The Interdimensional Spaceship

Denebola looked curiously at the strange boy. He seemed startled, and the way he looked at her didn't leave any room for doubt as to why. Probably one of Taber's friends, she guessed, though she wasn't sure why he wouldn't have seen a lion before. In any case, he was making her uncomfortable.

"Where're we going?" she said, looking up at Taber, who was still being hugged by Jaron. The fox also creeped her out; without his boyfriend, he was a panicked mess.

"Back to the others!" Taber said, picking Jaron up and cradling him in his arms. "They're all pretty nice people, and I'm sure they'll be happy to see I brought friends."

"Sure," Denebola said, smiling. She didn't want to say that the whole point of the trap was to catch any strangers - strangers were dangerous. But Taber didn't know that, which wasn't surprising at all. Still, he was strong, and he could make a good fighter if he saw the need for it. She needed someone like that on her side, so she followed him down the corridor leading away from the garden.

Sune fell into step beside Denebola, despite his clear discomfort with the situation. He wanted to move farther ahead, but he knew doing so would be rude to both Taber and the lioness. He would just have to hide his worry a little bit better than he already had been.

Spoiler

@corvidconvalscence, @ChristenedPages, @Featherstone, and @soundofmind, do any of you guys want to post next?

Dante followed the group back from the garden. Maybe it was her lack of speech, or the way she had been trained to blend in, but the others hadn't seemed to notice her, which she was grateful for. She used the time to herself to observe everyone better, and get an impression of the lioness.

"Are we sure they're still where they said they'd be?" She decided to speak up and bring attention to a point she was wondering, leaving her phrasing up to interpretation.

James led the way to the library quietly, focusing as he followed the map in his head. Eventually, without trouble, he found the correct door and pushed it open. Before he saw the rows and rows of shelves and the circles of plush seating, the smell of books hit him as a friendly welcome. He took in a deep breath and held the door open for his friends following him.

Sune thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"They probably have already gone to the places they were heading to," he guessed. "I know some of them were going to the library, and that Runi was heading to the holodeck. I think the library might be the best place to go."

He didn't admit that part of the reason was because he felt just a little threatened by Runi, and that he wanted to see Maahes again.



"Thanks," Maahes said, flashing a grin at James as he entered the library. An excited feeling - and one of joy - shot through his essence when he saw the seemingly endless shelves.

"Oh," he managed to get out.

James grinned over to Maahes, glad they could both share in the feeling of being comforted by the surrounding books.

"It looks like they have a very broad collection," he said with a hint of eager excitement. "It might take me a while to choose something to read. I think I'll collect a stack before I get to reading. Is there anything you're interested in looking at in particular?"

He started to shake his head, then paused and looked around the library again. "I think I'm going to try some fiction," Maahes decided. "I know it's kind of silly, but I really like science-fiction and fantasy - they feel like an escape from real life."

James grinned. "It's not silly at all. I'd love to go take a look with you. We've had fantasy stories, but I don't think in Nye we have anything that quite resembles the science fiction you're familiar with."

"How about we don't?" Denebola said, snapping out of the uncomfortable realization that she hadn't noticed the quiet girl. If she was so out of her element that she couldn't spot one person, she'd be in too much danger around a group of strangers. "We don't know that they haven't been waiting for us, or they haven't already come back from the library."

"Probably not," Maahes agreed, giving his friend a smile of his own. He began to head towards where he presumed the science fiction area was - Magic, apparently, liked to decorate the parts of the library so they matched their genre, and he could see the Enterprise hanging above the aisle. "Then again, a lot of the science fiction that Earth has tends to be pretty imaginative for the time period. Sometimes the stories are set in the far off future, but now it's finally that year and we still don't have half of the technology writers expected us to have."


Sune shook his head. "They wouldn't have waited for us, and they wouldn't have spent such a short time there," he argued, trying not to meet Denebola's gaze. He really wasn't feeling all that comfortable around her right now. "We were trying to pass time, and we each decided to go to different places. They wouldn't be waiting for us while we looked around the garden. And my friend is in the library - he'd take at least an hour in there, and it hasn't been that long."

"Perhaps that's because when people try to imagine the fantastical, they reach for the ideal, instead of the realistic," James commented, following his friend. "Though of course, I'm sure much of it has to do with their limited understanding of what is realisitically possible in the first place."

"We can check where everyone split up, and then go to the library," Denebola said. She snatched Jaron from Taber's arms. "You agree with me, don't you?" she said to Jaron.

If nothing else, she could count on his fear of other people - he nodded his head.

"Meh," said Taber, "It'd save a lot to go to the library if we're pretty sure-"

"Then you can head over there," Denebola said, trying to hide the relief in her voice that she wouldn't have to be around Taber. "We'll go to the other spot."

"I'll go to 'the others spot' as well." Dante nodded her head and stepped in Denebola's direction. While she didn't exactly trust or feel comfortable with the lioness, she was significantly less annoying than the others.

Maahes nodded in agreement. "That's what I think, too," he said, scanning the shelves for any familiar titles that he had been planning on reading but hadn't gotten a chance to get his hands on yet.


Sune looked between Denebola and Dante, then gave a hesitant nod before eagerly heading towards the library. He was grateful that he didn't have to deal with someone like Denebola for at least a short period of time, and was happy he'd be seeing Maahes in the near future.


Runi eyed her holographic foe, a holographic sword in one hand and a holographic gun in the other. She gave a little grin of delight when the Galra sentry lunged at her - she was ambidextrous. A swing of the sword, and the hologram was disarmed in both senses of the word. A blast of the gun, and he was lying dead on the floor beside her.

He flickered out of existence, only to be replaced by several more of his kind. She knew that she should be adjusting the settings so they were a bit more challenging, but it was just far too enjoyable to easily defeat them. Better yet, it gave her the opportunity to test out different guises she hadn't used in quite some time - her lithe Altean one was a guise she especially needed practice with. It was disorientating as all heck to go from a tall, muscular Galra to someone so much smaller and leaner.

But now she was back in the same guise she had been using when she first ended up here, and she eagerly hopped out of her train of thought and back into the fight as some more faceless foes charged at her.

Raiden appeared in the background.
"...."
Then he clapped his hands, music started playing and he DANCED.
Shuffle shuffle clap, some fancy leg work, he pointed at someone for a second and then bam, music cut out and that was it. He was done with the dance. He crossed his arms and that's where he stood.