Meat n' Greet

[cityship]

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

Comments

[youmissed]

He called it "alone time" but it was really beating a retreat.

It was too noisy, too crowded.

John's head felt funny. Bad funny, not I-tried-the-blue-Star-Wars-milk-and-I'm-so-buzzed funny. Not that kind. The one where he felt that sick ugly feeling curling in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with the slime puke. The sad thing was he thought he recognized it. No. Just -- no. Now wasn't the time to get..."confused" was the PC term, he guessed, but it was way more than that. Confused was forgetting your keys or the combination for the doors on Moya 'cause Rygel decided to power-trip out for crap reason 54 and change 'em. Confused wasn't thinking you saw people who weren't there.

He didn't need "confused" right now. Seriously, he didn't. He needed to focus. Eyes on the prize. Be zen. Eyes on the prize like a Jedi Master

[ronnae]

Ronnae had to head out of the crowd for a bit as she felt her anxiety rising. She didn't mind helping the welcome crew one bit, but she still had to deal with her own issues. So she went to a spot that she thought had been unoccupied before. She'd go back and keep passing out omnicomms, she just needed a break.

Once she reached it however, she noticed that someone had also ventured to this side of the deck and promptly froze, "Oh! A-ah sorry, I... I didn't know that someone was here already."

At the sight of him fiddling with the omnicomm, she offered a friendly, yet timid smile.

"D'ya need help with it? Take it you're one of the new crew members then?"

She knew that lost feeling all too well, and she always did her best to make the new crew members feel more at ease as best she could.

[youmissed]

John looked up.

...And found himself looking up at one of those green girls from Star Trek. Between Zhaan being blue and Chiana going with monochrome, he thought he shouldn't even surprised that they were going down the color wheel with green people now -- the little hints he could see of fangs made him sit up a little bit straighter, but so far the alien girl seemed friendly. He offered his own smile. Talking with people generally kept that ugly feeling in the back of his skull from getting too bad and he'd take the company over being by himself right now.

"Sure. I figured it'd be VCR easy like last time," John held up the omnicomm and gave it a little waggle. "I'm John. John Crichton."

He held out his hand.

[ronnae]

Well, he was at least friendly! That made Ronnae be a lot more at ease.

She did a short bow and took his hand in greeting, still holding her timid smile as she spoke.

"Name's Ronnae. Ronnae 'Mash Belore Ryllos. It's a pleasure to meet you John."

Remembering her own time learning everything about the comm, she nodded.

"I'm sure you will, and if you ever need help with anything, or have any questions about stuff around here, you can ask me or any of the other crew members. Most will be happy ta help you."

Most, since there where a few who were good, just not very helpful!

[youmissed]

There was no way he was going to remember a name like that. What was it with alien and impossibly long names? At least she'd given him the short-short version. "Is it true? What they're saying about our worlds being kaput?"

He tried to keep it casual, all cool about it as if he wasn't freaking out at the idea of Earth being plain gone and these days he wasn't even sure where home was in the first place. Earth, or a ship full of aliens who followed that school of tough (and did he mean tough) love. At least back on Moya he'd had the hope that if he could just figure out wormholes, he could find a way back to his homeworld and it would actually be there. The idea of finally finding a way back and there simply being nothing? He didn't even want to think about it. Not right now.

He wondered what Ronnae's homeworld was like. Green, he guessed. He had to say that he did like her shade of green. It'd worked on Star Trek and it worked here and he could safely say she was the nicest green person he'd ever met, no lie.

[ronnae]

Ronnae's expression dropped a bit and she nodded.

"Sadly, yes. It's true. The Ohm are fairly thorough and destroy everything. The war in itself is to stop them with the promise that we would be able to get our worlds back."

But Ronnae couldn't quite bring herself to believe that. She had her doubts about the Daligig, about the ship, and about the Ohm. Specially ever since they managed to find a way to communicate with them. What was going on behind the scenes? Where they really fighting for the good guys or where they being used?

She shook her head. This wasn't the time, nor place to be having her doubts. She was here to help the new members of the crew and so far, she'd only met really nice ones. This one included. He didn't seem fazed at all about her appearance, and that in itself had made her really happy. And as such, she regarded him with a friendly, warm and comforting smile as she usually offered her friends when something unpleasant was spoken of.

[youmissed]

Frell, those were some pointy teeth there.

John fought with the monkey side of him that said big pointy teeth in his face equaled a world of hurt. Leftover human instinct or something, he guessed. Ronnae struck him as a sweet alien girl, if he ignored the fangs, and he was determined to make a good impression as John Crichton, astronaut; human; chewtoy of his end of the galaxy.

That meant no staring at the teeth.

"So who's doing the promising?" John tried not to let what she said get to him. Earth had to be out there, somewhere. Most species didn't even know about the place, so maybe they meant more along the lines of planets in the Uncharted Territories.

[ronnae]

But her tusks are oh-so adorable John!

"The owners of the vessel and our allies in the war. If you'd like more info on them, it'd be best if you asked the council members like Kang, or Command. They're much better informed than I. I'm just a warrior and an engineer for the crew."

Granted, those were things she was very proud of! He would probably tell from the tone of voice and the smile she wore when saying them!

Maybe we can timewarp this? It'd be cool if she could show him engineering.

[youmissed]

Give him time to adjust and he might even agree.

Yeah, he'd heard about that from the snippets of conversation in the crowd. He didn't trust the Daligig anymore than he trusted the Peacekeepers and they're "we're here for the greater good" motto they liked to trot out. Twice burned, basically. He thought he was justified in being paranoid of people, aliens or whatever, running up to him claiming they were doing things for his own good.

"I'm surprised they have engineers here," John admitted. "I almost thought the ship would have it's version of DRDs to do maintenance. So where'd you pick up engineering? Alien U?" He flashed her with a grin - his human, fangless grin.

It probably wasn't quite as impressed as her grin but hey, he worked with what he got and what he had was flat white teeth and his, uh, pinkness. He guessed.

That's fine! That'd be great!

[ronnae]

Of course, Ronnae had been around enough races to have found something to appreciate about every single one of them and blushed a bit at the friendly gesture. She wouldn't deny that he was handsome for a human

[youmissed]

Talk about being busy. John considered himself impressed. "Grand Master Engineer" sounded a lot more up there than his PHds, he had to admit. It hasn't escaped his notice that the more Ronnae here got to talk about engineering and tinkering with stuff, the more she opened up and he had to say, the look was good on her. Made those fangs a little bit less noticeable when she got animated like that. John relaxed.

He did find it a lot easier when the aliens were friendly.

"So basically you're adjusting to this place. 'Grand Master Engineer', huh? Pretty nice position," John grinned. "Sure, I'd love that. Probably should get a look at this place's tech, see what I'm dealing with."

Stacy was a lot more squishy than Moya, so he thought he'd have that whole adjustment period again.

[ronnae]

Ronnae's face turned a darker shade of red and she smiled, "Great! J-Jus' follow me

[youmissed]

John followed Ronnae, letting her give him the grand tour on the way to Engineering. He wasn't surprised some people out there could settle into life on a flying blob of meat. Awhile ago he would've laughed at the idea but after seeing it first hand, he could say with all honesty that hey, there were a lot worse places you could end up. Ignoring the slime puke. He could do without that, thanks. John tugged at the clinging collar of the suit they'd stuck on him, pulling at it unconsciously as he glanced over his shoulder. Big winding halls

[ronnae]

Ronnae stayed leaned against one of the walls as she let John take in the sight. It was an amazing place that she had grown to love, between here, the City and Special Weapons, she was at her most comfortable

[youmissed]

Yeah, he bet it was exciting.

"So how does all this stuff work? I mean, look at this," John pointed at one of the consoles. "It's like sticking your hand in Jello. Squishy stuff," he added, since it was too much to ask for Green here to know about Jello. "Tastes like yellow. You probably never had it. So does it lock to your genetic code or can anyone pick it up?"

John peered at it without falling into that human temptation to go sticking his hand where it had no right going, frowning and thinking that just when he thought he got used to anything the universe threw at him, he was still surprised by stuff like Jello controls and ridiculously huge pits leading to depths he was still having trouble processing. No telling how long Aeryn would be willing to wait before she went full Peacekeeper on some poor guy and helped herself to one of the ships in the hanger, not unless he came back with something better than "I don't know what these do" and "beats me".

[ronnae]

"I don't generally work on the Core Room, but they work basically the same. Input and Command prompts, coding, all that sort of thing."

She went on to slide, touch and poke a few on screen commands, put in a few keywords and her personal code and accessed the command window. Might as well do a routine check up while down here.

"We try to keep a daily check up to make things are running smoothly all the time. It's usually Programming department that handles these, but we're instructed in how to work the consoles and such once you join the department if you join Engineering. You get used to it~"

While she didn't know what Jello was in specific, she did know Jellies, and Slimes from her world, and figured he was probably referring to something as viscous as those.