The dead of night—or at least a simulated night, but the crew took to it in their usual patterns and created a deadness that was acceptable—that was the time, the reason. The place was the Hangar, cluttered even now and moreso than ever with parts of damaged vessels in stages of repair, their insides strewn about their bases in careful (or careless) heaps, looming shadily in the subdued lighting. One particular ship, pure black like the darkness that surrounded her, was the destination; the lone traveler hobbling amongst the piles to reach her was Dustin.

For the few days allotted for him to heal, the frail genius had been making remarkable progress. He could breathe well enough to make this journey without becoming completely winded, he was strong enough to carry his backpack full of tools, his shoulder and ribs had healed to the point where both of his arms were mostly functional—but most importantly, Dustin now had the capability (and a properly sized crutch) to sneak his way out of the Medbay in the first place. He was well enough now, considering, and though it would take another few weeks for his shattered leg to completely mend he would’ve been released within the next day or so. This was merely a test, a way to see how well the ship’s technology was holding up and combining with his own internal synthetic systems.

He was also obviously checking in on the one patient not immediately attended to after the battle.

The Dart loomed in front of him, broken and forlorn. Only a week ago Dustin had finished the final adjustments, soldered the last wires; now she was a crippled veteran. Just like her creator, yeah?

There was a movement nearby. The scraggly man stumbled and froze, piercing green eyes searching his surroundings.

The battle against the Ohm raged on, and the casualties on the ground were mounting. Injured crew members got emergency treatment in the field, which largely amounted to patching them up so they wouldn't die sometime within the next fifteen minutes. After that, they were quickly picked up by shuttle and brought back to the ship, where they were sent to a medbay that was getting progressively more crowded.

The situation was growing increasingly dire, to the point that Stacy activated one of the AI's to help out.



"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

By this point, the Ohm had spread all across the planet.

Destruction spread throughout the cities of Zokez II. There were evacuees that still needed to escape. People that needed saving.

It was time for the crew to do what they did best.

[ooc: Sub-plots! Check here before tagging.]

Something about this whole experience feels familiar to the short, pink-haired woman padding down a side-street, arms dangling limply at her sides as she peers into shop windows, into the faces of passersby, into vehicles and restaurants, and it takes her almost four hours to figure out that it reminds her of movies from the twentieth century, of TV shows depicting happy (or miserable) men and women going about their daily, robot-free business, walking to work, eating with friends, buying a new pair of pants. She almost cries when she realizes that she, for once, is actually living that moment of normal humanity, and she takes this as a cue to sidle into the next clothing boutique she runs across and buy herself a few articles of dearly yearned for clothing: jeans, a T-shirt, a sweater (not that she needs it in this climate), and shoes.

Thus adorned, she continues her wandering, hands now hidden in her pockets, and only now does it occur to her that she has greatly missed pockets--they really do aid in her natural slump, as having her arms positioned thusly helps her spine to bend just so...

Somehow, she manages to wish Dustin--or, better yet, Chief, because cats can't hurt your feelings while they're having emotional crises--was here very rarely. The few times he flickers across her mind, she blinks and winces and sighs, and pretty soon, she finds herself sitting on a bench, a carry-out plate of Zokez II's interpretation of sushi on her lap.

How she has managed to be on-ship for... well, who knows how long (long) and not have gone on a single shore leave escapes her.

It seems an odd day indeed when Yoshimi is as buoyant as she is, floating into the room on wings made of success, mind spinning with schematics and potentially helpful devices and maybe the desire to try her hand at building an aircraft, except for the limited on-ship supplies. A data pad is clutched in one hand, as per usual, but she tosses it onto the bed with nary a thought, tripping over to the shared desk merrily.

Humming--atonally, as is her unfortunate habit--she pulls out one of the few pieces of paper they have, and a pencil she found in the Mess--with an eraser!--and starts sketching that aircraft.

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.

Yoshimi has been camping out in Engineering, tentatively fiddling with tools while she waits for someone with Authority to show up, but somehow, nobody has proven helpful.

At all.

( Not once. )

The pink-haired woman leaves her room.

Wait, what?  Voluntarily?

Not to blame anything on Dustin, but her mind has started to wander towards old pastimes with the recent development of a complete and total lack of stress in her head and in that room.  Her fingers have started twitching for tools again, an itch that she hasn't felt for a good long while, and though something in her insists that she will regret taking these serious steps outside her door, an idle Yoshimi in a crafting mood is a dangerous Yoshimi, and she doesn't much wish to unleash that on anyone.

For these reasons, she can be found poking her head through the door of Engineering (for the first time!) several minutes later, eyes sweeping the room, head swiveling with them.  She looks like a kid in a candy shop, or like a kid in front of a moving school bus.  It's hard to tell which.

"Ah, h...hello?" 

Yoshimi is seated in the middle of the floor, her book forgotten on her bed, left leg stretched out in front of her, frown fixed on her face.

You may or may not be wondering what in all hell she is doing, especially when she starts swearing for no visible reason.

Here's your answer: The Robots Slayer's prosthesis isn't cooperating, and even as she tries to wiggle the five little piggies on her left foot, all she can get the damn thing to do is twitch oddly at the ankle.

"Figures that it'd start misbehaving eventually," she mutters, shifting to bend it at the knee.  She spends a few moments poking at the joints on the bottom of her toes, the muttering becoming a constant pretty quickly.

One toe twitches, and she freezes.

Yoshimi is suffering an odd phenomenon - stir-craziness.  She has been alone in the room for the last day and a half, Dustin having been... elsewhere, presumably involved in one of his mysterious, illicit projects, and though solitude rarely bothers her, it has her itching right now.

Consequently, she paces out of her room, looking displeased and ruffled.  It's also notable that she's grumbling inaudibly as she stomps the path to the Lockers.  A few more moments see her armed (and probably dangerous) with her rather antiquated SMG, slung across her back.  The lights glint off the polished metal, the faint, worn engravings catching shadows.

Predictably, she stops walking when she reaches the Sensoriums.  Whether or not it's a wise idea to be involving herself in anything physical after so few days of recovery barely crosses her mind - her body wants to do this, and that's all the initiative she needs.

Rolling her shoulders, she blinks and the room configures itself into a nondescript factory, fully equipped with hellspawn tech and rampant robots.  A few clicks have the conjured clip going home, and after a few breaths she pads towards her targets.

If you hear gunfire in the hall, do not be alarmed - it is simply a bored Japanese woman wishing she still had a job to do.

 Yoshimi never thought she would be as glad to leave a room as she is when she hobbles out of the MedBay.  Her shoulder is puffy with gauze, and her legs are still weak from overexertion and blood loss, but the pink-haired woman actually looks rather pleased with the world.  She had been privy to a lot of the goings on in the last few hours - a first for her - and was glad that things seem to have turned out so well.  Especially that kid conked out a few beds down from her - Aang or whatever his name was.  She'd heard vague things about him through whatever grapevine she had access to (admittedly not much of one, being such a recluse as she is), and there was a lot to be said for being able to watch that brunette with the hair loopies pay that much attention to the kid she'd been allegedly looking for for... Kami-sama knows how long.

Still, Aang is far from her mind - as is the rest of the crew - as she stumbles into the caf, her stomach growling.  Food is in order, in her mind, and though she probably ought to be worried about where the hell Dustin has got to, she can't quite bring herself to care right now.  Never has slop tasted so good...

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-Samus, Dustin, Hellcat, Wyn Callahan, Xander Harris, Yoshimi]}

There’s a minute trail of blood leading away from the frigid halls of Engineering and Neuropathy, spattered here and there, mostly blending in with the meaty surroundings, but still quite evident. Seasoned observes might notice that the droplets are paced fairly far apart, indicating that the donor was running (or jogging, at any rate).

Judging from the mess in the corridors nearby, this one’s speedy getaway was justified.

Follow the trail, if you must. It’ll lead almost directly—there’s a temporary deviation towards the Hangars—to Yoshimi Ito’s personal quarters.

The disheveled man inside, cursing furiously at his cellphone and searching haphazardly for something to plug his bloody nose, is definitely not Yoshimi.

[[Note: Takes place right after this thread.]]

( Cut for bendytime explanation )

How could he have been so dumb?

It was a miracle that he’d escaped the brig (and the Major, no less), but now Dustin was on the run from everyone and everything. Judging from the crowd that had amassed and followed him inside Neuropathy, there was no doubt that his failed endeavor to get inside Stacy’s brain and fix her, once and for all, had long since been broadcasted to everyone’s Omnicom and had earned him widespread acrimony. Though, then again, he’d still managed to get pretty far into her programming to prove that he’d put up an impressive fight, one that few were probably expecting from him.

No matter; it still wasn’t enough.

So now, downtrodden, starved and exhausted, Dustin wandered into the City. He hadn’t eaten or slept since he woke up, kept hydrated only because he was stabbed by annoying tentacles each time he passed through the Living Area. Frankly he hadn’t expected that he would be on this ship long enough to worry about such matters.

Obviously he was wrong.

Staggering, the scruffy man’s gaunt figure walked blindly forward in a trance-like march. His deep green eyes, accented with bright red veins, were wide open and unblinking, staring at nothing, and yet wandering this way and that as if following invisible lines of text. The gears in his head were turning, nigh audible if one pays attention—though that sound is actually Dustin muttering to himself, quietly and without moving his lips. He seems to be speaking in…Russian? It doesn’t matter, what with the translating systems, because even with them he’s not saying anything coherent. Just numbers and letters…

( To hell with Batman! )


((ooc: One thread would be nice so that Dustin doesn't have to explain and/or experience the same things more than once.))

[NOTE: This takes place DURING the holiday plot. If your character is involved in that, then they're still on the surface and not on the ship at this time.]

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.

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. The mission is still going on, so if your character is offship, they won't be around for this.]

Kyle has been oblivious to the miniature civil war that had erupted, but it's likely that even if he had known, he would have taken no part in it. He's had enough of war for a while, especially considering he wasn't around for the events that precipitated this particular fight, and he's not about to go jumping into any fray without a good reason.

Instead, he's been holed up in the Sensoriums, in a replica of his old workroom, finally making all the half-baked concept weapons that he just never had time for back where he comes from. At the moment, he's got a small, working railgun prototype sitting in the middle of a clear space. A search through the media library had turned up some interesting facts about superconductors, and after running tests on the various suggestions, he's fitting the prototype with superconducting wires. They still require some cooling, but not as extensively as other superconductors, eliminating the need for liquid nitrogen.

He's completely engrossed in the delicate work, and has almost forgotten why he'd come today in particular -- Yoshimi is going to try out the SMG he rebuilt.

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.]

Asking Stacy a few questions informed Kyle that the best place to work on melting down and rebuilding Yoshimi's SMG would be the Special Weapons Lab, and after a few wrong turns, he ended up there almost by accident.

Thankfully, it was empty, and he looked around thoughtfully, examining the various equipment. It's not a proper weapons-making facility, lacking some equipment and with only primitive versions of others, but he can work with it. Placing the broken SMG, and its small pieces, on a table free of other people's work, he set about finding some equipment. A heat source and a mold of some sort were imperative; he had a small laser chisel in his bag for finer work, but he needed the general shape. Some searching provided him with a small gas burner, a crucible, and a small, cylindrical mold. The last was a lucky find; he could use the laser chisel to make rectangular shapes, but it was harder to use it to make something round.

Using the crucible, he melted the SMG down in pieces, leaving the barrel, chamber, and trigger alone; those were fine, although they needed a good cleaning. After molding a number of the small cylinders, he set to work shaping them into the rest of the gun, with one cylinder set aside to make a silencer with.

He's not sure whether Yoshimi's going to wait for him to send her a message, or just come of her own accord - or, for that matter, whether someone's going to just walk in, and he keeps an ear out just in case. It probably wouldn't end well if he was startled while pouring molten stainless steel.

There were two things Ron used the Sensorium for when he needed to get his mind off of missing Kim. One was training with Tai Shing Pek Kwar, and the other? Was cooking.

"Alrighty, tonight's meal du jour? Stir Fry à la Stoppable, cheese biscuits,a ndfor dessert? Chocolate cake.""

"Yay! Cheese bisuits!" Rufus squeaked.