station72 | [hatch log] into the garbage chute, flyboy(s)

Entry tags:

[hatch log] into the garbage chute, flyboy(s)

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: The Station + Concordia
WHEN: DAY :43 - :44
SUMMARY: New hosts hatch on the Station; their arrival on Concordia is bumpier and smellier than usual.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

YOU WAKE UP and nothing will ever be the same again. A moment ago you were somewhere familiar - or familiar enough; now you're lying in a small faintly hexagonal chamber lit by a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. You can't shake the sensation that you've been asleep for a long, long time.

The sluggishness of coming out of a deep, dreamless sleep persists all the way until you disconnect the tube running from the compartment's rear wall to the base of your neck. Then things get loud. A wave of emotion fills the void. Fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety; maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. Somewhere, someone else is feeding their thoughts and emotions into your mind. On the plus side, it's easy to follow that digging, familiar sensation to each other. After all, you're part of the same brood. You belong together.

Welcome to Station 72. Sirius and Kavinsky will have one day aboard the Station to acclimate to their new reality before they're whisked away to Concordia to join the rest of the young hosts. Get to know one another, ask some burning questions; in a day's time you'll be boarding a shuttle and going somewhere far, far away.

MEANWHILE IN CONCORDIA, the host's espionage efforts are coming to a head. Preparations for infiltrating Public Security HQ are in full swing, a handful of hosts are planning to get in close with Representative Goram Saffit himself and there's currently a semi-functional android taking up one of the beds of the Bearings apartment block. Honestly, there's more than enough on everyone's plate without piling new hosts on top of it all. But that doesn't stop Nirad from disappearing when he's called to return to the Station. Presumably, this means everyone better get ready to debrief some new arrivals soon...

     ON THE STATION, there's a hum in the air - or the mind, rather. Follow the buzz and it'll lead to the Hangar Deck where a slick brick-shaped black transport is waiting. The source of the mental hum seems to be a young man: Nirad has come to collect you. He'll answer any questions; in fact, he seems happy to talk and length about absolutely anything. The boy's apparently the rambling type with little to no filter between his brain and his mouth. The combination of talking and mental hum can be disorienting. Once safely aboard the transport, the ship’s landing platform descends through the floor of the hangar. It snaps into place in the airlock. For a moment there’s a beat of perfect stillness, a shiver of anticipation. Then the transport is flung through the shaft and 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, the rest of your brood is waiting for you.

     A BUMPY LANDING
The stealth ship slices down toward the planet until it fills the entire viewscreen. "All right, everyone out," Nirad announces, unbuckling his harness and jumping to his feet. Uh. What?

He leads to the port side of the transport ship where there's a small series of circular ports. They're roughly shoulder width. At a touch of a button, the ports open out to a series of escape pods. There's only enough room for one and it looks like you'll be lying on your back the whole trip. "Hop in. I'll launch you and then follow you down in my own. The pod's stealth tech should keep you invisible to the locals until someone comes to find it, but don't forget to scrap the pod when you're out of it. We can't risk someone finding it laying around." A pause. "Sorry, by the way. Usually we'd just land the ship but it's getting kind of obvious."

Hopefully you weren't expecting a nice, easy trip down to the planet because this is dark and joyless. The escape pod has no windows. It launches from the transport ship and rockets downward at the behest of the planet's gravity. Everything shakes. It's desperately cold, then violently hot and then-- something gives. The sound of something whistling. A jerk. The escape pod trembles as the anti-grav jets at the base deploy. It's a last attempt to soften the landing, then the pod drives down into a mountain of debris like a tent stake into muddy earth.

Congratulations, you've landed more or less safely in Concordia's only open air landfill.

     SEARCH & RESCUE
It's three in the morning and maybe you're asleep in Bearings or maybe you're burning the midnight oil; either way, Carata is in your mind telling you to get up and get ready. "The new hosts have landed. Let's go pick them up, shall we? If I were were, I'd wear some clothes you don't really care for."

Time to go digging through the city's biggest ~~dumpster~~ transfer facility!

The escape pods will have to be unearthed and opened from the outside to rescue their inhabitants. Once free, be sure to dismantle pods and scatter them through the piles of debris. Eventually all of this will be recycled, but we don't want anyone finding mysterious alien technology in one piece now do we?

((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. Any threads on Concordia can be open to both new and old hosts!

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 )

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[Part of it could be that someone like Kavinsky wouldn't mind meeting an all-knowing seer if only to prove them wrong. The faculty at Aglionby were fond of forcing philosophy upon their students to the point even Kavinsky couldn't escape every related lesson taught. There were theories of a thousand possible futures or universes-- what if the coin you flipped had come up heads?

When he enters a dream, he may as well be doing that. Turning the coin himself. The future writhes in his grasp.

He scrolls back up, re-reading a part of the debriefing that he'd only skimmed the first time.]

Cool. Last question-- is this like lone wolf Noah's Ark or can we swing back by where I come from and get someone?

[Does he have to dream a whole new Prokopenko?

A whole new Lynch?

What if he didn't bother with either and just made new friends? He's already fond of Sirius.]

[Surprisingly, for Kavinsky, violence is not always the solution. It is not even-- always-- the second solution, should the first one not go as calculated. There are certain people worth picking a fight with, but many are subdued more easily by other measures.

This grim little shit is no different.

He offers him his middle finger and a slight lift of his upper lip.]

Please go jerk off alone then wait for my call.

[Is Sirius swimming through his memories, a flying fish that has to break the surface once in a while to travel? He's picking up bits and pieces, but not the whole story. That's his fault. He hasn't given in enough for them to share as much as they need to. Thank God that Kavinsky's figured out what they ought to do and left his door wide, wide open. Propped there with a bunch of textbooks he never deigned good enough to read.]

Whoa. No. I was high, but I was awake.

[Then, he's doubtful. He might've been dreaming, though normally dreams are under his control. He issues both the supply and the demand. Was he asleep? Would Sirius know better than he, an outside observer combing through his mind? Kavinsky's plenty sure he was awake for the event, if sincerely out of it.

No, he must've been awake. He definitely stuffed Lynch's brother into his trunk.

Backseat? No, trunk.

It's a fuzzy memory when it comes to details.

He lets Sirius know he likes the way he stares. Seems like he's finally ready to start dismantling something.]

Outer space. I was trained to fly spacecraft.

[There's a small note of pride there, for once.]

Always thought I was decent with it.

It isn't.

[It will never be. Not unless it can be removed, and a real prosthetic put in place. That denial is firm, unyielding.]

Let's just focus on getting this job done, all right?

A last answer: it's possible, but likely lethal. If you want to return to your system, you must go alone and not expect to return. Opening this place up to your universe again could endanger the Station. It's very possible it'd be too dangerous to fetch you from it.

[The unspoken implication, the feeling that hums along the link between them, is that going back where he came from is tantamount to suicide. Something deadly had found him there once. If he goes back, it will probably find him again.]

[Merlin, is what he thinks at that number. Two hundred, perhaps more or perhaps a bit less but all the same, still two hundred. Not unfathomable if you're counting stones in a wall, more difficult if you're tallying up plimpies in a tank. Nearly unimaginable if you're thinking of other people--and that's if you've been a free man for the last twelve years; a man in isolation finds two hundred people to be a bloody lot--and that's if you can wrap your head around what she means, properly, because it's not two hundred other people stood next to you on a train platform or at a quidditch match or in a park, but two hundred other people, consciousness, two hundred lines of connection snapping at your attention. Remnants. The dead? The sleeping? The obsolete? It hardly matters. It's still part of that two hundred.

Merlin. And, then, No wonder she's mental, by which he means eerily serene. Dim glimmer of humour.

To cope, he looks past her. But there's nothing and no one to look at, and his attention snaps back on her a moment later.]

So out there, somewhere--there's a hundred and ninety-eight for us. Give or take.

Edited (to finish my thought is good) 2016-10-26 21:34 (UTC)

But there was a dragon.

[Dragon, rendered grossly. He ignores the warm bloom of appreciation he gets back from Kavinsky but goes on staring, trying to pick this all apart. Dragon.]

You haven't got dragons.

[But Sirius has, and that was like no dragon he's ever seen before. Familiarity with the species does a kind of mental edit, repairs flesh to bones, strips back on coils of muscle. More noble than rotting. More deadly than disgusting. It drifts him a little into Kavinsky's head--thoughts, consciousness, whatever, like stepping foot over a threshold. He snaps himself back when he realises, and his eyes return to grimmer focus.]

You want me to see all of this?

Yeah?

[Outer space, that's films and muggles and, more familiarly, astronomy, standing out on a tower in the dead autumn chill. Star charts. His own name. It's the pride and the flying he can cleave to, the easiest since--

Well. Kavinsky.]

So you're familiar with all this, then. Getting dropped down onto planets, in pods.

Yeah.

[He smiles faintly, a real, albeit small one. Thinking back to when space was... it was some big, amazing mystery. And not reality.]

[A shrug.] Dropped onto planets more than pods. Usually it was in a different kind of craft.

[ He grins, barely controlling the impulse to reach for that finger and bend it on itself. ]

Nicer.

[Kavinsky's body language is an easy read, a simple shrug, a leaning back onto his heels. If Tinman refuses to accept the coolest part about him, that's his business. Far be it for Kavinsky to make a fuss.]

My bad. Go ahead.

Easier landing, I'd bet.

[Or, like. A landing, and not the crash sort.]

I'd say you should suggest the idea of easier landings to someone, but I don't know whose ear to get on that one. Or if it would matter.

[Once more, he's alone, and Kavinsky can easily compare it to leaving Jersey for Virginia. In that venture, he'd had his mom, but what good was she? Most days she was practically dead to the world, a combination effect of her own bad habits and Kavinsky easing her along to a nightly coma. The only reason he stayed with her was the ease of living out of a nice house instead of one of Aliongby's dorm rooms.

The station already has more going for it than Kavinsky's old life. He can't say he's leaving behind anything he'll miss to the point of tears or outside of the occasional, nostalgic pang.]

I'll stick it out here.

I've got swarms, but they were all up here before that guy showed up.

[Up here-- in his mind. Kavinsky dreams of all sorts of monsters, those that wear human skins and those that slither on scaled bellies. Sometimes he's a mere observer and sometimes he's their master, but the dragon Sirius refers to was neither. Kavinsky's dragon wouldn't have so much of its flesh sloughing off and it wouldn't hesitate so long before turning on him.]

You can see it all, man. All you have to do is ask. And you can show me, too. What kind of dragons you got.

[Kavinsky's reaching out again, hands at his sides, but the rest of him cloying and wide in presence.]

[Kavinsky's quick enough he might have saved the finger in time. Escaping any further assault, however, would be up to further debate.]

Now you're taking advantage of my good nature.

[A single please is about as nice as he gets, along with the offer of a free good time that the other boy seems to have already taken him up on.]

Some days.

[Like when no one was shooting them. Or at them. Or they were making a crash landing because of some malfunction or--]

We had an actual transport when they brought me in. I wonder why things changed for you.

All right. Head's up.

[Because the city's hand-iest welder is going back to work. Ducking his head and putting all his attention into what he's doing, instead of the previous conversation.]

Take is likely the operative word, but yes. There were at least at one point that many individuals paired with a symbiote who grew close enough to the Nest that they're part of this consciousness. [Whether they exist now as anything but fragments, as some piece of a conglomerate whole as opposed to possessing their own physical shells is the question. But a large one; it's too big for even her to know, so perhaps it's best not to dwell on it. Not now, anyway. Not on his very first day.

So instead, Cathaway sets aside the datapad she'd been reading through uncurls her legs, stretching them out before her. There's a small, very human pop to her ankle joints when she does but either she's used to the discomfort or simply doesn't perceive it.]

Now. What other questions should we answer for you?

[He must have some. The statistical average is three.]

Edited 2016-10-29 19:21 (UTC)

[There's a sensation of approval that touches the air like the scent of ozone preceding rain before she nods. Good.]

That's very practical of you.

[She motions to the tablet then, reaching as if to take it back.] May we? Just for a second.

[ Hmm but thinking about eating that finger later though, that would be delicious. ]

Yeah, so?

[ Eat me

badum tsh ]

[ Sam does have a pretty good idea; he spends enough time in space, so after eyeing his end for a moment and guessing about where the CPU ought to be, he aims his first swing for that spot.

It does feel kind of good, to just hit something. Throwing around gravimetric energy and all the superhero stuff is one thing, but firing at range doesn't have the same sense of catharsis that hitting stuff does. And given that he hasn't been able to just take off to space for a few hours whenever he needs to find his center, because of all this low profile stuff -

- well, that next swing comes with all the force of someone who's got a few things to work out behind it. ]

You know about that kind of stuff?

[ He's not sure any of them are exactly demolitions experts, when he thinks about it.

Then again, he wouldn't have guessed Bruce was some kind of Wall Street ninja from the first things he'd seen of him, so really, who knows what this excuse for a team is capable of. ]

Right now, a lot of planning to break and enter in government offices.

[ Aren't they busy little bees.

Wait, maybe he should qualify that. ]

- in our defense, the government is covering something up.

[ Sirius finally goes still, and there's the expectation of reprieve. A break in the tension, the sense of having won, of having gained some sliver of control. What should be relief is replaced by thoughts, one on top of the other, mundane glimpses of gardens and clouds and the moon — and there's a flinch of fear, quick as the image, feeding back into the noise — and it's all fractured by violence, by Peter. Even if he wanted to kill Sirius, he'd be hard pressed to manage it now. There's a headache knocking at the back of his skull, and his own thoughts are difficult to grasp amidst the white noise; harder still to resolve into action.

The wand in his off hand isn't Sirius'. It's foreign, obviously stolen. Remus pockets it after giving it a critical glance, keeps his own wand at the ready. And while this isn't relief, exactly, it is less than before: less immediate threat. Enough time for awareness to trickle back in, small details like the fact that they're in the common room, and he's just incapacitated Sirius, and someone could walk in at any moment.

When he reaches out, it's half by accident. It's the impulsive flash of regret, that hapless urge to pass the blame and let someone else clean up his mess. The connection answers before he can think to take it back, filling the gaps left by indecision and frustration — it finds Mara, tracking her down by the impressions of her authority and control. Once it's there, Remus doesn't shy away from it. His mind briefly strays from the flood of memory spilling from Sirius', but the first attempt to pull up his walls frays quickly. The second time's better, backed by irritation and anger, all of it seeping into the connection with Mara as he tries to divert his focus. ]

[Mara is always quick when summoned. She's spent years, decades of her life prepared to go into battle at a moment's notice, and it's not a habit that dies easy. She arrives quickly, silently, expression serious. There's a silver tube in her hand, and she brandishes it as confidently as any wand.]

[She sees Remus, feels the state he's in, and decides quickly to take control. Whatever this is, it's fatigued him. An urge within her, one she's slow to admit but slower to curb, rises up to protect her brood at all costs, protect everyone, keep them safe and never lose them. It drives her now.]

[She looks down at... is that the corpse from earlier? She toes his shoulder with her boot.] We have to stop meeting like this.

[She turns to Remus.] This is your Sith?

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[hatch log] into the garbage chute, flyboy(s)

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i was gonna say sorry i'm so slow but u know me so. NO SURPRISE

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