight against lately.

Toph wasn't one to poke her nose in and around politics, or complicated, grown-up social drama, or whatever it was that seemed to have plagued so many of her friends the past little while. The Nightmare King had been vanquished, they'd found and rescued Aang and beat the snot out of the guy who shot him, and as far as Toph was concerned, all was well.

Or about as well as it could be, considering she was on a ship, and nowhere near her home. There was plenty to think about, but she didn't know how. Katara and Sokka and even Aang now - all of them were infinitely older than she, with their own problems. They wouldn't want to confide in her. She was too young, too carefree, too ...whatever.

But she still had something: the ship had Earth; or Stacy could make something that felt like it, and so she was in one of the Sensoriums, which, this time, had been made to look like a miniature Great Divide, except without the bug creatures.

Plenty to play with.

She assumed her stance and started slow, levitating boulders, then roundhouse kicking them into the distance.

Destroying fake Earth? Great stress relief.

The effects of the Nightmare King have faded, the battlefield is gone. Stacy is rebooting her systems, and will be online again soon. It's over, it's finally over at last. They've won. They're all alive!

Except that it's not over.

Through the city, a wave of destruction spreads out from where a teenage boy rockets out of what's left of Escherville and floats in the air. A shockwave of air shatters the glass in nearby buildings; the stone foundation that serves as the overlay of Stacy's flesh that most of the city rests on cracks where he passes over it. Eyes and tattoos glowing, long hair whipped around by the winds he's creating, Aang is a force to be reckoned with--and not one to be reasoned with.

This is the Avatar in his full fury, angrier than his comrades have ever seen him, nearly thoughtlessly so.

He's overwhelmed by such senseless rage, the world breaks down around him--at the whims of the elemental forces under his control--stone cracking, water condensing out of the air and freezing over surfaces, wind whipping rubble around in a deadly, gouging tumult, fire crackling through the air.

Aang's voice is many voices, old and young, thousands of them all intermingled, as he cries out:

"WHERE ARE THEY, STACY? WHERE IS THE CREW? ANSWER ME!"

Stacy tries to reason with him. Some of her systems are damaged, she is awake and aware, but her security measures are not back up yet. And even when they are, what then? She can't hold him down forever. In this state, he needs to be calmed, and the AI knows that's something she is incapable of.

So she tries reason. ||Avatar Aang, the original crew is dead. Only refugees from podsleep are awake--||

A building is swallowed up by a sinkhole that appears in the stone.

"YOU'RE LYING!"

He doesn't remember what Leon and the others told him in the dreams, about the original crew being dead. His consciousness had been separated from his body for a very long time, and to have it snap back so suddenly to a physical form at the height of an adrenaline surge, that had been trapped in the Avatar State for more than a year...

A whole year trapped as he had been is enough to unsettle his mind, to make him angry. Now that he's free, everything contained over that time--kept stuffed inside so that he could maintain composure--is bursting free in a frenzied maelstrom of emotion and destruction.

Not that most of the crew will know this--for all they know, if they didn't hear his words, he could be the Nightmare King.

"THEY'RE NOT DEAD! THEY ABANDONED US! THEY LEFT US TO HIM! WHERE ARE THEY?!"

||They are dead. Avatar Aang, you must calm yourself. You have been forced to endure a tremendous physiological and psychological strain--||

She isn't answering the way he wants. She isn't telling him where they are, so Aang reacts by destroying her city. A wave of his arms and there's a blast of air that destroys a temple. He's going to continue until he finds them, finds someone to direct his rage at, or until something manages to calm him down first. The latter is entirely possible, given some time--but at what cost?

People say that war is hell. This looked it.

Buildings and cars and bodies are scattered like broken toys as far as the eye can see, stretching out toward a dirty horizon. Even the clouds seems streaked with mud and blood, and they're taking it out on everyone below with a constant stream of cold, soaking rain.

The sounds of fighting seem to come from all directions, but at this moment, there's no one else in sight.

A breather. The calm before the storm.

[[OOC: This is for everyone who was involved with "The Lurking Fear". Questions go to Milo or Kaylin.]]

Nightmare becomes reality....

_{[roster: Leader: Nightwing, Ava Ballantyne, Jamie Hemeros, Spider-Man, Œthel, Toph]}

Katara was by herself. Despite all the things she was doing to make sure she would be in a better state, something seemed to weigh heavy on her just now, and she breathed hard now. She wasn't sure what to call that feeling: it was like there were memories that she made, and they were gone now. It made her think of Aang first, who's memories still needed to be regained. She thought of Nanoha and Fate, and how the fight must be hurting them both. She thought of Toph, and Zuko and Mai and Sokka, and how she wanted to make sure they weren't hurt. The feeling of being unable to help her friends and her family on this ship surfaced every now and again, and at these times Katara retreated to the WITCH bus, and went straight for the water room.

This time, she headed for Kiyoshi island minus the Unagi, via Sensorium. She preferred the company of the giant Koi fish usually, but this time it was very quiet, and Katara was sitting by herself, looking out into the ocean. So much was happening at once, and it would be necessary to have a clear mind for the things that were going to happen next. That meant dwelling on the things that weighed heaviest on her, so the Nightmare King couldn't use it against her.

After dealing with the mess that was waking up on this strange ship of sorts, Thrall has found it very hard to fit in at all, especially when there were so many human looking creatures on this ship - as well as other oddities. Yet, strangely, no other orcs.

It took him time to orient himself with his sense of direction, being too stubborn and stoic to ask for help to find anything, and it lead him to the mess hall. It was crowded and there were many others there, but he slowly gained his bearings - very slowly. It took Thrall a few times of standing there and watching others go through the process of being scanned by that large eye before they receive any nutrients, if you could call it that.

The orc was leery of proceeding and allowing that thing to scan him, if it was even doing that. The hesitation was quite obvious in both his motions and on his face. For a creature that is as large as him, he certainly did jump when the slop was offered upon his tray. There was a sharp inhalation of whatever was offered. Is this poisonous, he wondered? Thrall then proceeded towards one of the tables to sit and stare at whatever was on his tray. Unfortunately, it was not pork. Nor was it bear meat, lion, or any other red blooded beast that he could tear his tusks into. Instead, he lifted a utensil, and poked at the slop a few times. Maybe he lost his appetite already?

Lately, Toph had been feeling pretty... avoidant. She wasn't certain as to exactly why, but since returning from her 're-education', she had simply sought solitude.

Plenty had happened when she spent time with the Crazy Cake Lady, and she hadn't really talked about exactly what had gone on. Mostly because she wasn't certain if it had actually happened or not.

She was clinking her way around one of the sensoriums, which portrayed a rocky landscape not terribly unlike the one where she'd taught Aang how to Earthbend. She'd been pacing for a couple of hours.

Kaylee had asked if the ship was full of good crazy or bad crazy, and Toph had taken this as food for thought.

"How crazy is this place?" she wondered out loud.

She sure could have used a friend; but they'd all been so busy with this or that, running off to save lives and whatever else Stacy told them to do. It'd been awhile since she'd had a good, uninterrupted chat with one of them, after all...

Meluly had gone along cooperatively with Katara, following the girl to her room. Getting along so well has left a little skip in her step, and she slides the door behind them shut before momentarily claiming Toph's bed to perch on the edge of, watching Katara with a vague, pleasant expression. Her body language is halfway tense, halfway languid in odd increments, not quite sure of what she wants, but happy enough with anything that comes along.

Something...odd is happening on the ship. Plant-like protrusions are occasionally sprouting in places throughout the ship.

They look like mistletoe, but this is purely coincidental. It's not like it's the holidays on the ship, right? It might be for some people, back home (if they still had a home), but others were grabbed from different times. No, it's just coincidence that these little devices look vaguely like mistletoe, and coincidence what they're being used for.

For you see, when this "mistletoe" is overhead, a crew member will be trapped in an invisible forcefield, and won't be able to escape until someone has kissed them or otherwise showed them some equivalent of affection. (Cheek kisses and sloppy puppy kisses from the canine crew members count). The "mistletoe" spring itself is shielded itself and can't be destroyed, the only way out is a kiss.

Why is this all happening? GLaDoS is performing whacky behavioral experiments, that's why. Each time, it happens, she intones messages like the following.

"Please express affection for your fellow crewmate to free them."

"This is of the utmost importance, and part of ongoing Crew Coherency and Cooperation Studies."

"Please do not attempt to leave the vicinity until you have participated."

"Participation is required. Why wouldn't you want to participate?"

"The Transmigration9 AI Complex thanks you for your participation in important research. Unless you don't want to participate, but not participating would make me disappointed. I suppose you just want to disappoint me."

And of course, sometimes she even outright lies.

"There will be cake."

Katara had her time to laugh and her time to cry after finding out about her world. She'd had fun with her Outsider friends, she'd broke down in front of a person she would rather have not done that with and she was still adjusting to recent events. Throughout all that had happened, there was still the silver lining: Toph was here, and now there was only one more person she was waiting for and all of her team, would be back together again. She knew that joining the Outsiders had been a step in the right direction: she felt like she was missing something, like a part of her was just going through motions. Her friends fulfilled that, and she was glad, but there was a little part of her that wasn't filled.

So Katara found herself back in the Sensorium's, specifically the Northern Water Tribe Spirit Oasis, one of her favorite places. It was the second time she'd been here, and she was glad to be there: it was the only place in the Northern Water Tribe not covered in ice, and it was known to be a gateway to the Spirit world. The lush, quiet place never failed put her in a quiet state, and she sat there now, cross-legged and breathing slowly.

She could deal with this: she had to. But it wouldn't happen if she wasn't grounded and quiet, willing to center herself and contemplate her role in this place that would now be her home.

 Between nearly killing himself trying to help people and his talk with Nathan, Peter was exhausted. Even with his upbeat demeanor, it was hard to not say he felt stressed. His flight-breaks no longer helping, he decided he needed to take a few hours. He found himself at the sensoriums, a place he had heard talked about like the holodeck from Star Trek. As he walked in, it was a blank room. He closed his eyes and thought to himself. 

I just need a way to relax.

He suddenly heard music, and opened his eyes to what appeared to be a high class nightclub, but filled with the strangest creatures he had ever seen, even since arriving on the ship. Behind the bar, a green-skinned redhead with horns, more conspicuous for his paisley shirt and purple ascot, was trying to get his attention.  

"Hey, kiddo, didn't you hear them call your name?" The demon said, smiling. "You're up, bubbulah. Don't worry, I picked a good song for you." Peter eyed him warily. Wherever this place had come from, it was not his head. But decided not to question it, and went to stand in front of a karaoke machine on stage. He picked up the mike and saw the song, and smiled. He loved this song. EVERYONE loved this song. Luckily, a few years in boy's choir had given him a sense of tune, and puberty had left him with a decent tenor. So, he began to sing. 

o/` I can't fight this feeling any longer,
      And yet I'm still afraid to let it flow... o/` 

That was all it took. As if suddenly injected with 100 ccs of pure rock ballad awesome, Peter closed his eyes and began letting the music take him, eventually rocking out. He had forgotten what it was like, honestly. Forgotten the fun of just letting go and having fun. And as he finished up the REO Speedwagon classic, breathing heavily and feeling alive, he wished he hadn't. 

But then he opened his eyes to notice more than just his holographic audience had filtered into the "club". 

"Uh... Next?" He said as he hastily replaced the mike and went to get a holo-beer. 

That was embarrassing.  He could only hope someone would follow him up and make it slightly less so.

[ooc: Start a subthread with your character approaching the stage and singing a song. Characters can react to other's performances even if they aren't singing themselves. And any song you'd like, Lorne has the entire mutliverse on karaoke. I'm not asking, and neither should you.]

The crew meeting doesn't take place in the Obs Deck like it usually does. It takes place in the Medbay, because that's where most of the crew is gathered, and it's plenty large enough. Those that are still getting treated can sit on the beds, and those that just need to sit can sit on the beds.

When the last stragglers rejoin the others in the MedBay, when almost all the injuries have been treated, the Bridge Team finally returns, but they do not return triumphant. Most of their expressions are somber. One of their number, Paco, has come back missing an arm, and quite a few have rather nasty injuries, black eyes, burns, and so on. Jaime Reyes' armor is healed over his eye, and though said eye isn't gone (well, at least it won't be for long), it looks as if it is.

But their greatest casualty is being carried by Brainiac 5 with a flat pane of yellow shielding like an impromptu stretcher. Robin lent his cape to cover the body out of respect, but the green hand of the robot Brainiac is visible despite it.

The organic Brainy peels off from the group to silently carry the body into Special Weapons Division, to place it on one of the work-tables, as if the room is now an impromptu mortuary. An autopsy of sorts needs to be performed, after all, to ensure with absolute certainty what he already knows--that there is no way to repair their lost comrade. He will be absent from the reunion, and most likely chase out anyone that comes in.

As for the rest of them, they need medical care, probably need hugs, and mostly just need to see that the rest of the group is okay. They also need to meet the new people--who need to properly meet everyone in general, really.

[ooc: MEETING THREAD. Everybody, start subthreads and tag subthreads. This is for new people to meet folks and get a few more explanations, and also folks from the different teams just to reunite with people and see if they're okay, and all that. After the reunions and all that, free threading will resume. EVERYONE would be here, most likely. By this time, most folks would probably have joined the others.]

The undead were pounding at the doors -- all of them, and the windows, and the walls in general for that matter.

The front doors were going to be a problem, though. They zombies were actually breaking through there.

Battle stations everyone!

By hook or by crook or by avoiding hook and crook, the crew assembled from the previous podpops eventually made it up to the Living Area to greet their new crew mates. The creepy sculpture was also there, though less to greet them than it was always there.

The strange, fleshy seating had multiplied. You really, really don't want to know how.

||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.