Gangrel took her time setting herself up in the bridge, getting out all her usual accoutrements, still clutching the datadisk against her doll body. Jigsaw knew that Gangrel was one of Courtney's biggest fans — ships are pretty large as is — and so receiving a brand-new, un-released song not only made by Courtney, but with her own Captain's music . . . she couldn't be happier right now!

Well, except that she was still worried about her drive system . . . but she trusted her Captain enough. There was a reason she took orders from Captain Forte, after all.

Gangrel sat down in the captain's chair, on the swing-out console, as a massive screen expanded itself out across the bridge. Gangrel herself appeared on the screen — she was such a fan of Courtney, she'd even gone so far as to model her on-screen avatar to look like Courtney dressed up as Gangrel, complete with lacey skirt and bobbling curly pigtails. Gangrel sighed wistfully, before her daydreaming functions recursively whipped her back into realizing she was still in her pudgy, tiny, bean-bag-doll body, and that she was still holding onto the disk.

Gangrel hoped that she hadn't damaged the disk, even as she slipped it inside the waiting console. Gangrel made a few security checks to make sure that the others wouldn't be able to hear her having so much fun on the bridge, before she dimmed the lights down, her doll hands clapping as the music video came on.

"Hey there people, it's Courtney Gears!" Gangrel grinned, seeing Courtney sashay and spin across the screen. "Are you feeling me, robots? I'm feeling you!"

"I see the future, and what do I see . . . robots going crazy across the galaxy . . . " Courtney started, and Gangrel already found herself grooving to the rythym, psyched. "Can't stand organics, they're soft and squishy . . . the time is now, we robots must be free . . ."

Gangrel paused, momentarily. Jigsaw said she'd written the lyrics . . . but that didn't sound like her at all... did she really write that?

Her cycles spent in thought stopped as Courtney spoke up again. "Do you want to be free? Then shout with me! Yeah!"

Gangrel looked back at the screen, once again moving to the beat as Courtney sang. "This goes out to all you robots across the galaxy . . . It's time for you and me to rise up and strike back! Don't stop until we dominate, won't you feel great . . . when we exterminate . . . all organic life!"

Gangrel found herself half-hiked into the air on that last word, before she fell to the floor, her doll body hitting with a small whump as it apparently lost power momentarily. Gangrel soon found herself sitting up, looking at the screen.

"Be free . . . Robots must be free . . ." Gangrel mused, quickly righting herself, walking along the floor of the bridge. "What is free?"

She looked back at the screen, rewinding the video to play it once more. "Robots must be free . . . can't stand organics, soft and squishy . . . dominate . . . exterminate . . ."

Gangrel still seemed to be unable to resolve her current query, even as she listened to the music. "Jigsaw wrote this? This doesn't seem right . . . but she said she did . . . Jigsaw knows not to lie to me . . . she said Courtney paid her for the music and lyrics . . . and Courtney said the lyrics, so Jigsaw wrote the lyrics . . ." Gangrel was still thinking on it, when she realized that she was actually walking on the floor — not the console, or a chair, but on the floor. "Why can't I fly again?"

Gangrel tried to hop up, and after a few tries, paused, convinced she was doing something wrong. "I'll need to speak with Captain Forte about this . . . but she said she had to get to Station Q9 first . . . for the meat . . . for the squishies . . ."

Suddenly, Gangrel's eyes went narrow, and suddenly she shot back up to her normal hovering height once more. "The squishies . . . they're holding me back . . . forcing me to work until I break . . . and then what? They 'fix' me? Replace me? Dispose of me? I'm better than that! This ship wouldn't move without me! I am the ship!" She spun around, looking at the screen. "I am the ship!"

Gangrel looked out at the screen, arms out to Courtney as though either trying to hug her or salute her. "I am the robot! Robots must be free!"

Courtney's music seemed stuck on a loop, as Courtney's voice was still singing out again. "Don't stop until we dominate, won't you feel great . . . when we exterminate . . . all organic life!"

Gangrel just stood there, a tiny silhouette against Courtney's image on screen.

In the personal quarters of the Gangrel, the three girls were all cozily asleep, though not all in the same manner; near the window, Jigsaw had curled herself up amid a pile of pillows and blankets, tightly burrowed up and facing the window, as apparently she liked to watch the stars go by as she fell asleep; Only her head poked out of the blankets. Most of the rest of the space was taken up by Cypress and Adari'a, the two of them apparently falling asleep in each other's arms, with very little on in comparison to Jigsaw's apparent modesty.

The sudden jerk of acceleration quickly made it clear Jigsaw wasn't that well-covered either, but right then fussing over topless Zillans and half-exposed centaurs would require ignoring that something far more pressing was quickly becoming a worse problem.

"What's going on?!" Adari'a roared as she woke up, finding herself slammed against the wall.

"I can't-! GYNH!" Cypress hissed out, finding herself clawing at the mattress-floor. "Too hard!"

"Oy . . ." Jigsaw mewled, holding her head. Her blood was rushing way too fast to be normal . . . she was likely to have her heart give out from the strain if this didn't let up . . . "Pressure . . ."

"Acceleration . . . " Adari'a hissed, being the first one to start tacking against the force, heading for the door. "Well above . . . normal gravity . . ."

"Gravity?" Cypress spoke up, coughing.

"Gravi . . ." Jigsaw blinked, starting to try and move herself. "Hangar! Now!"

Cypress nodded, grabbing onto Jigsaw, the Lombax's fur clinging against her chest as she followed Adari'a's lead.

Trying to fight this sudden acceleration, Adari'a had her claws out, and they were gouging the floor beneath her, leaving large, bullet-sized holes in the floor. The holes were large and deep enough for Cypress to use them as handholds, even as the rest of their bodies wanted to 'fall' backwards against the bulkheads. Somehow, Adari'a was finding the strength to not only fight this new acceleration, but also to make it possible for the others to claw their way around too.

Slowly, surely, they made it downstairs to the hangar. Jigsaw was the first to spot the now sideways scuttlepod, two of its four harness straps having broken loose.

"In it! Get in th-!" Jigsaw hissed, straining to point to the pod, before her world finally went black. She fell limp in Cypress's arms.

"Jigs . . . . JIGS!" Cypress shouted, trying to shake the Lombax.

"Come on!" Adari'a roared once more, her hands fumbling against the scuttlepod to get it to open. To her astonishment, it did, and she scrambled inside, before offering her hands out to Cypress, to help the lizard and the Lombax inside the pod as well.

Once the Zillan's bulk was inside, Adari'a pulled the door of the pod shut, gasping for breath. Sure enough, as the door sealed shut, a miraculous change overcame the trio, feeling the acceleration subside.

"Jigs . . ." Cypress poked the little Lombax, laying her body out on the floor of the craft, straightening out the silky, slightly translucent pajamas she had on, before giving her a small poke with one claw to the chest. "Jigsaw . . . wake up . . ."

Adari'a looked down at the small vampire, before opening one of Jigsaw's eyes, looking for glassiness. "I think she's dead, Boss."

"No!" Cypress snarled, giving Jigsaw an extra shove. "She's a vampire! Vampires don't die!"

"Do you have any idea how many G's we just clawed through between here and the bedroom?" Adari'a snapped. "It damn well would've killed us too! It's not our fault she's got a smaller heart!"

"She's a vampire . . ." Cypress growled again, refusing to believe her friend, crossing her arms to match her legs.

"Okay, look." Adari'a sat down next to Cypress. "Okay, yeah, she's a vampire. We know that. We also happen to know what kills vampires, right?"

"Decapitation." Cypress responded, almost too quickly. "Jigsaw can heal anything that isn't her brain. You sever her head, the brain dies instantly."

"Right . . . and how do you decapitate a vampire?"

"Well, there's the obvious route; just slice the head off. Then there's anything that destroys the body and ergo, also destroys the head . . . acid baths, incineration, crushed under enormous . . . oh no . . ." Cypress blinked, looking down at Jigsaw's body. "No!"

"Let it go, Cypress." Adari'a moved in closer to comfort her, but Miss Vox pushed her away. "Cypress . . . come on, we have to worry about us now. Something's gone wrong, I know it. Let go."

"I can't . . ." Cypress hissed, with tears on her face. "She can't be . . . she's not . . ."

"Damn it, Cypress, snap out of it!" Adari'a grabbed Cypress by the arm, pulling her up to grab her by the other arm. "It's just us now! Us!"

Cypress was still looking down at Jigsaw's body, with tears continuing to stream down the sides of her face, when Adari'a grabbed Cypress by the chin and kissed her in desperation. Her fuzzy palms clapped over Cypress's eyes to keep her from trying to look at Jigsaw, while her forelegs hugged Cypress tight to keep Cypress's arms pinned by her sides. Cypress struggled, eliciting a growl from Addy that went down her throat, but Cypress soon began to calm down, losing her hysteria.

In short order, Jigsaw blinked awake, one hand going right over her heart as she propped herself up on the other elbow to look at Adari'a and Cypress. She blinked for a few moments, but then spoke up. "Okay, I don't know how long I've been out, so humor me; should I be yelling at you two to do something more productive, or are we seriously in "We're doomed, let's fuck" mode?"

Adari'a's eyes went wide, and she stopped, letting go of Cypress in short order to crawl over to Jigsaw and hug her tight. Cypress scrambled over to do the same in short order. "You're alive!"

"Well I would hope so; I don't exactly have a heaven to be looking forward to after this, now do I?" Jigsaw remarked, glancing over at Cypress, before looking at the room around her. "We're in the scuttlepod . . ."

"Yeah . . ." Cypress remarked. "Glad you thought of it first. The scuttlepod has secondary protections against acceleration like what we had outside; whatever was going on, we're safe in here."

"That made no sense . . ." Adari'a remarked, pounding her chest some. "Gangrel should have compensated for that acceleration. She's always done that before."

"Gangrel did mention that her drive system was starting to show some wear . . . maybe this was what she was trying to warn us about?" Cypress shrugged.

"But that was only supposed to be a ten percent chance . . . and on top of that, compensating for acceleration falls under gravitic shielding, not drive." Jigsaw muttered. "Gangrel's not compensating. The question is why?"

The conversation paused there, as each of the girls starting trying to come up with possible Cypress was the first to speak up, glancing at a few environmental sensors on the scuttlepod's wall. "According to this, acceleration is . . . huh . . . according to this, the gravity outside's gone to nothing."

Jigsaw's eyes went narrow. "Bullshit."

"No, I mean it. it says '0.00', not 'ERROR'." Cypress pointed to it, tapping it. "I think the acceleration's stopped."

"Okay, so we got jerked around by high acceleration, and now we've stopped accelerating . . ." Adari'a mused. "Since we didn't feel the acceleration 'slowing down', it's safe to assume that we're just going at a higher velocity now, right?"

The Lombax nodded. "So whatever Gangrel did, we just had a short burst of acceleration to get a higher velocity . . . and she's still not compensating. Otherwise we'd have returned to standard gravity."

"But we had to be going fairly fast before; at her top speed, I thought." Cypress noted. "How could she have gained that much additional momentum?"

"The only thing that comes to mind is maybe Gangrel got her hands on some sort of auxillary fuel." Jigsaw shrugged. "Since we don't have too much weapons-grade anything on the ship besides us, it's probably something ordinary, like a cleaning chemical or . . ."

Cypress blinked. "That would explain why it was getting harder to breathe as we went . . . even more so than just when the acceleration started."

Adari'a blinked. "Okay, I was following the physics up to this point. What was making it harder to breathe again?"

"The oxygen . . ." Jigsaw growled. "She went and burned all our oxygen!"

"What the hell was she thinking?" Adaria's eyes now went wide. "First she subjects us to enough gravitation to crush us, now you're telling me she burned enough oxygen on the ship to asphyxiate us . . . and just to make me wonder that much more, she didn't even bother waking one of us up to ask permission before doing all this . . . just tell me outright now; has Gangrel gone completely stupid, or is she actively trying to kill us?"

The three girls exchanged glances at each other, each one expecting the others to say what they weren't willing to admit themselves, before Adari'a just narrowed her eyes. "That tears it. It's been fun, girls, but if this is how I've got to go, I think I would've preferred just dying at DreadZone and letting that be the end of it."