[HATCH LOG] STRAP IN

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Station 72 | Avera 9
WHEN: Day :161
SUMMARY: New hosts wake up on the Station. Mom and Dad go to pick them up for the school field trip.
WARNINGS: None; will edit if necessary.

ON AVERA 9: A moment ago, the hosts on Avera 9 might have been aware of a hollow feeling in the back of their minds - a lack of something significant. On day :160, that changes for Adara and Castor broods. An empty, waiting slot is filled. With little warning, Prince and Cathaway announce they are returning to the Station. Even Prince - normally focused and attentive - seems distracted. There are reasons they don't usually leave the Station. This is one of them.

ON STATION 72: On day :161, two hosts wake up in the vaguely claustrophobic chambers of the Nesting Deck. There's a weight on their chests, a sharp tug like some piece of them is being pulled elsewhere - but maybe that's just the tube running from the rear wall of the chamber connected to the base of their skulls. Once disconnected, Jessica and Petre may collect their personal belongings - carefully organized in the cubby at the mouth of the compartment - and then slide feet first out into the Nesting Deck.

They aren't alone. First, there is a sound - a sensation - of something whispering too low to hear. More obviously though, there are two figures - a man and a woman - waiting for them at the center of the polished deck. The woman is easy, gentle through every one of her angles except person her pin straight hair and the piercing too-reflective quality of her gaze; the man is sharp, staunch, and his jaw is set.

Prince and Cathaway will offer answers, but it's clear there's an urgency here. The Prince, at least, seems anxious to hustle Petre and Jessica along to the hangar. The other hosts have been left to their own devices and the Prince has little trust for them. It isn't long before the two new hosts are ushered to the ship and urged to join Prince in returning to Avera 9. Today they'll be left to the tender mercies of Prince's capable but inelegant flying, as it appears Cathaway is opting not to make the trip with them.

"Be well," she tells the new hosts. Far away on Avera 9, the old hosts find her warm milk, honey sweet voice in their heads. It is intimately near, as if she weren't somewhere entirely different:

( Please return to the landing zone at-- [a sensation of time, an implication of navigation and the tilt of the planet and stars rotating overhead that is abstract but nonetheless clear as day]. The Prince brings you new hosts. Please support them. )

When the shuttle drops down again, it is with the expectation that the other Hosts be there to meet them and to take in the new members. --And maybe to get another lecture from The Prince, if the situation calls for it.

---

((OOC: This log will cover both the short time aboard Station 72 for the new Hosts should they chose to use it, as well as their landing on Avera 9, open to all of the Hosts new and old. Consider it a check in before they’re again allowed to go back to their scrounging and stabbing.

For additional hatch information, see the previous hatch log. For general information on Avera 9, see this ooc post.))

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Comments

cathaway | rho-specialized npc (closed to station 72)

[polyphonos]

Today - unlike the last time new hosts hatched here - there is no elaborate hunt to find her. Today, she and the Prince are waiting on the Nesting Deck for the new hosts to wake up.

She feels it when they do - how the air changes, the tenor of the deck shifts. A moment later, the sound of them, of their mind, comes awake. It is loud. Perhaps for someone more intimately tied to the Station, it would be obnoxiously so. But she is as far away from this place as she is present; the noise of young uncoordinated minds is little more than a murmur. A breath against the skin.

"Come along. We have things to do," she calls, like a mother would to a child slow to drag themselves from bed. There is a gentleness to her voice, though it rings clear like a bell - not so different from the faint jingle of the chain and charms at her wrists and middle. There will be questions. She knows this. But they will be inconsequential. Things must move more quickly than usual if they are to keep to the time table demanded of them on Avera 9.

It won't do to linger long.

[inflori]

Petre does play the part of a child well, light blue eyes everywhere, wide and almost animal-like with their curious perceptiveness. He was quick to get ready and he is quick to follow now, and the sluggishness of muscles still waking up is met with the impatience of a racing mind. He feels it, the warm little sensation of something inside his head, something that makes him comfortable with the invasion, not entirely unlike how it felt when he first rose as a demon.

There was someone with him back then, too. A woman who immediately became his guide and protector, who taught him about the hunger and strength he'd inherited. Seeing Cathaway now, though, he misses the parallelism entirely.

"Is she here? Diana? You know who she is, don't you?"

If they saved him, surely they saved her as well. That's how it works in his mind.

[polyphonos]

The tang of the line drawn between them rings with something festering - a low, dark flickering urge. He feels like ink, like the rot under a turned rock. She ignores it easily enough, or at least bypasses the immediate flicker of revulsion with care. He is not the first young host to feel similar. She doubts he will be the last.

He asks a delicate question. Cathaway gives him a consoling smile. She is warmth and dappled sunlight, a cool turn of air through an open window. "Today it's just the two of you. We're afraid we know of no Diana on the Station or on the planet below. You will have to manage without her whoever she is."

She doubts it's the answer he expects or wants, but it's the true one.

[inflori]

Her presence is such a natural, pure comfort, that for a moment, Petre looks genuinely confused. Let him watch his world fall apart, bring him to the middle of nowhere in space and then witness the first instance of perplexity at a pleasant buzz in his limbs, like now is when he finally woke up for the first time. That's what makes him frown and look at his hands, then around. Not unlike someone experiencing an entirely new kind of high, however subdued it is.

When his attention returns to her, the link of their conversation reestablished, he is just as out of tune with the reality of what he's been told as one would expect. He is but a child and Diana is his world. Not just what he knows, but what matters.

"... But. Then. Where is she?"

Denial, of course. She can't be dead. Just misplaced, is all.

"Someone else got to her?"

[polyphonos]

"She is wherever you came from." It is an unsatisfying kind of thing to tell a young host. Cathaway understands this. The question is - to elaborate and potentially plant some seems of uneasiness in him, or to simply let it lay? After a flickering moment of study, she opts for the former. Better to be forthright. Consensus demands answers; almost no one would let such a feeble explanation sit.

"There was a force - a creature or a person, perhaps - which chased you here. Unless you saw your Diana come between you and it, we suspect is is likely she is perfectly fine. Once you've left the system, the enemy pursuing you has no reason to be there."

Cathaway fixes her attention on him. It feels pointed - something narrow set against tender skin, without the weight to cut. "Is she a friend to you?"

[ex_rate800]

Waking up with all her injuries gone and a blank space in her memory isn't new to Jessica, but feeling safe, under any circumstances? Kind of is. Of course, part of that soothing feeling of everything being okay means she doesn't really have the capacity to panic about everything feeling okay, but she's still surprised.

The paranoia starts to trickle in about the time she's collecting her stuff. It doesn't horse-kick her in the chest, though, until she slides down a ladder so fast it makes her palms raw, and realizes the muffled sound of people talking in another room isn't actually getting any closer. That all this foreign acceptance-safety-curiosity-joy is in her head. She goes cold with the fear of it, blue-black ice dropping through the bottom of her stomach as her mind immediately rebels, scrabbled to NO and AWAY, desperate claws of a trapped animal on smooth-slick glass, trying to find a weakness or a way out. Panic like a siren, and underneath it all, dull resignation, that tar-black current encouraging her to stop struggling, give in.

She pulls herself under control with effort, aided by the swamping sensation of peace that doesn't belong to her but she can't fight. Her fingers tremble anyway. It takes long minutes for her to remember her body and the fact that she can move of her own volition.

That's when she finally sees she isn't alone. The sight of Cathaway is more relieving to her than Prince; that neither of them are Kilgrave (dead, he's dead, I killed him) is also reassuring, though not enough to totally allay her wariness. She'd agreed to come, she has to remind herself. Whatever fucked up shit happens next would be worth it to spare the people back home.

Jessica exhales so hard it catches and lifts her dark hair, glares arms-folded across at the two people, trying desperately for control through obstinacy. "'Come along'? Seriously? Just how old do you think I am, lady?" And she waits a moment, not caring if it's rude, exercising her choice of refusal just to remind herself it's there, before she finally starts to move again.

[polyphonos]

Had they met differently - had their been the luxury of time and easiness as with the last clutch of hatchlings -, that might have been the kind of thing to make her laugh: bright and barking, a ringing note bouncing off the irregular walls of the Nesting Deck, filtering to the light soaking down through the top of the chamber. Today, Cathaway doesn't laugh. She merely fixes the woman with an expectant, piercing look. There's something strange in her eyes, a light too easily reflected; she doesn't blink as often as maybe she should.

"Old enough to know when it's important to do what you're told. Do you have all your things? The ship is waiting and your brood will be expecting you."

Pleasantries can be traded on the move.

[ex_rate800]

"I've got everything," Jessica says, or at least, she'd mindlessly shoved all her stuff back in her pockets, and anything else on the table with it. Probably if she leaves behind a stick of gum or a crumpled dollar she won't miss it much.

It still sounds like her mom — "Hurry up and get in the car, Jessica. Do you have your pillow?" — that she's a little resentful, but what is she gonna do, turn around and go plug herself back in? No. Okay. "Let's go," she agrees. Who needs pleasantries anyway? Not a lot about this is pleasant.

[polyphonos]

"Good. We won't return here for some time."

She turns on her heel with an easy swing of her shoulders and the rasp of those fine gold chains at her waist, wound down her arms and anchored at her wrists. The myriad of small charms hanging from them jingle faintly, a chime to punctuate the clack of her heels on the nesting deck's smooth polished floor. The sound echoes, large in the chamber, as Cathaway leads the way to the doorway, the ramp and the life support wing beyond it.

"When you're down on the planet, it would benefit to be mindful of others. Lean heavily on your brood; they'll teach you what we don't have the luxury of time to." A verbal pause, a beat; Cathaway tips her face to her, the sheet of her pin-straight grey hair falling across her shoulder. "There's little time, but if you have specific questions we will do our best to answer them before you go."

Prince | Iota-Specialized NPC - Planetside

[regalled]

[The trip down to the planet is not as smooth as the previous, although the new hosts would have nothing to compare it to, and honestly it isn't rough so much as it is without the elegance with which Cathaway pilots.

When it drops down into the same valley, Prince, who is more taciturn than usual -tight-jawed and stormy-browed- unclips himself from his harness and moves down the back of the ship and down the ramp out into the sodden earth of Avera 9.

If you're new, and want to know more about the equipment he'd given you before you boarded, you can find him poking around the shuttle's exterior, checking for damage, going through the check-list with a stubborn dedication to proper maintenance.

If you are not new, you can still find him, although depending on who you are he may have a less than warm welcome for you. He's still the only person on the planet who might be able to answer your questions without trying to stab you.]

[narcissithstic]

Where is she.

[The demand is as unappealing as Kylo Ren's presence, but (like the latter) Prince is apparently forced to suffer both. Ren's kept the bike wrenched from his companion's grips; it's granted him the means to travel great distances with little time or effort, and at a time like this when he's unsure how long Prince will remain planetside, a gift.

And a curse for everyone else, really.]

[regalled]

[It's not as if Kylo Ren could sneak up on him. Few could, and it was even harder for Hosts. For a Host like him, so tumultuous, it was at the moment nearly impossible.

Still, Prince doesn't turn to aknowledge his presence- or the threat that he always carried with him- even when he speaks. It is uncommonly rude, but though he does not know every detail of what has occurred in the time since he and Cathaway had left Avera 9, he knows enough.]

She has remained on the station. It is not unusual. [It was far more uncommon for them to leave at all, nearly unheard of for them to leave together without having another to watch the station in their stead, but it had seemed worth it, at the time. The awakening of the new Hosts had proved it a foolish choice.]

What is it that you need? [And with that he actually does turn his face towards him, hands still inside a matinence panel on the side of the ship, expression admirably blank all that his motions were short and sharp.]

[narcissithstic]

Nothing you can give me. [As linked as they are, Prince and Cathaway are as different as night and day: seeking either advice or favor from Prince would be beyond undesirable in Ren's eyes.]

When will she return?

[Soon, he hopes; he cannot tolerate current company for much longer.]

[regalled]

Then it is nothing you truly need.

[The response is without pause or hesitation. No real consideration given to Ren or his childish demands.

He frowns at the panel, flipping a switch once, twice, frowning slightly at a fault- real or perceived.]

And she won't be returning to Avera 9.

[They should have never left the station unattended, and if one of them was to stay she was the obvious choice, her bond to it was far stronger than his.]

Is that all?

[ex_rate800]

[ After the initial shock of realizing she's now a goddamn astronaut fades, Jessica finds she enjoys being flown over the planet, half her face leant up against a window, ignoring both Petre and Prince as she takes in the vast expanse below. Once they land, however, she realizes she's not ready to meet up with the people she's going to share a headspace with, and instead follows Prince around to the back of the ship. ]

Need a hand?

[ Not that she has any idea what she's doing, but she's a fast learner and wants an excuse to be here that doesn't involve talking. ]

[regalled]

[The new Hosts had been an unexpected event- surprising both him and Cathaway, and their arrival had been a difficulty in itself for the very fact that they came when both of them were off the station entirely. The fact they had awoken to fewer hosts was not unusual though. The first batch was always the most unlucky in that way, to have so many around them just as confused. A sharp and abrupt shift in their reality that no underlying sense of rightness could entirely fix. So maybe these two were fortunate, even if they were given little time to adjust before they were asked to leave the station.

The truth is that these newest Hosts are garnering very little of his attention at the moment, the brusqueness of his motions and the stubborn silence he was radiating was not caused by their unexpected arrival but instead by the other Hosts, the trouble they had managed to find even in the short time that he and Cathaway had been away. It's enough to sour his mood but not enough to have him ignore her or her offer. His hands curl back from the panel he was inspecting even as he turns his head to face her, the serious set of his expression easing somewhat, with effort.]

You are familiar with this machine?

[It's a genuine question- without barb or challenge to the tone. Some were, at times.]

[ex_rate800]

Nope.

[ A shrug, hands stuffed into the pockets of her jacket, fingers fiddling with a coin. The most she knows about shit like this is that she doesn't need a jack to change a tire. Not that she owns a car. ]

[regalled]

I see.

[He glances away for a moment, in the direction of the town and, in turn, in the direction of the others. There was little she could actually do to assist him, in truth. Most of what he did was merely routine, not difficult or terribly important with a ship this well maintained and infrequently used. She would be more useful, and would no doubt find more use in getting to know the others, in learning how to exist somewhere other than where she was from.

But there is no harm in it and no call to be rude.]

Then it will be a learning experience. Here- [He steps sideways slightly to allow her access to the panel, a metal sheet that has pulled away to reveal a long line of wires running horizontally, each one with a small connector near the center and an equally small switch.]

Every switch should show blue. If one shows red it means that there has been some failure in the electrical system and the power has been re-routed to the next available. In that case we will need to find the origin of the failure and see if it can be repaired.

[A failure was for all intents and purposes meaningless. There were so many redundancies in the system that unless you were tremendously lucky or foolish you would never find yourself without a single working bypass. The attention he payed to it was simply his nature, as exhausting as that could be to the people around him.]

jessica jones / castor brood / OTA.

[ex_rate800]

— NEWLY ARRIVED.

Despite a rocky awakening, Jessica has managed to calm herself by the time she finally ventures out into Avera 9 to meet some other "hosts". After hiding at the back of the ship like a kid nervous about her first day at school, that is. Now that they're close, though, she can feel the pull, the sudden bursts of sound and sensation. She mostly expected the others to be like Cathaway, experienced and distant, so she's surprised to find how much emotion she's picking up.

For her part, Jessica is noisy with irritability and restlessness, especially when it's been who-knows-how-long since she last had a drink, the thirst in her wanting more than simple hydration. There's a finger or two still left in her hipflask, but she's saving it for when the shakes come on. Even if a kick of boozy warmth would be welcome right now, a miserable misty drizzle flattening her dark hair and trickling down the back of her scarf to run icy fingers down her spine. Gotta be a bar 'round here somewhere, right?


— SPACEPORT: MINTE'S PARLOR

And of course, there is. For those who don't or won't introduce themselves at arrival time, it's easy to run into Jessica knocking back some space-booze. She's bought a full bottle of the closest thing to whiskey she could find, and is drinking it neat, barely conceding to pour it into her glass between each hot, caramel mouthful.

Her constitution is such that this isn't really enough to get her drunk, which is probably good for everyone who has to share a brain with her. Her control is already awful: she's a violent cycle of bursts of feeling stomped down into diamond rage, paranoia and PTSD, recitations of lists of streets in a desperate attempt at self-mastery, and beyond anything else a kind of selfishness, that doesn't want to deal with anyone else's feelings even as her own are writ large.

Come say hi!

DAY 161

[erbier]

[ Ilde's encampment had not been far from the landsite. Perhaps an amount of intuition that she would need to be close by... She doesn't question such things. She came from a world of magic, not science, and though there is some element of the latter in all her Hive does, she doesn't think of it that way. And won't, no matter how many times it is explained to her.

She feels the webbing of her brood keenly, and something that once had been missing now drew closer. It is something far beyond a duty to go greet the new member awakened.

Ilde is a slight girl of twenty in a mud-spattered uniform of charcoal grey. Her blonde hair is a frizzy wild mess from the rain, but even beneath it it is clear that she is pretty, with a rarely offered crooked smile. She approaches Jessica was a quiet kind of patience, aware of the pain that rattles around inside her at this moment, but politely ignoring it. ]

Hello, there.

[ex_rate800]

[ It reminds her of when she'd been job searching, endless interviews, shitty work. It's not the same at all, but it pulls in her stomach the same way, makes her stand straighter to hide her unsurety.

Except she can't hide anything anymore.

Still. There's an unfamiliar side to the coin, a sensation she's only ever felt in painful, painful memories. Belonging. It terrifies her even as she longs for it. ]

Hi.

[ Flat, but not wary. She isn't self-aware enough to recognize that she'll always be warmer to bedraggled young blonde women, after Hope.

An awkward bite of silence. ]

This is all. Kinda fucked.

[erbier]

[ She doesn't entirely understand that turn of phrase on her own, but the consensus of the Hive fills her in on the idea of it. Crude. But in a moment like this, understandable. ]

It is difficult to acclimate. There is no hurry.

[ In a way, the two who had awoken were lucky. They only had to hear each other's screaming thoughts, it had been quite overwhelming when the larger group had awoken as one... It had been so loud Ilde had truly thought she would lose her mind until Cathaway had helped to center her. ]

My name is Ilde.

MINTE'S PARLOR

[decommission]

Too far out of town to approach her earlier in the day (and with a bad mood no one new needs to catch), he doesn't follow the thread of their connection until later that night. It's closer this time, just over in the bar at Minte's, basically below the room he's now sharing with Aoba.

The young man that comes over to sit next to her at the bar isn't much to look at, thin and short with faded dark circles under his eyes. The link between them is more remarkable - a clear, solid thing. Steve doesn't project anything as strong as her unshielded bursts of emotion. Instead, his end of their thread is more an anchor, one humming with curiosity.

"Anyone tell you to steer clear of Tari Town yet?"

She might notice a few alien heads turn their way, giving wary looks before going back to their own drinking.

[ex_rate800]

Much as she hates feeling pinned open all exposed, it's nice to be able to feel another person coming, know who they are in relation to her before they even exchange a word. Unlike with Ilde, Steve's reception garners more wariness. "Nobody yet."

Hypocritically, she itches to use the link, peer through it like a keyhole, break in and rifle through her broodmates' shit. Find out who she's had her lot thrown in with. What stops her isn't morality or self control, really. Not when she's never hesitated to get nosy for a job. It's the disgusting thought that Kilgrave would invade people's heads with that same sense of entitlement that has her reining in what she can control.

"Why?" she asks aloud instead, because she loves her some off-limits places, but she doesn't want to go picnic in Chernobyl or whatever.

[decommission]

He rests his hands on his lap, and when the bartender gives him the sort of look that says pay for something or move, Steve points to a hologram of something in a tall can.

"It's another trading town. We had trouble with a merchant and now they don't want us back there." He frowns at the aluminum can dropped in front of him by the bartender, both hands wrapping around it.

"If folks start looking at you funny, that's probably why." His mouth twists downward on one side. This 'crew' has become kind of infamous in the past few days. She ought to know what she's walking into, especially when a lot of the traders aren't looking too kindly on them.

A beat, and then he extends a hand in her direction. "I'm Steve, by the way."

Bringer of doom and gloom today, apparently.