ITT: We Are All Space Mercenaries

Suddenly, Bodega bursts into the room with Greg, Becka and the others present, now in her casual, everyday 'battle attire'. She gulps down some kind of protein shake and begins spraying spittle on everyone's faces as she said, "Just WHAT the WORLD'S BOUNDS is goin' on in here, in here, here?! What'd I miss this time? Sounds like another problem to me! A PROBLEM!"

Lambda: "Oh, Deggy, there you are. Did I scare you off before by reminding you how technologically incompetent you are?" *I chuckle.* "In all seriousness, there's another human onboard, tall geezer, no clue where the fuck he came from but I guess he's an intruder?"

*I shrug, but then I notice what Greg's holding. It's this really old-looking phone... I think? It's fucking ancient by today's standards, but at the same time, I've never seen anything like it. I can't help but look back at it once or twice.*

"5 minutes after I wake up, there's a ruckus about an intruder."

Having just finished her coffee, Jane reappeared, much cleaner than before, with her hair down and a tank top made out of a red formal shirt, a black tie, and jeans.

"All clear, although we're a tad low on gas."

Jotaro walked in next to Jane, readjusting his glasses with his flippers.

After a longer-than-normal pause, Bodega suddenly stood up straight and folded all her arms, laughing. "WAHAHAHAHA! Ruckus? There's no ruckus; no, no ruckus here! I'm not... mad... about Lamb-dee insultin' everyone about everythin' all the time, no... I'm just keep-keep-keepin' you all on your toes! Like this- GWAAAAAH!" she suddenly turned to face Greg the supposed intruder, raising all her claws up high, her face snarling with show fury.

Frank is eyeing the radar intently. The Celestial slowly drifts towards a Phyber tank that's also orbiting Phobos.

A voice comes through the ship's radio. "Please state your craft's name and request."

Grand Celestial, requesting refuel.

The tank extends a hose, which magnetically attaches to the ship. The hose end wanders around for a bit before finding the fuel intake valve, and begins pumping.

Frank takes these few refueling minutes to relax.

Aur clamps his hands over his ears as soon as Bodega starts yelling.

"No we resolved that, we're just gonna hand his ass over to the authorities next time we land. Apparently."

Erik, who has been sitting in the corner, reading a very old copy of Frankenstein, looks up in confusion.

"I don't understand. Why are we treating this man like our enemy? He seems harmless enough."

"You guys like 20th century Earth culture, right? Well, why can't we be friends?"

His expression turns grim. "If he is genuine, then I know how he feels."

You always were a soft spot, Erik. But he’s cargo, not crew. Enzo says, trying to regale his mindset to his fellow Star Spotter.

".. I'm getting the impression he wasn't supposed to be cargo intentionally. I don't think we're transporting him for a job, he was just... here."

'Ey, c'mon now!" Bodega turns to the old fellow, jovially slapping Greg on the back. "Ya don't call a livin' bein' cargo! That's a bad line of thinkin', bad line of thinkin'! As I said, I was just keepin' him on his toes. HOWEVER, just keep in mind that in the event he does turn out to be some kinda danger-magnet, I won't hesitate to send 'im back into his coma! WAHAHAHA!" she laughed, apparently oblivious to how terrifying it must be for the out-of-time guy listening to all of this. She never did get taught much about the idea of 'sending mixed signals'.

Alright, Bodega. Just remember that he still got on the ship somehow. And this ain’t no bed and breakfast.

"Maybe someone knocked him out and put him here? Thinking we would kill him or something? Or just to screw with us?"

"His confusion makes it seem like something supernatural is going on. This is cool. I hope it's something bad that we can kill."

Edited by DrNoPuma on Aug 14th 2018 at 10:23:25 AM

The four-armed alien rubs her chin after hearing Enzo's summary of the situation. "Well, I guess you're right, ra-right about that..."

"Yanno, YES, I hope that's exactly what it is, what it is!" she declares upon hearing Erik's hypothesis, idly cracking her knuckles. "Some joker, funny-man bastard thinks he can just stick poor... uh... what's-his-name on this ship and thinks he can just laugh it off? NOPE! Da-down he or she's gonna go, go!" she emphasized, performing some kind of air shove to demonstrate how exactly how or she's gonna go down.

Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on Aug 14th 2018 at 3:26:37 PM

"I don't think he was just 'knocked out'. Didn't he say some shit about being from 2021?"

Aur gives Bodega a "do you have to be so loud" kind of look.

Space Police Cruiser

(As I sit there staring at the stars passing by and daydreaming about what sort of situations we'll get into, I hear the cruiser's police phone going off.) Ooh, I'll get it, Roark! (I say, reaching for it.)

P'roo, please... (Roark picks it up and answers it. Oh well, guess I'll get my chance later.)

Yeah...yes...uh huh...okay, we're on our way. (Roark says before putting the phone down.)

So what is it? (I ask, hoping it's a situation I can contribute to.)

A ship orbiting Phobos is requesting that someone on their ship be picked up. (Roark explains.) We'll head that way.

All right! (I pump my fist. I hope this case is an exciting one! I wonder what this guy is like? An intergalactic criminal? A jewel thief? Who??)

"What's this about 2021? I feel this poor man is more than just lost."

"That spells trouble for us."

"But alas, you revel in trouble."

Aubrey looks at the piece of paper that Lambda had just handed over to her.

"Alrighty. I'll get back to you if I'm in the mood to listen to something." Aubrey replies. "Thank you."

Aligning her vision back to the current happenings on the ship, she saw the usual crew — and another guy, the one they seemed to refer to as "Greg."

"So, what's up with you?" she asks to the new (and recently unfreezed) person.

Edited by ActualBeatrice on Aug 14th 2018 at 9:33:51 PM

"Cops should be on the way... don't worry, sir. You'll have a nice, cozy jail cell to call home in just a bit."

Becka lowers her pistol, and reaches into her pocket, pulling out the unlit cigarette and putting it in her mouth.

"For a cast of weirdos, we sure do meet a lot of other weirdos..."

Creph, the grey-ish angler fish humanoid alien, walks into the room amidst the shouting and shenanigans, stretching their scaly arms while they yawn

"Well, I have no idea what is going on here. All I know is that you all probably got into a bunch of stupid nonsense while I was trying to get my beauty sleep. You all know that I can't sleep with background noise. Grrrr."

"Hmph... I dunno, dunno, Becka; somethin' about this don't seem right..." Bodega mused, scratching her head. "I can only hope this guy's a secret ancient terrorist warlord, terrorist warlord, an' then I'd feel a lot better!"

While everyone discussed what they were going to do with Greg, he can't help but feel his very presence is troubling the entire crew. He understands that being handed to the police is a likely, possible chance, on account of being a stowaway, but he doesn't feel too easy with being treated as an enemy.

This kinda takes me back to when all I knew was managing the train station and sending orphans away to the orphanage, except this time I'm the orphan. Fuck, I feel strangely guilty... I wish I could go home.

Unfortunately, he can only dream of going back. If only his phone wasn't dead - he could listen to some 2NE1 while waiting to be dropped off at the police station. For memory's sake.

He looked at Aubrey, and replied, 'I'm not really doing too well... ya got a charger for my phone? Or at least a music player?'

Edited by MvflG on Aug 14th 2018 at 9:57:34 PM

As the towers of the rig entered his view, Tilt turned his heels inward to try to slow his trajectory a bit.

The problem with rocket boots, or at least older models like his, was that you had to either go full speed ahead or kill the power entirely. All or nothing. It made landing ever so slightly more difficult than taking off.

He tried to use the glider to slow himself down, but by the time he got himself back to cruising speed, wham!, into the side wall of a tanker he went. The hologram collapsed itself, and Tilt fell to the roof of one of the control rooms.

One reboot tone and a few thumps to the head later, he got himself back up, a bit dented on an elbow but no worse for wear. He took the stairs to the control room and found a trio of Blomworks engineers at the terminals within. He made an effort to slide into the hallway unnoticed, but on his way in, he tripped a silent alarm, and the workers, one tall, one pale, and one blue, entered the vestibule with plasma pistols ready and grim looks on their faces.

He threw his arms up. "Hey, hey, sorry about that, I don't mean you guys any harm."

"Who are you?!" the pale human worker in the front asked, a stream of sweat falling from his brow to his nose.

"Just an android on a freelance job. One that you probably don't want to shoot into oblivion, unless you want every drop of Phyber on this hill to vanish into thin air."

The workers looked at each other. "What do you mean?" the blue one said.

"Check your radar, champ. The Varrq are afoot."

The blue one gave the pale one a look, then took a look at her wrist computer's display. "Someone's headed towards us, fast. Serpentine path, 3 klicks in the past 10 minutes. No comms."

The tall one looked back at Tilt and lowered his pistol, with the other two following suit. "What do we do?"

Tilt turned to the ceiling, then back to the workers. "Mind if I borrow your phone?"

Edited by Tre on Aug 21st 2018 at 1:15:40 PM

Enzo shrugged. The cops might have a charger.

"I haven't got a charger, but you're in luck, cause I happen to have a music player with me." Aubrey says, handing Greg some kind of music player, which she had just obtained from her shirt pocket.

"I don't know about this K-pop stuff; never heard of it. I hope you're alright with what I have here, it's mostly stuff from that-one-Earth-band-from-the-sixties."

Kristoph pondered. "Won't ze cops just confiscate all his belongings, though? Besides, if he really is from another age, then his physiology might prove it." His fingers twitched as if they were aching for experimentation.