[Alright, so this entire deal? Sounds like a load for crap. In fact, Drake is pretty sure this really is a load of crap. As if being chased halfway across the world wasn't enough, he had to arrive to this place and get bombed less than a day later.

Way to arrive in style, Drake.

At first all that can be heard is a loud snap and a crackle over the feed.]

Hey, ev---one okay?

[He grunts in frustration. Fantastic. Tech from the future and still static. Guess some things never do change, huh?]

St--pid thing. Sully? Chloe? St--- in --- piece?

[Someone sounds like she's been drinking iron filings. Hoarse, in a word.]

Wow. I take everything I said about it being so weird that they weren't just smashing us back. I liked it like that. Peaceful was okay.

[A cough, and she switches over to text.]

Maybe we should be training down here? But I'm not sure I'm up for that yet. Let's play a game or something. Who's up for twenty questions?

Or, if you've passed through other worlds before, who'll talk about that? I'm just curious.

[The feed is staticky and has an annoying old-TV-on-the-fritz roll going on. Maria's sitting on a folded-up blanket with her back to the catacomb wall, bad leg stretched out in front of her. Not the best furniture in the world, but displaced persons can't be choosers.

She's also managed to scrounge up a tiny petroleum campstove and a very battered tin pot, in which she's currently making tea. The sky may be falling in a screwed-up, filthy future that none of them can escape, but THERE WILL BE TEA, DAMN IT. Her expression is meditative.]

In the world I come from there was once a war which wasn't a war. Two great powers running roughshod over little countries to prove how big they were to one another.

[There's a burst of audio static that drowns her out, although she keeps talking while she pulls the tea off the flame and cuts the gas.]

. . . never seemed to me that either one of them cared that much for what became of the little people they were using for their pawns.

I do not consider that the Initiative or the United Earth are any different in that regard. It is not so much that we are caught between good guys and bad guys. Only between two great powers who see us as means to their own respective ends.

[She gazes calmly down at her tea, her body language and her placid delivery very much at odds with how pissed she actually is. She takes it personally when people drop bombs on her, okay?]

Nevertheless. I cannot speak for anyone else. But I intend to find my own best way to show the more brutish of the two great powers just what a very bad decision they made when they decided to fuck with me.

[ The feed is staticky and the image is dim, but it is still quite easy to make out long ears and bright green eyes thanks to an orb of light hovering somewhere off camera. His chin is propped in his hand, and he looks weary and almost bored. ]

Well, you lot certainly know how to make someone feel welcome around here. I don't know if I'll be able to handle this much excitement if it's going to be the norm. Not that I'm not thankful that the walls have stopped shaking and all. [ He gives a bit of a grimace at that, even if it's fleeting. ]

Anyway. Anyone else looking for a way to kill the time while we're stuck down here hiding like rats and whatnot?

[ He pauses, and then: ]

And by that, I mean something to do that's not offering up my jugular.