He folded his arms.

"And getting the job done I presume?"

Getting the Draconian into an occupied area and not be noticed would also be somewhat of a challenge.

Smoke Alarm shook her head, blue hair dancing, but the Kang was grinning. 'Uh-uh. Us are scaredy-rats, unbrave of Inbetweens. And you're too big to go climbing and creepy-crawly through ducks.' she teased.

Her dark eyes widened at the news. 'We're outgoing to Arsuran?' Arsuran! It had been her home only briefly, while she tried to work out how to get back to Paradise Towers, or even Earth. But it was still a home-sweet-home, and she felt unbrave to see what the Fists had done. 'I know peoples and carrydoors and boxes and Mrs Maglup and frapple pies. I can find us a hide-in and unoutlooked ways.'
This message was last edited by the player at 04:36, Tue 14 Jan 2014.

"If I can presume that you'll be coming along, Legate. You look handy with that sword. My idea was that we might want to infiltrate them and lead the rebellion by joining them."

A quiet smile.

"Do we know there's an active rebellion there? They were pretty ruthless when we were fleeing."

His hand dropped to his sword, before giving a bow.

"My sword is at your command."

Trav gets a funny look when Sereth says that his sword is at her command.

The Krayloss, standing alongside the legion of Arcadia. The Castellan and her ready to lead the armies of Gallifrey, against the Nightmare Child and Davros.

She shakes her head. "Legate, I am humbled by your proclamation. But please, let your sword be guided by your conscience and honor, not by any command of mine. I stopped being a general a long time ago. Now, I'm just a traveler, a stellar vagabond. If I can name you my trusted companion, and trust your sword to guard us and do what's right, I'd be deeply grateful." She carefully places her two hands on his sword hand, and looks up at him, smiling slightly.

OOC - Some background on knowledge of Arsuran Orbital Prime that Sereth and Smoke Alarm would have available to them:

Sereth would have a good working knowledge of the spaceport, the Utilplex where the ring's government offices were (as well as a number of the ousted officials) and the business districts around the spaceport.  He would also know the overall layout of the habitat.  He knew of a few small enclaves where groups of Draconians were living and had businesses.  Some of these he managed to get out on the Lucky Drifter, but the fate of some is unknown to him.  It's likely that at least some are still on Arsuran.

When Smoke Alarm jumped off the ship that she hitched a lift on, she spent a number of days exploring around the spaceport and the business districts right around it.  Gradually she got chased off from these places until she settled down in a very downscale area where lower-class workers lived and no one bothered chasing her away any more.  This would be where Mrs. Maglup lived or lives, for instance.

Let me know if there are more specific things you'd want information on, or particular features you'd like to have available to exploit -- depending on what they are, they might call for spending Story Points or they might not.  Stanley and Trav can suggest these sorts of things as well, of course, they'd just be "learning" of them by way of one of the others.

'And my arrowgun!' Smoke Alarm declared, drawing the small crossbow, apparently misquoting a movie. Then she returned to playing with her talkiphone.

Escaping Arsuran, helping the refugees and scaredy-cats first in-come off the sky-fly then go-out back on, then making how-you-do with the Fists and getting all the know-how on them, followed by the lost-and-found of the talkiphone box, it had been a long lights-on for everyone, followed by a long lights-off, and more lights-on, especially for the busy-bee Smoke Alarm. Finally, before they arrived on Arsuran and the Kang went nigh-nighs, Traveller put the talkiphone box into something called tem-pour-all orbit. She made time stop, which impressed Smoke Alarm greatly. They could visit Arsuran and the Fists at lights-on, such as it was without tick-tocks.

Then Traveller showed them to their rooms on the talkiphone box. Apartments! With big beds and cubboards and drawerers and wardropes everything! After getting rid of the Cleaners and unlocking all the doors and making all welcome-mat in Paradise Towers, the Kangs had lived in apartments and slept in beds, though they often bunked together and moved around for safety. (And a few Kangs liked to hug and tickle and play sleepover alone. Sometimes with Boys! They didn't invite Smoke but she always wondered. It seemed like fun.) She'd had a dormy-tory at the yawny school on Earth, and had a little room on the Exeter almost like a box with a bed in it. But she'd been living as a stowaway, on the streets, and in boxes and nooks and crannies for long tick-tocks now. And here, a real apartment of her ownsome!

But she didn't go in. She still half-expected a trap, a Cleaner in the cubboard. And she didn't want to get too comfortable in the talkiphone box in case she to out-go and be footing it again. When she felt sound-and-safe, she could make a home-sweet-home here.

As the others went off to nigh-nighs and sleep-tight and made sure the bed-bugs didn't bite, Smoke Alarm drifted back to the talkiphone's brainquarters, easily negotiating the winding, changing, labyrinthine TARDIS carrydoors. She liked the brainquarters and stood there a while outlooking at all the fishies in the walls. Then she outlooked at the puters and picturespouts. So many buttons and levers and switches. She played with a few that didn't look too important, but nothing seemed to happen. She made sure to put them all back the way she found them. She thought.

She eyespied a row of numbers she recognised as ticktocks. One said 195th century! But Doctor Sam had said it was the 26th century, 2587 or 2578 or 2597 or something. That blue bubble had taken her through hundreds-and-thousands of ticktocks. What she'd feared, and what she'd tried to ignore and deny and turn her back on as all Kangs did, wasn't untruth. And Traveller hadn't talked untruths: the Doctor really was gone and unalive, made unalive like Pex the Brave. And Mel was unalive, and Doctor Sam and Mister Mop. And all the Blue Kangs were gone and unalive, all her sister-friends since time started, Drinking Fountain and Door Knob and No Smoking and This Way Up and all the Red Kangs, all the Kangs, all the Rezzies, all the Caretakers, all unalive. She couldn't turn her back on it any more. She was the last, Blue Kang the Last, Kang the Last.

Smoke Alarm fell against the console, clutching it for support. She felt cold and shaky, like the AC was too low, and she felt empty and hungry. Her eyeballs became wet and stingy like she'd been eating onions. It was the same sick she felt when her friends were made unalive or disappeared, eaten by Rezzies or taken by Cleaners. She became a crybaby, like when the dog had bit her, and huddled under the protective shelter of the console as the onion-drops came.

But the Kang had seen too many friends made unalive or disappeared, been through too much trauma to be a crybaby for long. Finally she stood, sniffled, and told herself 'Brave and bold as a Kang should be.'

She knew what she had to do.

The Kang piled whatever loose objects she could find onto the console, from all around the brainquarters and other rooms. Chairs, a pair of old boots, a side-table, some poles, tools, puters, shinies out her pockets, old fizz-ade cans and lolly wrappers, bit and pieces and odds and ends she couldn't identify, until she'd turned it into a huge shrine of scrap and junk, the biggest and most icehot ever. She tied on her blue strips, some red and yellow and pink clothes and cloths, and laid her arrowgun on the ground before it. Smoke Alarm stood back to admire her impressive handiwork. She couldn't say why the Kangs did this, but they knew they needed to.

'Hail the Doctor. Hail the unalive who put Paradise Towers to rights. Blue and red of colour, and brave and bold as a Kang should be.' she announced, young voice full of sadness and echoing around the brainquarters. She drew her hand from left hip to right shoulder, then held her hand up, palm out, an odd farewell gesture.

She started a slow walk around her recycle-bin shrine, chanting out her farewells. 'Hail Mel. Hail the unalive who found the Great Pool. Blue of colour, and brave and bold as a Kang should be. Hail Mister Mop. Hail the unalive who told funny stories. In life he was not a Kang, but brave and bold as a Kang should be. Hail Doctor Sam. Hail the unalive who found Paradise Towers. A would-be Kang, and brave and bold as a Kang should be.' The funeral chant went on and on, echoing off the glass walls, eerie and haunting in its simple grief, especially from one like Smoke Alarm. And Smoke Alarm walked around and around and around, pausing periodically to make the farewell gesture. And the chant went on. 'Hail Drinking Fountain. Hail the unalive who lead the Blue Kangs. Blue of colour, and brave and bold as a Kang should be. Hail This Way Up. Hail the unalive, Pink Kang the Last. Pink of colour, and brave and bold as a Kang should be.' Smoke Alarm kept footing it, around and around and around and around, circling the recycle-bin shrine she'd made of the console and time-rotor, always repeating her chant, naming every friend she'd known and lost. 'Hail the Blue Kangs. Hail the unalive who were clever and quick. Blue of colour, and brave and bold as Kangs could be.' And her feets were hurting and her arms were hurting and her eyes were hurting and her mouth was dry, but she kept talking her chant, not wanting to let any unalive friend go unremembered. Sometimes she forgot and had to go back, sometimes she repeated her farewells, sometimes she did whole groups where there were people she did not know. 'Hail the Rezzies and the Caretakers and the Boys. Hail the unalive. In life they were not Kangs, but they got wiser. Hail the Kangs. Hail the unalive who were fun friends. Red and blue and pink and yellow and green of colour, and brave and bold as Kangs could be.' And the Kang went on, and on, and on, deep into lights-off.

At some point, she must have sat down to close her eyes, as she went nigh-nighs on the couch, curled up and sleep-tight, hugging her Puddy and arrowgun. That was where she was found waking in the morning.

Several hours later, Trav comes into the control room, wearing her robe and slippers and jammies (with little chibi veritech fighters all over them). Carrying her mug of coffee, she sees Smoke all curled up, and the impromptu shrine that she had constructed on Sweet Boy's console, alone. She sneaks up and locks out the controls so that nothing that Smoke does will disturb anything. And then, a respectful distance but next to the tokens and photos that Smoke has set up she places a few things - pictures of the Doctor and her in various incarnations, her and Al Capone, when she wore her first face, her second self on the bridge of the SDF-1 with Minmay, Henry Gloval, Rick Hunter, Roy and all the rest, a small holofeed from the console of herself as the Marshall, standing with Inquisitor Ghent, Watch Captain Saladin of the Ultramarines and her comrades from the Deathwatch, and of course photos of her kids, which were already up on the console, surrounding a glossy of a young brown haired woman and a latino looking man, on an airboat in a swamp next to a dinosaur skeleton. The last is Trav herself with a fellow wearing tattoos, some kind of hooded mystic looking fellow, and a tall, impressive looking armored man who was adorned with various talismans and fetishes.

She makes sure that all the entrances and vents are locked so that Smoke is not disturbed, except for the spiral staircase that leads up to the Orrery, where she herself creeps. The Orrery has repeaters for the sensors and library functions.

OOC: Smoke, roll Presence + Resolve + Brave.

For reasons.

OOC: Okay.
14:24, Today: Smoke Alarm rolled 13 using 2d6+6 with rolls of 1,6. presence + resolve + brave.

When Smoke Alarm wakes, before she and the others in TARDIS make ready for outgoing, she seems to remember something from her sleeping.  It's hard for her to remember exactly, but it might have gone something like this:

A face is watching over her, a man's face with short and slightly unkempt black hair, beneath a cream-colored hat with an upturned brim.  The face isn't as old as a Rezzie's, or as young as an inbetween's; the eyes are deep and clever and wise, and the crinkles at their corners are those of smiles.

"Brave and bold as a Kang should be," he says softly, "and tired and grieving and lost in echoes of time.  Funny thing, time.  Somewhere in it we are all happy and somewhere sad, somewhere, it's true, we are unalive, and elsewhere we're being born, or bursting with the life inside us, or elsewhere still we are not even thoughts yet to be.  We are wanderers always looking for our way home, and we are guides to those who've lost their way.

"What we are is the sum of our memories and our hearts and our dreams.  We are remembrances in those who have known us, or we're the hopes of those we've yet to meet.

"Rest well for when you waken, Smoke Alarm," he says, gentle and proud, and then he grins and winks.  "You've got work to do."

'Doctor.' Smoke Alarm murmured in her sleep. 'Build high... for happiness.' The old motto of the Kroagnon construction company had become a goodbye, a good luck, a wish for happiness and prosperity. 'Work to-do.'

The Kang wasn't one to stay unconscious and vulnerable for long, so she awoke relatively early and with a start for the still-unfamiliar surroundings, kicking and struggling out of a blanket she found draped over her. Which was odd, because she didn't have a blanket and no-one had put one on her, but it had kept her warm. She looked warily around the brainquarters of the talkiphone box, the Sweet Boy TARDIS, and smiled.

She found herself alone in the brainquarters, and was concerned to find the doors locked. There was also a stare-way she hadn't seen before. Curiously, with Puddy in one hand and arrowgun in the other, she crept up the stairs...
This message was lightly edited by the player at 01:57, Tue 21 Jan 2014.

Smoke Alarm finds herself coming into a large gallery, several hundreds of feet across. Railings are made out of brass, with a large platform floating in space. A large steampunk style telescope, like the type you find in observatories, is up on a second smaller platform that one would climb up some stairs to reach. Around the platform at various quadrants are smaller scopes, viewing glasses and astrolabes, all sorts of astronomical devices throughout history.

Below is the huge ring of Arsuran prime.  Trav is sipping coffee, leaning back and looking at the nearby sun of Arsuran, the stars and nebulae, the head/hand of one of the scutters in her lap, which she is scritching. She's curled up on another big couch, in her robe, jammies and slippers.  She smiles as Smoke climbs up. "Hey, babe."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:14, Tue 21 Jan 2014.

Smoke Alarm peered carefully over the lip of the stareway, on the outlook for some danger and worried she might be trespassing somewhere. Then she looked around the big space room in awe, at all the shiny eyescopes and things. Icehot, Smoke Alarm thought, amazed, but didn't say anything. This seemed too quiet a time to make noise in.

The Traveller disturbed the silence instead, and Smoke Alarm crawled up the rest of the way. 'How you do?' she murmured softly, still looking around.

Trav smiles, and pats the space next to her, inviting Smoke to join her, on a couch that surveys the universe. She does the How-Do-You-Do Kang handjive with her. She doesn't say a word, however, waiting for Smoke to speak, first.

Smoke Alarm shuffled up to the couch and sat next to Traveller, feeling all yawny for the rise-and-shine and fumbling slowly through the how-you-do. 'You don't have to do the how-you-do hands to-do all the time.' she somehow managed to say. She still felt fuzzy-headed after waking up from her sweet-dream, which had felt as real as a picturespout and had been talky too.

Trav smiles. The coffee cart with it's donuts is nearby. Trav doesn't speak - instead, she just regards the Arsuran habitat below, and the more distant stars, nebular and galaxies, in all of their splendor, before them.

"I hope you didn't mind me adding some stuff to your memorial."

Smoke remembered the shotsnaps stuck on the scrap-heap, all those strange faces. 'No. Everyone goes on the scrap-heap.' she said solemnly. She thought for a moment, wondering if there would be a to-do about her using the puter as a base for the scrap-heap. But here, in the brainquarters of the talkiphone box, it seemed the best place for it. 'It was for the Doctor, and— and everyone.' she admitted.

Trav offers Smoke coffee and donuts, as the sun breaks over Arsuran primes terminator. "So, tell me about him when you met him. I knew him for a long time, but not when he was short and carried that umbrella. The Doctor, I mean." Trav was locked up in the citadel on Gallifrey during those days.

After a little consideration, Smoke Alarm took a doughnut. Though she knew she could trust Traveller, old habits died hard, especially when they were the sort of habits that kept one from being unalive. She eyespied the doughnut over for unusual sprinkles, sniffed it for funny smells, then finally took a small nibble of the side, before putting it back. She'd wait in case she felt sick. Rats had the same technique, in case food was bad or baited. The Kangs had learned a lot of know-how from the rats.

'Was he bigger then?' she asked. She'd been smaller once herself, and now she was bigger. She assumed that was what Traveller meant. Had the Doctor gotten bigger too? 'The Doctor is an oldster but not a Rezzie or an Inbetween, unold but unyoung. His clothes are high fabshion for an oldster. His umberella has a question-mark. He is icehot and fun and clever and wise and has all the know-how and gets lost-and-found in all the ways and carrydoors. He cares but is not a care-taker.'

'The Doctor helped us. "Free for use of public. Advice and assis-tance obtain-able immedi-ately." He stole the Caretaker's rulebook, tricked the Chief Caretaker, found the Fizz-ade cans, ended the Kang Game, and guided Drinking Fountain, Fire Escape, and Bin Liner down to the Basement to eyespy the Great Architect. Then, at the Great Pool in the Sky he... He didn't do anything much. But the Doctor and Mel got us to work with the Rezzies and the Caretakers and Pex and we all had know-hows to break-down the Cleaners and catch the Great Architect. All of us together put Paradise Towers to rights. The Doctor made us able to. We made him a Kang, Red and Blue.'

Smoke Alarm smiled at a happy recollection. 'Afterwards, I gave him a Blue Fizz-ade. And he said my name: Smoke Alar-r-r-r-r-r-rm.' she said, trying to roll the "r"s. She retrieved the doughnut and took a larger bite, finding her tummy didn't hurt, then put it back.


OOC: Coffee? You really want to give Smoke Alarm caffeine? ;)

I'm happy to say Sylvester McCoy once did that to my name too. :D

"The Doctor and I come from the same planet - Gallifrey." One of the pics she put onto the shrine was a flat photo of that russet planet. "It's gone now - all rocks and dust. I'm the last one, I'm afraid. But that's a bad story. I'll tell it, but later. Let's talk about the Doctor instead."

Out comes the sonic, and Trav aims it up. It lights, and out comes several swirling images of the Doctor, all the way from his first cranky form up to the noble 8th Doctor, the last one she knew. She doesn't show the War Doctor, the regeneration triggered by the Witches of Karn - that was the one who planned the end of the Time War with her, when she was the Marshall, commander of the armies of Gallifrey. Dorian said to her that the Doctor was the last weapon the Marshall ever used. She socked him hard for that one. The Doctor actually helped her recover her heart. "He's been bigger, and smaller. Look at that one - the one with the tootle stick. That's the first one I met. I was very stuffy and uptight but he got me unwound. That next one, he was taller, and could do an awesome karate-chop. The one with the scarf was kind of a jerk but was funny-crazy. And that one - with the celery on his jacket. He was my special boo."


Trav listens and smiles as she hears about The Doctor's escapades in Paradise Towers. "Yeah, he did that thousands of times. Never sticks around. I'm sure Mel is alright, I knew a lot of his friends but I never met her. That's why I do this - his is a good way to live, so I want to do the same thing."

"We people from Gallifrey, when really badly hurt, have a trick to keep from being unalive - we change. We remember everything, but we get a whole new look and whole new feelings and acting. I've done it four times now. It's how we grow old. It's what everyone does, really, just bigger and louder."
This message was last edited by the player at 07:46, Thu 23 Jan 2014.

Smoke Alarm watched the whirly images out of the picturespout — literally spouting pictures, she realised — and listened to Traveller's tales of the Doctor with fascination. 'Wow.' She thought about how Gallifrey people changed bodies as they got old, and thought that would be weird but kind of fun, like a whole new game to play or picture to watch. 'We just get bigger.' she said glumly. 'When time start, I was really small. Then I got bigger and biggerer. Things... changed.' She made a small, shy gesture towards her torso, not sure what to say about all that. 'Mayhaps one day I'll be so big I can't foot it through a door. Mayhaps even as big as a tower!' she ended with dismay, afraid for the future. 'There'll be nothing for us to climb and nowhere to go. So big and slow. But mayhaps I'll be unalive then...'

She looked to Traveller with fresh hope. 'Mayhaps the Doctor changed?'
This message was last edited by the player at 09:48, Thu 23 Jan 2014.

She shakes her head. "He didn't. Well, he did, but that was one last time. He was the biggest of them all, biggest heart. He was biggest here," she says, pointing at her heart. "I can't be nearly as big as him. He got so big that the world couldn't fit him, yeah? Made himself unalive so everyone else would be OK." Fantastic,, he said, those last few moments before sweet boy took her, hurtling away from Gallifrey and into R-Space.

"Funny thing, is, since I go walkabout through time - one of the rules is that I can't go back where I've been. But it's always there. So, he's always there. Like he said - the people we love, they're asleep in our minds. I can go back, just by closing my eyes. So the good times, the happiness, they can't ever be wiped out no matter how much the bad guys try."

She closes her eyes for a moment, and remembers the good times. "Hm."

Then she hops up. "Busy day today, gotta shower and get ready. Can't have a stinky Trav. Wow, that rhymes!" She smiles that whacky smile. "Follow me, I'll show you the spa." She starts heading down the spiral staircase.

'Hail the unalive. Hail Doctor the Brave.' Smoke Alarm agreed mournfully, thinking of his wise, smiley face, which seemed to emerge from her dreams more than her memories.

'Shower?' Smoke Alarm repeated, surprised, and sniffing. Shrugging and curious to see what a "spa" was, she upped and followed Traveller. Then she dashed back to collect her part-eaten doughnut, before hurrying after Trav again and taking a bite on the run. 'I only washed last week.' she mumbled around the doughnut.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:53, Fri 24 Jan 2014.