[hatch log] pull plug, enter multiverse

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: The Station + Concordia
WHEN: DAY :025 - :026
SUMMARY: Somewhere deep in Station 72, a hatch happens; new hosts arrive on Concordia.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

YOU WAKE UP and in a very real sense you are born again. You’re not the same person you were the last time your eyes were open. You’ll never be that person again - well, except for you, Jessica Jones. You know how this part goes, don’t you?

You might not know it right away, though. What you do know is that you’re laying down in a place very different than you were before. The walls angle around you, claustrophobic, and they emit a gentle white light that’s faint enough not to hurt your freshly opened eyes. For a moment you feel fine even if you didn’t before you went under. Whatever injuries you might have had, whatever agony you may have been experiencing, whatever fear dogged your heels, they’re all gone. It’s quiet. When you’re conscious enough to take stock of anything beyond that, you realize that you’re wearing your own clothes and that there’s a faint pinch at the base of your skull - notable as the only discomfort you feel. Reach up, feel along the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment’s back wall. It pulls free without much fuss.

Then it’s not so quiet anymore. There’s the sensation of something more, something louder, something both big and broad and something intimately near to you. There’s the realization that you aren’t alone, that you won’t ever be alone again. You belong here. This is as correct as the murmur of something like muffled voices in the back of your head is somehow familiar, or how the press of emotion that sweeps over you now doesn’t necessarily belong to you but doesn’t feel out of place either.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet, and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you, as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. You can hear a sound in the back of your head, a faint buzzing, something like distant waves or the murmur of a party behind a door. Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone - and the those sounds in your head are louder. Other people’s thoughts swim up: some of them seem clear, most of them are a jumbled mess. Some of these people call to you - their voices are louder, their feelings more clear, they feel right. Further, there’s an awareness that there are others like you - not here, not close, but somewhere: an indelible tug at the back of your mind.

Welcome to Station 72. All new hosts will have one day aboard the Station before being whisked off to Concordia to join the others. Get to know the other new hosts, and ask the guardians of the Station - Prince and Cathaway -, any burning questions you might have. By the time the day has passed, Carata will arrive on the hangar to collect you.



MEANWHILE IN CONCORDIA Angel slips into a coma on :025 at almost at the exact same time that some Hosts become aware of missing pieces fitting into place. Those hosts with new brood members waking up on the station will feel somewhere more complete; you might want to let everyone know you’ll be getting new roommates soon.

Everyone might be putting themselves and their broods back together in the wake of the explosion that left the nest down one host and injected everyone with renewed motivation to either find the people responsible or make sure nothing like what happened at Royal Street ever happens again. Things are progressing on multiple fronts, but on DAY 26 there’s an option to put some of those efforts on the back burner...

     ON THE STATION, the new hosts are herded onto a sleek, black brick-shaped transport. Carata, a woman young enough to almost be called a girl, carefully makes sure everyone is seated and strapped in. She’s all gentle, easy smiles and cheerful responses to any questions posed to her. When everyone’s safely aboard, the ship’s landing platform descends through the floor of the hangar. It snaps into place in the airlock and for a moment there’s a beat of perfect stillness, a shiver of anticipation. Then the transport is flung through the shaft, ejected into the wild black of space. There’s a nauseating lurch in your belly as it bursts through the delicate shell of the multiverse and snaps into real space above the blue and yellow marble of the planet Opia. Somewhere, thousands of miles below in the city of Concordia, your brood is waiting for you.

     IN CONCORDIA
IN CONCORDIA, as dark falls, Nirad announces he’s going to fetch Carata and the new hosts from their landing. Anyone’s welcome to accompany him on the hour long drive to the stealth transport’s landing zone. The rented bus - manned by that same (now very stoic) android - takes everyone to the outskirts of the industrial block. They arrive at a different parking garage just as the stealth transport drops out of the sky, shivering into sight as it touches down. The hosts on the ship step down and then the stealth transport lifts back off the rooftop and wrinkles out of sight. It’s unclear how many more time they’ll be able to get away with this.

Get your meet and greets in and stretch your legs; you have a few minutes before everyone piles into the van and takes the long drive back to the Bearings Apartment block where the hosts have rented out the entirely of Level 13. New hosts will find there are rooms there that as of yet unclaimed, and they’re free to begin making this their home in whatever ways they please. Get familiar with your new comrades, explore the city, or maybe just take a well deserved breather. Officially speaking, nothing much happens until--

     EARLY ON DAY 27

A NEW WINDOW POPS UP IN YOUR EXTRANET PANEL...

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new and recently returning hosts; any threads on the Station should be closed to newly awakened hosts or Station-based NPCs; a top level for Cathaway and Prince will be going live shortly. Any threads on Concordia can be open to both new and old hosts! For anything happening beyond these calendar dates, feel free to create your own logs and posts.

If you have questions about the mission specifically, direct them to the most recent calendar post HERE. You can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE; you might also want to take a glance at the MISSION CONCORDIA BRIEFING. For all other questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[greentech]

Guardians of the Galaxy? Who're they?

[ She pokes the eggs and gives them a quick stir. They're cooking up pretty fast, so they should be out of the pan any minute now. ]

Technically, I'm a Paladin of Voltron, but I'm not sure that really matters here...

[headinjuries]

They go after a lot of the cosmic-level threats in our corner of the universe. Like...there was something with Annihilus and a bug army that took out the entire Skrull empire and a bunch of Kree territory, but I didn't get a lot of the details on that one. Rocket's not really that into telling the war stories, just making new ones.

[ And...well, he was pretty sure that one was after his father's time in the Nova Corps, but it wasn't like he could just go ask, not anymore. ]

So what's Voltron?

[greentech]

That sounds... strangely familiar, actually. [ Pidge cracks a grin. Even if their only real big threat was the Galra, it's nice to know that somewhere out there there are groups of heroes dealing with similar things. Breeds a bit of good-will on her end.

She tugs the pan off of the heat and quickly gives the mostly solid eggs a quick stir. ]

Voltron? Uh... it's a big, powerful robot. Really advanced technology! It's made out of five smaller robots and I pilot one of them. I'm the Paladin for the Green Lion.

[ Because that makes sense. ]

[headinjuries]

That sounds...super anime.

[ They did that kind of thing a lot in those cartoons, right? Transforming robots, teams always had exactly five people? ]

...not that I really have room to talk or anything.

[ If her life sounds totally anime, his is some unholy combination of pulp sci-fi and telenovela. ]

[greentech]

Uh, I guess? It does feel like something out of a movie sometimes, but... it's real. And there are a lot of people out there that we were going to try and help.

[ Her voice trails off. OK, she can't get homesick for the castle or Voltron or her teammates who aren't here. She's got to pull it together. She heaves a breath and starts scraping the eggs onto a pair of plates. Tortilla-things can get heated up next. ]

I'm supposed to help a bunch of people here, but I feel like I'm letting a lot of other people down. And why do they have to hook our minds together? Can't they just let us work as a team? I mean, sure, we had some weird mental hook-ups when we were trying to work on Voltron, but it wasn't all the time-

[headinjuries]

[ He's not sure if it's just her frustration bleeding over, or the frustration he's been feeling since he got here, or maybe the one is just feeding the other, but whatever it is, it's flaring up on his end, too. Because speaking of letting people down - ]

I know I'm letting people down. I promised my little sister there was totally no way I was going to go into space and not come back, and...here I am.

[ Not after his father already had. His family didn't need to go through that again. ]

[greentech]

[ That sounds far too close to home to Katie. Although in her case, she is the sister who got left behind. She just decided that she was going to do something about her family vanishing into the depths of space. ]

You're not ketting her down. Trust me.

[ Most of her anger was aimed at the military, anyway. ]

She's probably worried, but... I don't think let down is probably the best way to describe it.

[headinjuries]

Yeah, but... [ He shrugs. ] You know how sometimes you get that something is objectively true, but you still can't make yourself feel like it is? Yeah.

[ Okay, the circumstances were far beyond his control, and he knows there's not really anything he could've done to change what happened, but...he promised. ]

Dad going AWOL was bad enough.

[greentech]

[ Well, this went from small-talk about food to discovering some horrifically similar family feelings. She frowns and starts plating their food. Does she open up? Or does she try to keep this to herself? Does she even want to share it? She grits her teeth and then lets the tension out. Or tries. ]

I... know how that feels. That's part of the reason I wanted to get out there.

[ She pauses, feeling awkward. ]

My dad and my brother were both on the same mission and they both disappeared.

[headinjuries]

[ He's got the fridge halfway open again when she says that, and he pauses to glance over his shoulder.

Oh.

Sam's gotten used to the - probably very typically teenage, self-centered - feeling that nobody around him understands how he feels. (To be fair, he hasn't given most people enough information to even have a chance at knowing.)

But she definitely gets it. Losing family. Not knowing where the hell they went. Blasting off into space half-cocked to try and get them back because what else are you supposed to do, just sit there and take it? ]

And once you got out there, you found everything but them, and everything went way out of control, right?

[ Because boy, that part's familiar too, if so.

Finally, he remembers why he opened the fridge again. ]

Oh, uhhhh. Milk or soda? I don't actually know what they're milking for this stuff, if that makes a difference.

[greentech]

[ Sitting around and waiting for someone else to solve a problem for her has never really been her style. She always looked up to her father and she wanted to follow in his footsteps. So the logical thing was to go and find him herself, clearly. ]

Basically.

[ She settles the pan back on the stove. She can clean it later. Or not. Maybe she'll foist the chore off on someone else if she feels like she has something more important to do. ]

Turns out that they needed someone to be a paladin... and that ended up being me. [ A pause. Wow, this conversation is a bit whiplashy. ]

Uh - milk? It can't come from anything too weird, right?

[headinjuries]

I'd kinda hope not, but after I made the mistake of trying whatever passes for hot sauce here...

[ It was not hot sauce. It was definitely not hot sauce.

He pulls a can of soda out of the fridge for himself, and then the jug of milk, and eyes it. ]

It looks okay?

[ But, you know. It doesn't look weird. He doesn't look like someone who's single-handedly wiped out a full Chitauri armada. What it looks like isn't really the part to worry about. ]

[greentech]

If green space goo won't kill me, then neither will space milk.

[ At least she's pretty adventurous. She fishes a glass out of one of the cupboards for herself, along with some utensils for their make-shift dinner. Or is it lunch? She honestly has no idea what time it is. She snags the milk from him and pours herself a glass. Part way through, she pauses and then decides to ask the question that's been bouncing around her head. ]

So - we're... part of the same "brood" or something?

[ She's heard very vague explanations about that. ]

[headinjuries]

[ He's reaching around her to snag a fork and his plate, and getting straight down to business when the question comes, and he starts trying to answer around a mouthful of eggs before he thinks better of it and finishes swallowing. ]

Yeah, uhhh. It's like -

I guess our symbiotes hatched together. So since they're...connected stronger to each other, then we are too? Because of them. So they feel better around each other, and then that kinda leaks over to us, and God it is so weird thinking "this person is important and I should stick with them" before you even get through introductions, but that's...how it works. Apparently.

[greentech]

[ Pidge digs into her own food, leaning against the counter. Don't worry Sam, she's used to living with slightly messy eaters. Hunk's one of her BFFs, after all. She chews, swallows, and considers. ]

That's... different. Once we get back to the station, I'm going to see if I can figure out a way to tap into their mental signals using some good old-fashion human technology. Might make it easier for us to work around them, if we have to.

[ There's a pause and she adds, as a bit of an afterthought. ]

I guess ending up with you as a "broodmate"- [ She makes air quotes with one hand. ] -isn't so bad, though.

[headinjuries]

I'd take you over Parker any day.

[ He's guessing she hasn't met Parker yet, considering how scarce the woman seems to make herself.

Lucky her, really. ]

[greentech]

Who's Parker?

[ Pidge is used to having teammates that you don't exactly get along with, but for all of their bickering, team Voltron tended to be more friendly than not. She might not be ready for Parker, honestly. ]

Is she that hard to get along with?

[headinjuries]

She's also in our brood, but she kind of avoids everybody. I dunno if there's anyone here she doesn't hate.

[greentech]

Wow, she sounds great.

[ Pidge rolls her eyes. ]

There's no point in taking it out on us. Not like we chose this, right?

[headinjuries]

Yeah, isn't misery supposed to love company?

[ Except for the misery that apparently doesn't. ]

[greentech]

In theory. Most of the time, I find that it really hates everyone around it.

[ She... might have some experience with that. Haha. ]

[headinjuries]

[ He makes a noise that's halfway between a snort and a (bitter) laugh. ]

Yeah, okay, that does sound about right.

[ Does he even have friends at school anymore? He's beginning to suspect no, with what a downer he's been to be around lately. ]

[greentech]

OK, maybe "hate" is too strong a word-

[ She waggles her hand as she takes a bite of her eggs and chews. Unlike him, she actually swallows before starting to talk again. ]

But I definitely didn't want to talk to anyone while I was hanging around Garrison. At least not more than I had to.

[headinjuries]

Talking feels pretty pointless when nobody's gonna get it.

[ He hadn't really explained any of his shit to the other Avengers, beyond what Iron Man needed to try and do some searching for him. It didn't seem like it was worth bothering. Either people didn't get it, or they needed him to have it together. ]

[greentech]

Well, I was also supposedly banned from Garrison for life and I was pretending to be someone else.

[ She pauses and a little half smile tugs at her features as she remembers something else. ]

Plus all the guys there just wanted to talk about pizza and girls. Well, one guy in specific, but we were on the same training crew.