Weeks had passed since the battle, but the Quarter's repairs were coming along at a crawl. Breeches in the hull were one of the most ticklish things to fix on a starship, and the Ohm's weapons had of course fried most of the circuitry and broken all of the conduits around the breech area. Working with salvaged materials as they did, it was an unfortunate fact that sometimes the fittings just... didn't fit.

"You yī dà tuó dàbiàn!" Wash shouted, hurling his spanner across the cramped area he had himself wedged into. It bounced around the inside of the space and fell clattering on the floor of the hanger. "Damn," he said, and started the process of extracting himself from his spot.

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. They are also told they must read information about their current situation and a survival guide with their new omnicom. New crew-mates might see a tall dragonish guy with wings (but don't call him that) and purple 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.]

She thought her life would be different by now, but she's a prisoner again. Voluntary, she guesses, which makes it a little bit different than the first time. At least she can blink on her own this time. Not that she's using her body to do much good.

Ironically, she almost always looked better when she was a more total prisoner. Without her makeup and hair clips and changes of clothes to arrange herself into some approximation of health, without even a mirror to confirm her suspicions, she looks a wreck. Dark circles line her reddened eyes; her hair is unbrushed and falls in tangled clumps over her face; chapped, bloodied lips and fingernails bitten down to the flesh speak to her uneasy transition back into captivity.

Eva's given up all attempts to look 'okay'. She ripped a man's face open with her bare fingers. She's been a long road away from 'okay' for a while now, but she spent too long mistaking her anger and stubbornness for strength and resilience to recognize it. She's wised up now.

She really wants a drink right now. Instead she has some books - selected poems by Pablo Neruda and an anthology of poetry by women poets in the Andes - and a pillow and blanket. She's curled up on the cot with the former book in her hand, but drifting in and out of sleep. Her breath comes lazy and heavy as she alternately reads, dreams, and watches the door to the brig with heavy-lidded eyes, looking for nothing.

This was it. Endgame. The crux of the battle, the turning point, those crucial moments that would decide if the crew won or lost, that would decide if the Ohm would reign victorious or go running with their chitinous tails between their legs.

Did the crew have enough grit to win? Could they defeat a full Ohm fighting force?

With the flagging confidence of the GIA forces, it'd be up to the crew to turn the tide.

And one of the crew would pay the ultimate price to make sure the others walked away alive.

[ooc: everything is up!]

Run by: Tetra
NPCS: Everyone

 The battlefield in the space above Lirath was a tumultuous mess. being both inviting targets for barrage in and of themselves, and also forcing the GIA ships to stay in close to protect them instead of allowing for more maneuvering room. The ice ring around Lirath had been blasted apart, resulting in giant chunks of ice drifting through fire- and sight-lines, providing opportunities for both cover and ambush as well as destruction for the dog-fighting ships weaving in and out of their treacherous paths. The wreckage of GIA and Ohm ships made movement through the battlefield downright hazardous -- who knew if there were still live weapons aboard any of them, just waiting to be tripped by an unwary pilot? The gravitational forces of the nearby planet Kehoe were an unwelcome addition to an already chaotic battlefield, making navigation difficult.

Ohm shrikes strafed the bare handful of GIA capital ships present, causing soundless explosions in the vacuum of space and killing who-knew-how-many allies of Transmigration 9's crew in the process.The GIA fighters seemed barely able to dent the massive Ohm Leviathans that brooded over the planet like bloated, predatory spiders, and those that were still flying were massively damaged, hulls scorched by plasma fire, some barely held together with parts of them vented into space. In some places there were things that looked like clouds of specks-- groups of dead GIA crewman, lost to the void.

Before long, new Ohm bioforms would enter the fray, ones created to compensate for the ship's mecha.

In this scattered and scorched battleground, Starfighter Command would have to fight Ohm ships side by side with the exhausted forces of the GIA, braving massive chunks of ice, wreckage, and of course, the seemingly never-ending forces of the Ohm.

And the tide of battle was already turned against them.

[ooc: wait for subthreads to be set up before posting.

Subthreads open: 
First Wave and Second Wave, both open!]

Reavers.

Of course there were Reavers on the ship. There were teenagers who turned into monsters and viruses that made people crazy and clocks that made people age backward. Why not Reavers?

Following his announcement on the omnicomm, Wash had spent most of his days shut up tight in Serenity. Oh, he wasn't about to have the General come drag him out by his ear, so he still left the ship once a day, but in that time he went straight to the Sensoriums and straight back to the ship.

He was not taking any chances. Miranda was the last time in his life he wanted to see Reavers. Ever.

It was starting to wear on him. Not the close quarters of Serenity - he knew ever door and every switch on that ship almost as well as Kaylee did. No, the ship was the good part.

The bad part was the lack of company, the constant feeling of being at loose ends. Wash paced, more often than not, walking from the silent cockpit to the empty cargo bay to the deserted kitchen and back again.

Needless to say, he could use some company.

Kaylee stood, confused as can be, and stared through the door of one of Serenity’s guest rooms. Last she had remembered, the room had been empty, lodger-free. Now, it seemed as if someone had at the very least been storing things in there. She was positive she would have remembered someone living in her ship, but at the same time she very much doubted that Jayne was about to try and squeeze himself into one of those snazzy dress shirts.

What she would actually get back from the transmission sent over the omnicoms was uncertain, but for now Kaylee took a step back out of what the rest of Serenity’s crew would recognize as half of the Tam quarters. Maybe Jayne had beat up some poor guy on Stacy and taken his stuff and then...organized it quite nicely.

...yeah, Kaylee didn’t believe it for a second either.

Rubbing the back of her neck, a slightly confused mechanic made her way back towards the infirmary. There was a headache coming on, and she needed to be prepared.


[[ Closed to Serenity crewmembers, Jamie McCrimmon, and anyone who pm's me first to ask for permission because lol time constraints. ]]

After everyone and all of their ships were properly loaded the Quarter had launched successfully. The journey from Stacy to the Trojan Asteroid field trailing NiSaris took several hours, but they managed to approach the field with the people of the nearby world being none the wiser.

The problem was that the NiSarians weren't the only ones watching the skies.

As the Quarter approached and entered the asteroid field, all was quiet. But it was only going to be a matter of moments before that would change.


((ooc: See this post for instructions, but otherwise, have at it, and have fun.))

Wash had been waiting to get back into real space for a long time - last time he'd been stuck on the ship by the General's orders, so this time he'd spent a couple hours convincing her that it was tactically more advantageous to have Serenity on the planet's surface.

He ran his hand over the console and then began the startup, flipping the switches in the order he knew by heart. Light bathed the inside of the cockpit and Wash grinned, settling his hands on the controls.

Wash reached up to grab the comm and his smile only got bigger at how familiar it felt in his hand. "You ready down there, Kaylee?"

As soon as he felt the rumble of Serenity's engine turn over, they would be out of this hangar and flying again.

Wash rarely went anywhere but the bridge of the Quarter - the whole thing felt creepily like an Alliance ship and the bridge was a smaller space, easier to deal with after Serenity's tight places.

Not that it was much better on the bridge. Wash sometimes felt like he was in a vast fishbowl, standing out on the end of the bridge. It was built in the thrust, three sides surrounded by air and railings. Luckily the consoles were high enough that no-one was likely to get vertigo.

Wash went straight to his station, running his hand over the console. Even in a ship this high-tech they knew that the pilot had to feel her to fly.

"She's not my first love but she's well enough," he said.

On the rare occasions when his life called for something more formal than a loud shirt and pants with grease stains, Wash didn't mind looking formal. But there was something different about a nice suit and a uniform like this.

Wash kept tugging at the sleeves as he walked through Stacy's corridors - Rein's tailoring was perfect, it wasn't like they were too short. It just felt restricting, in a way Wash wasn't really used to. The duty uniforms were less stiff, but he couldn't deny that the dress uniforms looked good.

He wondered what Zoe would have thought if she could see him in it. Would she like it? More likely she'd tease him for going so law-abiding and buttoned up.

((OOC: Here is Wash all shiny in green.))

When life gives you lemons, the solution is simple in Billy's world: get to work!

With a restlessness perhaps more intense than his usual construction mode, Billy had located the agreed-upon site of the bathhouse in the City and begun preliminary work over the past few days. The contributions were collected, labor was pitched in, and by now the ground was level and the water was just about ready to flow in as soon as the heating system was installed. Soon enough, walls and fixtures would begin to appear.

On the outside perimeter of the work area were the different design sketches, all kept there on easels for reference and comments. A blank paper was left for anyone to propose additions if they wanted to. Whatever happened, Billy would work day in and day out to finish construction as quickly as possible. He still spent hours in the lab at his original job each day, but every spare moment was spent here, including two that were once for sleeping. Even his slop was grabbed to go and eaten here while he adjusted the blueprints or shaped some gathered wire.

He would need some help gathering and moving the scattered material for the walls, but he was confident that it could be done soon. Some of the crew members were celebrating the winter holidays again, weren't they? This would be his gift to the ship, as it was about the most he could contribute right then.

((ooc: This is pretty much to establish that the bathhouse/onsen construction is underway. Tagging in for the volunteers is totally optional and handwavable, of course, this can just be one big handwave 'this is happening' post. I still need to clear when it'll be done, but I'm hoping by maybe a week/week and a half after podpop. Billy's showing small signs of depression---bags under eyes, lined face, more closed-off than usual---but they can be missed or chalked up to a bad day if you just want a light thread. I'm not sharing angst with anyone unless you want that direction!))

[ooc: PLOT POST IS HERE! Read it!]

He stalked through the hallways like a shadow, moving too quickly for anyone to keep a bead on him for long. There almost seemed to be a purpose in his movement as he made his way through the dark corridors of the ship, though it was impossible to tell where he was headed. Perhaps the young man whose body had been hijacked was exerting some kind of control, or perhaps Veronica was doing the driving.

Whatever the case, the Tyrant made his way to the City.

He emerged from the tunnels and into the wide open space, at last free of the cramped hallway. He took a few steps into the streets and sniffed the air, smelling human blood. He roared, a horrible and twisted noise, then headed into the streets.

She demanded they all bow to her. They were little more than prey for the Queen in the grand scale of things. These thoughts rang hollow in a primal mind, though, but he knew what he had to do.

They would all die.

Trudy wasn't much of a programmer, but she thought she'd finally gotten the Sensoriums to understand what she wanted. The simulations of Zokez II had been modified to have all their pilots removed from the sim. Now it was just swarms and swarms of Ohm.

But the arriving pilots wouldn't know that right away - one of the things they trained on the least was actually getting into your ship and getting out the hangar door, and now that they had the carrier, that was even more vital.

So when the pilots arrived in the Sensoriums, they would find themselves not in Stacy's hangar, but in the hangar bay of the Macross Quarter. The fighters and gundams were arrayed throughout the hangar in neat ranks, all ready to go.

Trudy herself stood in her eyesore of a flight suit, her helmet tucked against her hip, waiting to greet people as they came in. She had some new faces to meet, after all.

But before anyone could get too comfortable, the wailing tones of Stacy's red alert sounded through the Sensoriums. [[Attention crew]] came Stacy's voice, [[We are under attack. Repeat, the Ohm are attacking.]]

"Get to your fighters! Rogue Two to the bridge - Wash, take us out!"

((OOC: Anyone currently in Starfighter Command or interested in joining is free to participate and hop in a cockpit. Shuttle pilots and crew will be manning their shuttles. The command staff and the council are welcome to observe the exercise but Trudy would prefer no civilian observers. Have fun! Shoot the Ohm with yer lazors, pew pew!))

Of all the people in all the verse that Jayne got saddled with and it had to be him!

The only person more annoying would have been that pretty boy doctor, that would have been too rutten much.

After a sufficient amount of growling and grumbling and poking around Jayne had found his way to the hanger, sounded like there was all manner of trouble going on around this ship but it wasn't his problem...yet.

All he wanted was to see if he still had a bunk or if he'd have to find a new one.

Ships of all shapes and sizes greeted Jayne, and he allowed himself a pause to fantasize about stealing one for a joy ride. He was lousy at flying for more then a quick get away but it might be fun. Hell the rest of the gorram world was falling apart why not live it up? You were either making a joke and trying to survive or pissing your pants and crying in Jayne's opinion.

And then suddenly, there she was. Serenity in all its crappy outdated glory. The Ship looked like it had been through hell and back partially because it had. Jayne could even recognize some of the marks on it's hull from various close calls.

Everything was just Shiny.

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.]

[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... )