OOC:
Stanley has empathic:
21:52, Today: Stanley Newton rolled 16 using 2d6+8 with rolls of 4,4.  Awareness (4) + Resolve (2) + Empathic (2).

Smoke Alarm:

Wind is rushing past Smoke Alarm on either side, and her helmet slices through it.  The hover-blade thrums under her seat and its ground-effect fields buzz against the street beneath her as she weaves her way into the draft of the blade ahead of her and cuts a second or so off of its lead.

And while she's gaining on the leader, she's falling through the skies over New Vegas on the back of Dev's bike; she's driving through the blackness deep beneath an alien sea with funny fish-bikes in pursuit, she's playing follow-the-leader on Arsuran and in kitling dreams.

You're in love with the speed, aren't you.  Great!  You're just like me!  Together we can always keep the lead!  Together, we'll never be caught!

Kalath:

Looking up.

Looking out.

It's the night that the stars go away.  She's out away from the lights and the noise of the city, to be surrounded by blackness and the stars for as long as they last.

Who knows if they will be back while I'm still living?

And she had been out between those millions and millions of lights, until they brought all the ships home.  No one really understood it, just that the distant suns they'd gone out to explore had one by one gone dead and cold, the "other" people that they'd met -- the furred Rakataxin, the spiny-scaled Algali -- had abruptly become not there, all trace gone from their worlds as if they'd never been.

And so the ships had come home and she had come with them.

As she looks up, the blackness starts to seep in from the edges of the sky.  Twinkling stars fade, as if passing behind a veil, until they are gone completely.

No!  The anger makes her want to snarl and run and break things.  Good reason to be out away from others, then.  No, I won't leave it at that.  I'll get back to them.  Back out there.  Somehow.  Someday!

...And then she was somewhere else, and then somewhere else again, and she was moving somewhere, she was moving fast, she was leaping and zooming and flying, over the towers and thru the streets and in the pools and in the skies, she was running and jumping and riding and flying and fleeing and going and being, she was whooshing thru rememories, in all-ways at once and all the different ways fell away to the one knowhow of living her life on the move and at speed and loving it and there was someone with her just the same and Smoke Alarm had knowhow and pulled away, surging forward, laughing Whaddya mean together? You catch me if you can! as she raced this other ahead thru the rememories...
This message was last edited by the player at 00:48, Sat 02 Sept 2017.

Stanley:

Careful and sure, he runs through the checklist for the live feed, one final time.  The Chancellor's address is now just minutes away.

He isn't one of the anchors, the talking faces of the network that everyone knows.  He isn't one of the journalist who spends their time digging for the truth.  He's the link in the chain that makes sure that their words get from here to there.  He sees that transmitter and camera and power and signal mesh and dance together.  Not a role of fame or glamour, but no less critical in ensuring people know what they need to know.

And in this case, there may be nothing more important.

Rumors had been buzzing around all levels of the network.  At first everyone seemed to think it was just another stellar contact, if a thing of so much moment could become commonplace.  It had happened before, of course, ever since the days when the strange small creatures calling themselves humans had come to his world.  Now Valkan and human and Rethdin were all Calixi, but from the tension he'd sensed, this would somehow be even greater.

Esta and Dregis, the other partners in his triplex, will be clustered around the tri-vid waiting for the speech with their whole brood, he is sure.  This is history!

But for him it is simply his task and he and his crew go through each step by painstaking step, checking connections, watching for any fault to arise.

The broadcast starts and the images start to roll, and he steals glimpses from the monitors between his checks on the system.  So it is spacecraft..  They are no Calixi vessels -- disc-shaped, with a ring of ventral bulges that he supposes might be engines or thrusters.  Vehicles aren't his specialty, but any technical knowledge could catch his interest.

The Chancellor starts to speak.  His four arms weave a pattern of greeting.

"Citizens of Valka and the Accord," says the Chancellor, "I must now tell you all of the coming of a great danger to our people.  It is a threat that calls itself, Dalek."

Trav:

The engines of the Resolute shudder and strain, and she can feel its fight through the deck and the soles of her boots.

Best crew in the fleet, from every world in the Accord.  A fighting ship that isn't the heaviest-gunned or the fastest -- but it's the toughest, and we all love her for it.  And held uselessly motionless in open space, in the newcomer's grip.

The power of the enemy craft isn't just a thing to be measured in the strength of its force projectors.  Its whole design speaks of it: where the Resolute is a boxy, functional slab, this thing is formed like a castle in the void; arches and ornamental flourishes and bloody minarets.  Built by a people with such negligent power that they can waste it on ostentation.

Her comms officer interrupts her thought.  "Captain.  We've synced to the protocol they're transmitting on... or they've done so."

Very well.  Let's see what these monsters have to say.

The viewer flickers on, and for a moment she is surprised, because the face looking back looks human.  Until she sees and reads the eyes.  They're cold, and disdainful, every bit as casually contemptuous as the ludicrous flying cathedral out there.

"Captain.  We shall overlook your aggression, at this time.  Take our assurance that we are acting in your best interests, and those of all the universe."

...Universe, is it?

"But the enemy here is beyond you.  They are implacable in their aim to exterminate all other live, and they have means more subtle than you can grasp.  We will release you shortly, but we advise you: you can not survive them.  We shall look after you.  Go home."

And while the logic of it does not escape her, inwardly, she can only rage at the smug serene monster who is telling her she does not belong among the stars with the adults.

For some brief span, while the light and the pulse and voices pass them by, the travelers -- and all those honoring the Calixi around Smoke Alarm's scrap-heap, it seems -- are lost in these fleeting images.  Perhaps the design of the cylinder, the Death, was meant to deliver all this as a crushing psychic shock.  Perhaps, though, what they've all done here today has transformed those impulses, soothed them back to what they originally were -- the passing memories of a people as time and space snuffed them out.

There's the eerie sense that these memories, these images, were aware of their recipients as they unfolded.  That they recognized the minds they were filtered through.

Perhaps, indeed, they have not yet ceased to do so.

The Traveller shakes her head and blinks.

She's still processing all of this. She pushes back into herself, trying to remember that interaction. Oh, that was certainly her on that screen.

She spared them. But she also dismissed them. How very Marshall like - she was certainly very Gallifreyan.

"Stanley, Smoke - did you see through the eyes of one of the Calixi? I just did."

That was how she broke her word to herself. Everything was simply a minion to take orders.

"Excuse me," she says, quietly, to the familiar buzzing nearby.

"I'd like to record two things. First, a request to the Praetor."

She gathers herself, and continues: "I'd like to ask that the Calixi be remembered. Not just simply from a lesson of guilt, but for another lesson that they pass to us - we must work together, resolve our differences, and listen to each other to keep time and space safe. One of my many great errors was that I looked down upon the other peoples who also had a stake in the time war. The great error of my people, my great error, which cost us the war, was that we thought ourselves the only ones capable of waging it. If we had listened - if we had not dismissed the other peoples of time and space, up and down history - we may not have lost as badly as we did."

She pulls herself up from her kneeling position. As the warm breezes of the Habisphere blow, she continues: "We acted like time and space was our property.  We thought we were protecting you - we were terribly, terribly wrong. My people paid that price. I'm the only one here to feel shame at that horrible, paternalistic error. And time and space were never the property of the people of Gallifrey - time, space and history belong to all of you."

She dusts off that old fedora, and puts it on. "This brings me to my second point, which is a request. A terrible threat looms at the end of time. We can't defeat it alone. I'm gathering folk up and down history and suggesting an accord where everyone who can time travel works together in keeping history safe. There are no more Time Lords - I am the last one left. So, time and space must be kept safe and free by you."

The sonic comes out, and details under cypher of the Parliament of Time are transmitted to the Familiar, to eventually find their way to the Praetor. "The Great and Bountiful Human Empire *must* be involved in this. I am prepared to speak to various parties to explain in more detail at their convenience. I was the Marshall then. I am the Traveller now, and my name impels me that I must work with all of you. The promise of my name - I will work with the people of time and space to keep history and the cosmos safe, and I will walk as lightly and as quietly as I can while enjoying the beauty and wonders of this cosmos. Like someone I loved very much said to me when I was a bad person, just look at it. I have always had my victories when seeing through other's good hearts, as part of a family."

"I will always remember the Calixi. I will always remember the Resolute, and her brave crew, who faced me down."

In reply to The Guardian (msg # 458):

They will not go out. They will not. Her eyes sparkled, twitching from cat-like to back again time, and time, and time again. She wanted to hurl herself at the darkness, beat it away, force it to give up and let the stars stay... she stamped her foot in frustration, not knowing if that would even work....

The Traveller saw this, and smiles.

She digs into her bag, withdraws a key, and offers it to Kalath.

"Would you walk with me, for a time?"

The vision the cylinder had shown to Stanley had been of someone doing his job. Working behind the scenes to make sure the people would receive the chancellors message, but he(both Stanley and the Calixian) hadn't known what it would say.  Then a word Stanley recognised all too well: 'Daleks'. He doesn't doubt that the announcement had been made not too long before the Calixi Sector fell.



"Huh... yeah, I did." Stanley replies. He looks around and sees the reactions of the people in the crowd. "It looks like everyone here saw something."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:01, Sat 02 Sept 2017.

Indeed, it doesn't seem like there is anyone in attendance who was unaffected or unmoved by the experience.  Stanley sees that Dr. Astas has sprouted plumage in violet and blue, and her eyes are bright with tears.  Saerin and Keeper Peltaven both are wearing somber expressions, and even the normally effusive Sando is simply standing with his head bowed and a fist clenched to his breast.

Rael nods to the Traveller.  "I will, of course, be making a full report of this to the Consuls.  I assume that you'll have some way of contacting us when the time comes."  Looking around, as people start to break out into murmured conversations among themselves, she adds, "I think you will not need to worry that any of this will be forgotten."

The Traveller takes the hands of Smoke Alarm and Stanley, and fondly kisses them gently on a cheek. "I think it's time for us to go."

She then approaches Kalath. "The key is an invitation. I can take you back to Khestartes Delta if you want, but my ship travels through time. I can have you back five minutes after we had left.You don't have to answer me back right away."

She tentatively reaches out to her, as if to take her hand - almost afraid that it will be batted away.

Eyespies opening, blinking in the light, Smoke Alarm rocked forward, taken aback by the sudden stopping feeling of no longer moving. She rolled back on her feels, her companion racing past her, winning the race, moving on much faster than ever she could. 'Icehot.' Smoke Alarm breathed in awe.



'I did.' she answered Traveller excitedly, 'I was a hover-blade racer, it was icehot.' She could rememorise it too, the feeling of speed, of banking the 'blade around tight corners, the victory of the finishing line. A life and a world living on in rememories, in all their rememories. 'We lost and found a whole world.'

She squirmed giggling under Traveller's kiss. 'We don't have to be outgoing right away. I was to eyespy the wubble-board show-and-tell. Oh! And I still haven't made my show-and-tell. Um...' Smoke thought frantically for a show-and-tell she could do in five ticktocks.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:14, Sun 03 Sept 2017.

"Ok then. A little while longer. But our next step is the end of the universe. This is a stop I've been planning on since before we stopped at Khestartes Delta. It's blondie's last wish. And yes, I want to be at your show and tell!"

Sando, nearby, tilts his head quizzically.  "Surely it is that blue-Kang-girl has made witness to all these folk, the ways of the right and proper scrap-heaping of her homeland?"

OOC: I should note that if you'd like to enact Wubblefest 57818, rock on, but you may want to set the scene for that yourself.  The general notion I had in mind was of a "street" or in the broadest sense a "folk" genre, woefully misunderstood by well-meaning academics. :)

'But I've been to the end of the universe,' Smoke Alarm said to Traveller with customary sureness. 'It's yawny and there's a stop-sign and it's where the law department is...'

Then she beamed at Sando, exclaiming 'I did? I did! I did do my show-and-tell! And so did the Calixi, they show-and-telled us everything. And it was icehot!' Smoke was still marvelling at what had just happened, how everyone had gotten together to do her scrapheap idea and helping-hand the Calixi to rest in pieces. And it had worked, icehot and geniusly.

There was one more thing, though. Smoke footed back to the scrapheap, eyespying the piled-up junk with care, and finally pulled loose a load-bearing poster. As the whole heap came crashing down, the Blue Kang scampered quickly out of the way afore she was caught in the overlanche. 'Rest in pieces.' she said solemnly when it had all stopped moving. She picked through the rubbish to find the old Calixi can, now mayhaps quiet and calm and empty. This she gave to Traveller. 'Now you can bury it or recycle it.'

Smoke Alarm stepped back, eyespying her handiwork. She'd saved the day for later. Mayhaps this was what it was like to be the Traveller and the Doctor. She liked it.

'Who's best?' she cried out, a start to a familiar, victorious chant.

'Blue Kangs, Blue Kangs, Blue Kangs are best!'


OOC: Cue wubstep. :D
This message was last edited by the player at 12:32, Mon 04 Sept 2017.

In reply to The Traveller (msg # 468):

She takes the key and just looks back at her.

"You say you can travel through time as well as space, and claim you are not a Sorcerer?"

The Traveller smiles. "I've seen real sorcerers and real magic. Magic is a mystery and a thing for priests and mystics, while what I do, science, anyone can do if they study and work hard enough. I'll show you how to do it, it's everyone's legacy and birthright. What my machine is no more mysterious than what your weapons do. It all is based on the same physical principles. A wise man said, "any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic." "

"I am going to try some of the food here." Stanley tells Trav. A show and tell about 'wubstep' does not sound like something he would really enjoy. "I think I still have some social credit left and it would be a waste not to spend it."

"Tobias, I was just wondering, did you see anything or notice something weird when the cannister opened?" Stanley asks his familiar after a short while.

In reply to The Traveller (msg # 474):

She just shook her head.

"But don't you see, if magic is purely advanced enough science, then by your very words you must be a sorcerer. It is said that with the right study, and enough time - which in the Stronghold we don't have as we're battling for our lives -anyone can be a sorceror."

"Didn't have. Things have changed now. As for time... time time time."

"My proper title is Time Lord. But I'm just the Traveller. I travel events and years and seasons, backwards and forwards like you'd go up and down a game path."

"I can take you home, back to Khestartes Delta, if you want. You wound up involved in this by accident. Or, you can come with us. Hunt down stories and tales and wisdom and adventures, to share with your people as they rebuild. The Hunters don't hunt for people anymore. Instead of meat, you can bring back to your people wisdom. Lore. Maybe some sorcery."

"Well? Hm, hm?"

The remains of the scrap-heap are still being cleared, with a fair degree of decorum, but some of the artisans are sharing their wares around the periphery of the area.  With some guidance from Dr. Astas away from items which might be metabolically questionable, Stanley settles upon a vegetable-and-fruit concoction,spiced and roasted on a long skewer.

To his question, Tobias responds, a bit hesitantly.  "It was extremely anomalous input, sir," it says.  "But I seem to recall--"

Suddenly the drone's audio jumps in volume, producing a startling three-part harmony:

Oo llanfal dree zrensas
Rres djenfal ni
Xi sensedda jechas
Ul hrennsal se

The tone of it is pleasing enough, but what's amazing to Stanley is that it's familiar.  He recognizes it, even though he can't imagine that he has ever heard it in his travels.  It brings up indistinct associations with holidays, a general feel not unlike Auld Lang Syne.

Smoke Alarm stop-signed the caretakers and garbage collectors from clearing up the remains of the scrapheap with all-speed. Instead, she encouraged people to take away anything of shiny interest or potential recycling, or in some cases take back what had been "borrowed". The scrapheap was to be scattered, distributed among the rezzidents, and recycled, to complete the grieving process and the passing of the Calixi.

On that basis, Smoke Alarm fished out of the collapsed scrapheap a serviceable wubble-board, a stiff rectangle of some plasticky stuff that had once been a sign for kronkburgers. The words were blue, at least. Turned down-side up, she wibbled it and wobbled it and wubbled it with a tetchno beat, and stepped and jumped to make her wubstep, as she sang out.

'Hail the Calixi.
Hail the unalive.
Hail the Calixi,
Who telled us their lives.
And were brave and free,
And Calixi should be!'

After that, the scrapheap ceremony was all-over red-rover, and it was time for fun times again.

'Play your wubbley-board, Blue.
Play your wubbley-board.
Oh, just keep playing 'til we run thru, Blue.
Play your wubbley-board.
Altogether now!

Can't tie a Kang-a-roo down, spot!
Can't tie a Kang-a-roo down!
Can't tie a Kang-a-roo down, spot!
Can't tie a Kang-a-roo down!'

After that stirring rendition, she played the song she'd used to good effect on their last adventure, now with less revolutionary fervour and more joyous triumph.

'The cats of Kestartes have made their choice.
Snappy Tom. Snappy Tom.
At Snappy Tom time, they raise up their voice.
Snappy Tom. Snappy Tom.
The cats of Kestartes have made their choice.
Snappy Tom. Snappy Tom.
At Snappy Tom time, they're all of one voice.
Snappy Tom!'

As the clean up happens, the Traveller carefully, reverently picks through the trash. With various faces, she'd always been digging around in trash, rubble, and dirt. The Master had tried to demean her by calling her rubbish girl, all the way back to when she had her first face. But when she out together a device out of a 1940s junk yard that stopped him and Cybermen allies, she wore the term as a badge of pride, even in her upper class New Englander tones.

And so it went - even the Marshall built an army of junk robots to distract the 8th Doctor during one go. Louise Simons, the rogue scientist from Rifts Earth, loved junk yards. The 2nd Traveller was famous for starting the TARDIS junk pile. The 5th Traveller adored junk.

So, as the Blue Traveller carefully picks through the trash, she finds an old cylinder. It's of a type used to carry data. Next to it is an old doll. Did this come from the cylinder? Or from the people here at the Habisphere? Who knows.

The beat up old dolly goes into her bag, as does the cylinder, after a moment of reverential silence.

--

Later, when Smoke Alarm does her wubstep, this Traveller is hopping up and own and clapping her hands! Those who knew her back in prior centuries would recognize the 2nd Traveller happy hop. It's totally at odds with this graceful and older looking Blue Traveller.