Come on and slam

[spaaaaaace]

It doesn't matter what was happening before. Wherever your character was? They just faceplanted into steel flooring. If they look around, it’s just a short narrow hallway, very characteristic of a transport vessel. Emergency lights flicker and faint, urgent beeping can be heard from the end, which opens up into a room that is currently producing a faint, blue glow.

A happy tone plays and is quickly followed by a chipper artificial voice:

Huh! How weird. I can’t believe we got another one! Well, welcome aboard the Ithaca. We’re having a bit of trouble with our warp drive right now. Please stand by.

Suddenly, the ship hits a bit of turbulence. Whoever’s in the hall may be thrown around bit, but luckily there aren’t too many sharp edges on the bulkhead. What are a few bumps and bruises anyway?

Oh, you may want to move. I think a new crew member is arriving.

Further questions are just met with an overly apologetic Please stand by! But turn their back for long enough? Another unlucky “crew member” may come catapulting into them. The artificial voice doesn’t seem too concerned with exploration, though. Every door is unlocked. The ship remains turbulent as it sometimes spits out unfortunate souls, but with steady feet, may find the following places of interest.

Navigation was where all that beeping was coming from. There’s a super fancy galaxy map that would certainly be a lot more interesting if actually contained planets your character knew. Sorry, there’s no Sol System or Federation Space here! In front of that is a cockpit which has a bunch of blinking consoles in front of a really comfortable looking pilot’s chair. It’s probably not wise to touch anything.

Head back to the crew quarters, and in between the rows of bunk beds, there are several lockers. Open them will reveal a myriad of (abandoned) personal items ranging from spare clothes to fit someone with six arms to a comic book collection to an alien “personal massager.” The stuff looks like it’s been left alone for at least a month. Maybe two.

If they head down a level, they might hit engineering or the cargo hold. Engineering has quite the array of tools, from the most basic to the most technologically advance. The most peculiar thing, though, is a meticulously organized collection of bright colored plastic tools. Across in the cargo hold, there are several wooden crates along with a few tamper proof containers. Most of the crates are all labeled with the same name, for someone on planet “Gotor.” A clever character might recognize this as a planet that the Ithaca is happily speeding towards right now according to the map in navigation. Most of the boxes contain bowler hats. The remaining to apparently be dropped off at Gotor contain bowling balls.

((GO FORTH AND BE IN SPACE! Have a massive pile up in the hall or bump into each other in engineering or explore together! It doesn’t matter. Feel free to have them encounter other strange things not written about here. Make the Ithaca spit out an unfriendly alien that they have to hit with a shovel. Make as many subthreads as your hearts desire. Really, do whatever. After a while, the turbulence will settle down and Edgar will explain. ))

Comments

[thechozonone]

Among the first to arrive is lucky lady, Samus Aran. It doesn't take her very long to get frustrated with this ship's apparent AI. When she can't make contact with her own ship and she doesn't see ANYTHING familiar on the Navigation map, she decides to give this ship a very thorough look around.

Remembering what he said about other's arrivals, though, she elects to do this search via the ventilation system. So yes the small fall managed not to knock off all her powerups, there is a round orange ball rolling around in the vents. Unfortunately, between the turbulence and a few loose screws, it's pretty easy to fall out. Bad timing could mean the morph ball lands right in front of someone. Or on top of them...

[spartan051]

Kurt wasn't sure what had happened to him or how he'd been transported from Onyx's core to what was unmistakably a ship of some kind. He wasn't used to space ships jolting and shaking about so unsteadily however so he braced an arm against the bulkhead for balance and peeled himself up off the floor he'd just slammed into.

Considering all he could remember was an army of Covenant forces closing in on him and the motley crew of Spartan-II's and III's, he was automatically on high alert an seeking out potentially camouflaged Elites or anything else that might ping on his motion sensors. Unfortunately, he wasn't getting anything on his COM frequencies when he tried desperately to radio the rest of his team.

The active camo feature of his SPI armor kicked in as the near seven feet tall Spartan went nigh on invisible and started to make his way through the ship in search of some answers. Though there seemed to be little to be had.

[raiderp]

Of all the places to get captured. I need to find my gear.

You'd think after watching the world's biggest conspiracy theory literally crash right into the middle of downtown Manhattan that few things would faze Raiden. But here he was, finger to his ear desperately trying to codec someone--anyone--familiar. This was crazy. This was insane! He'd just gotten out of a space ship only to land back inside of another one again, somehow.

This ship wasn't anything like what he'd seen before (limited experiences aside). The AI was chipper and friendly and wasn't talking about brainwashing censorship of the masses. A bit more familiarly, there were the sounds of muffled voices and not-so-distant heavy footsteps unmistakeably weighed down by thick armor. Probably bullet proof. It also sounded like there was a giant dog-sized rat crawling around the ventilation system. Just great.

Raiden tried to keep his voice down as he very cautiously slipped around corners and in shadows.

"Snake? Do you copy? Otacon?"

Worst of all; Raiden was naked. Every bit of the pale soldier's body was exposed, his junk barely covered by his other hand, his bar-code-esque tattoos striped across his thighs and arms bared all to see.

"Anyone?"

Ideally, he hoped he could get out of this without setting off any alerts and with no one seeing.

[matchmadeinhell]

When Kon woke up in a strange place without remembering how he got there it was really something of a panicked affair. Too much had happened in the last year and a half for him to not freak out when that happened, especially since that was how this whole crazy thing with the government started. He'd been KOed by the dimensional whim whammy of the Crisis and woke up strapped to a table with Uncle Sam all eager to get his probe on. (Not the actual Uncle Sam, as in the superhero, that would've been creepy. Metaphorical Uncle Sam.)

In Kon's recent experience - and even his not-so-recent experience - nothing good ever happened when he woke up somewhere and didn't remember how he'd gotten there. That was why the half-Kryptonian went from waking to standing in about 0.2 nanoseconds flat - and that was without using superspeed.

A quick look around revealed a whole lot of spaceship and no people, though. It definitely was a spaceship, judging from the nearby window.

"Aw, nerts." Right now, he could do without any encounters of the third kind. Or the second kind. Or any kind. He had a lot on his plate at the moment.

And his powers still weren't working, he realized, the moment he tried to fly. It looked like Felix Faust and Enchantress' combined magical hoojoo still had his powers as spotty as cell phone reception in rural Kansas. He knew he might be able to call on it in a spot - he had two times already - but there was no guarantee it'd clap on and clap off when he needed it most.

"Great."

That's when the AI chirped up, unhelpfully. Devoid of helpful answers.

That was his life, wasn't it? Randomly on a spaceship, powers were fried, and his handlers were probably...

They were probably...

They were probably a million miles away right now. Maybe in another universe even - this kind of hoobly joobly sometimes meant surprise interdimensional travel was involved. He was free. He was free. At least for right now.

The world started spinning and he could hear his pulse in his ears.

"Get a grip," he muttered to himself. Now was not the time to let himself get overwhelmed, not until he found out what was going on. "Get a grip, Superboy."

No shock. No shock at his real name this time. They could't hear him. They were too far away.

...but did he even have a right to that name anymore?

Whatever. It wasn't time to probe the nebulous depths of his own very fractured morality. That was why Kon made his way to what passed for a bridge and spotting some very colorful characters inside, he said, "Anyone wanna explain the spaceship thing better than the Stepford AI?"

If they turned and tried to blow him up, he'd book it and find somewhere in the ship to make a stand but for now he was defaulting to 'been there, fought some aliens, bought the T-Shirt.' Whackiness like this was his life.

"Also, what aliens do I have to punch this time to go home? I was kind of in the middle of a thing."

They'd be greeted by the sight of a ridiculously muscular teenager with baby blues that would make your average reader of Teen Beat faint and a pair of black spandex shorts that left very little to the imagination.

"And can someone maybe point me in the direction of some pants?" he asked with all the zen calm you wouldn't expect of someone randomly waking up near-naked in a spaceship.

[righteousblade]

If one looked at Jack they would probably assume he's far from knowledgeable as far as technology goes. That's not to say they're wrong - having been born and raised (mostly) in feudal Japan, he wasn't exposed to anything like this ship for most of his life.

Of course being flung thousands of years into the future had changed all of that. He may still not be particularly knowledgeable, but he's at the very least familiar with the strange advancements science has made. It's why his mind isn't immediately blown by his new surroundings. Actually, having stepped into a portal just seconds ago, he was prepared to be somewhere other than where he'd just been. The problem is that the portal was supposed to take him back to his own time, not... not here, wherever that may be.

Then again, that wasn't really too surprising, either.

So for now he's set out to roam the halls, hand resting on his sheathed blade as he cautiously explores his new surroundings. Maybe there was another portal here?

[spaaaaaace]

So, suddenly, there’s this really annoying beeping sound. Like ridiculously so. The unhelpful AI from before remains unhelpful and offers no advice of how to proceed in the light of these beeping noises and– oh look –there’s flashing red lights too. They seem to light up in a pattern, cascading towards navigation in the off chance that everyone got lost or didn’t remember where they came from. Should someone chose to ignore cascading lights an awful, terrible noise sounds a few times until they turn around and go forward as directed. There are boxes upon boxers of bowler hats and bowling balls that need delivery! And what kind of delivery vessel would this be without a good collection of delivery men, women, and aliens.

The incessant beeping doesn’t lighten up until everyone has gathered in navigation (Edgar is very patient for a stupid AI). It’s now that everyone can start to get a good look at everyone else.

Phew! A mostly human crew. I pulled a few Giraffitarians before you, but they had problems with the door height. Edgar chirps happily as they assemble. It’s true, too, mostly everyone at least looks human, save for maybe some vaguely humanoid armored figures and a very clearly out there green man with a double set of eyes. Said green man scoffs. Primitives.

Edgar does not let alien scoffing throw him off and he cheerfully continues as if he didn’t hear it, Good to see all of you made it in one piece! We’ve had some splicing issues in the past. I’d advise you to count your fingers and toes tonight. Humans have twelve of each of those right? My entry on human biology was corrupted slightly on one of those warp jumps.

Comforting. What else did he manage to lose?

Don’t worry! I’ve got my warp drive mostly under control.

Key word: mostly.

I was attempting to return for maintenance, but now that I’ve drafted a crew, we can continue onto Gotor! As the new operatives of this independent transport and shipping unit designated as the Ithaca, you should begin to review standard operating procedure manuals. Our delivery will be a bit late, but I’m sure the boss won’t dock your pay too much.

Pay? Boss? What?

I’m– Suddenly, the AIs voice scrambles and music starts playing. It only lasts a few seconds, and soon enough the AI is continuing, relentlessly chipper, as if nothing happened, –Edgar, by the way.

They’re delivery people. They’re delivery people on a broken ship.