station72 | [HATCH LOG] STRAP IN

Entry tags:

[HATCH LOG] STRAP IN

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.))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

Edited 2016-04-16 04:25 (UTC)

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.

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.

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?"

"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?"

The realization that sets in him is unpleasant, though he seems more lost than angered with what he's told. Even knowing that Diana is most likely all right and unharmed, the selfishness of feeling her absence rings louder in his mind, despite the distraction of that weightless pressure calling his attention back to Cathaway.

"She's my sister." The only word that comes close to what he feels. There's a very twisted idea of family here, but. She's his creator, his mentor, his protector. Of course he's attached to her completely.

Was, anyway.

"I need her here. Can't you go get her?"

Cathaway's response is immediate. She shakes her head, no. "We cannot go to your system without endangering it and our position here. You must be content with the thought that she may be safe and sound without you."

Were there more time, she might be gentler about this. But they have a time table weighing on them. Turning on her heel, she motions for him to follow her as she makes her way from the mottle light of the Nesting Deck and up the gentle ramp leading to the Life Support corridor. "We're sorry for it, but trust that in a few hours you will be with others like you. In time that may begin to make up for the loss of her."

But he is not content. He can't be, he refuses, and that transpires immediately through his features and his thoughts, emotions curling tight like his hands into fists. His brows pinch together, his lips press and his breath picks up, a huff of frustration and helplessness. He's almost ready to call Cathaway indignantly, demand she give him more answers, but her urgency silences him and urges him to follow.

"No. That's not going to happen."

He says so after Cathaway claims that anything will make up for the loss of Diana. This one is now determined to be difficult, even if he is cooperating so far. Sorta.

"I'm alone."

She breathes out, a gentle sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "You may feel that way now, but we guarantee you are incorrect. By coming to this place, you are intimately connected by the symbiote in your mind to the others here. Patience. You will see once you reach the planet. Right now your brood is too far away for you to feel or hear, but once you're with them you'll know we are right."

Cathaway's pace is steady as she winds up the ramp and through the Life Support corridor. On either side of them are doorways leading to small rooms furnished a bed, a lamp, a mirror; there are no doors. She bypasses all of them and makes her way toward the doorway at the end of the corridor.

"Do you have any other questions? We have but a short time with you."

There's still a silent anger in his eyes, like this is all her fault. He thinks so only because she's his only target at the moment, but there's really nothing he can or will do about it other than just follow at his own irritated pace.

"So you're just bringing me here and then abandoning me?"

Won't even stay with him long enough to let him get accustomed to her presence. Terrible...

"Hardly." She scoffs it out, shaking her head as they pass through the doorway at the end of the hall. From here their path twists, leading through many seemingly empty corridors and chambers with vaulted ceilings - mottled light - a gentle, pervasive quiet.

"The Prince will take you to the planet and there you'll be with other new hosts under his eye. We must stay here in case other hosts hatch in the interim - you and your partner here are an unexpected surprise; consensus suggests the likelihood of more following you is high and we cannot afford the fuel to take these trips back and forth so often. So you will go be with your brood so that you might learn along with them and then return when your task there is done. Honestly, you will learn more there than you would here."

While they walk, Petre crosses his arms and inches up his shoulders uncomfortably, painting the perfect picture of a sulking child. Which is exactly what he is, and it's a wonder that he's not just lashing out by yelling at his guide and trying to wreck their surroundings like a cat who's just discovered toilet paper.

This is a terrible analogy, but so is he.

"Fine. But what's an interim?"

Asking the important questions: a tale of give him a dictionary.

A hesitation - she tips her face to regard him across her shoulder, then smiles sharply. How funny. He'll be a good match for Ares.

"Interim. It means...the time between two things, we suppose."

Look, she's here to answer the important questions.

"It sounds pointless."

Just like Petre sounds like a brat, as usual.

"Which part? The part where you're leaving this place, or the one where we must stay?"

It's a patient question, asked easily and with very little consideration. Her focus is elsewhere even as she leads him from the life support wing, looping their way through light mottled corridors and broad chambers empty of life and stone still.

... The question is harder, because it supposes that there's choice. He already left one place, and he knows that now he must remain in another one. The absence of Diana hurts all over again, but Petre doesn't know how to interpret it with anything other than irritation.

"I don't know. You tell me. I bet you're all wise and shit."

She makes a low noise of dismissal. She doesn't especially care to assume the answer for him; if he has no desire to interrogate his own statement, then she has no use for it. "We know many things, but it's rude to tell a person what they're thinking. We prefer not to presume."

It's a clipped statement - perhaps not terribly patient, though there's very little edge either. She sweeps forward, lengthening her stride as they wind their way through the corridors. He will keep up if he knows what's good for him.

Keep up he does, apparently unwilling to recognize that he's just a little shit and she's doing all she can to help him and guide him, despite the hurry of their pace. Nothing's every good enough unless it's going his way, and his coming here is decidedly not.

"What else don't you do? Since you can do whatever you want."

"We don't do any number of things. For example, we dislike washing dishes and aren't fond of chess."

'Helping him' is, apparently, a matter of opinion. Certainly, she'll guide him to the hangar deck, bundle him in his necessary equipment, and see him off to Avera 9 but she has no need or desire to seriously answer questions he doesn't genuinely mean. She is a tool here for the use of the young hosts, yes, but that doesn't mean she'll bend over backwards to please him.

Inane comments deserve inane answers.

(no subject)

inflori - 2016-05-08 20:29 (UTC) - Expand

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.

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.

"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.

"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."

"Can I start with, where the fuck are we?" she asks, since this whole deal is literally so alien to her, who never travelled more than a state over. Everything from waking up plugged in to the visuals passing as she hurries to keep her determined stride at pace with Cathaway's, not to mention the promise of the planet.

A fair question. She nods.

"We're on Station Seventy-Two. Currently, it's moored most closely to the universe called Set-Capra-seven-seven-eight-point-five. There are a number of additional qualifiers we could provide you with, but those will be included in your briefing packet. You should have time to review it on the way to the planet, but for now we imagine the details would either be overwhelming or inconsequential to you." Or some combination of the two. Though she does continue to study Jessica for a long beat; if she really want to know the intricate, small scale details she sees no harm in providing them. However, she suspects the more relevant question is how, or why she is here.

"You were brought to this place because you were hunted. Your mind is somehow compatible with the Nest's symbiote, which makes you a target for our enemies."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[HATCH LOG] STRAP IN

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject