Hail the Conquering Heroes

[cityship]

Things can happen without Stacy knowing, that much is apparent now. The damage to her sensors is significant. But the fighting clued her in

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[thenameissam]

After getting 'decontaminated', making his way to the MedPay to be--rather roughly--man-handled by a doctor with an atrocious bedside manner and have the silver bullet removed from his foot and the would patched up. Once that was done, he stopped by the 'clothing room' to get molested, yet again, by the little vine-like tendrils that hung from the ceiling for the purpose of 'dressing' them. Yeah, like they couldn't do it themselves. He then stopped by the city to retrieve the machete he'd dropped when Danny's sonic shout threw Sam against a building and knocked him out before heading up to the observation deck like he'd been instructed

[thenameissam]

"Yeah, well, they came to the right place," Sam answered, looking over the crowd. "Especially the way that almost turned out."

[thenameissam]

"If you ask me," Sam said.

She didn't. But oh well, she was getting it anyway.

"We need to set-up some kind of training sessions. If we're gonna get outta this alive, we're gonna have to work together. And, after what just happened down there, I get the feeling a lot of these people are used to working on their own."

[thenameissam]

Sam returned her nod. He leaned back against the sofa and let the gooey mass of tissue hold all his weight as he relaxed his muscles. "You know, when we first got here...or woke up or whatever...I've got to admit, I wasn't all that sure you were up to this."

[thenameissam]

"No, no it doesn't," Sam said with a firm nod, his mouth turning up into an amused smile. "Then again, neither does 'Stanford Law School' drop-out. By all rights, I should be some uptight prick in a suit arguing about summary judgments and exculpatory evidence...and you should be out givin' parking tickets to jerks like me who park in handicap spaces."

[thenameissam]

"Yeah, I guess so," he nodded again, still smiling. After all, this was the first time since he'd woken up covered in slime that Sam had allowed himself to relax. "So what's your story, anyway?" he asked. "I mean, you're way too cool with this whole 'getting abducted by an alien stomach ship' to be just some ordinary small-town cop."

[thenameissam]

Sam's smile disappeared and listened intently, his brow furrowed, as she recited the story of Silent Hill. "What do you mean you usually wrote it off? What changed?"

[thenameissam]

Sam's confusion disappeared as Cybil continued to tell a story that, while the details were different, would be more than just a little familiar to him. "You've been to a cursed town," he said, almost as if he were merely thinking aloud. "Well, no wonder you're so together. Cursed towns are black. They're these places that, for one reason or another, were tainted by the people that lived there. It's usually something they did, something so heinous that the echoes of it hang around and fester and start corrupting everything, the land, the air, the buildings...the people. Shit, if the evil festers long enough, it can grow and actually become a gateway straight to hell."

He paused, eying the captain for a moment with a look of understanding that said that he was even more impressed with her than he had been before. "If you survived that, I'd have to say you're definitely cut out for this. And I definitely under-estimated you."