[hatch log] a lonely, distant place

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: Closed to Misato, Beth, Seviilia, Shepard & NPCs
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY :045
SUMMARY: Somewhere far away from Concordia, new minds gain awareness.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary.

YOU WAKE UP and the person you were a moment ago is gone. --No. Not a moment. It's been a while, hasn't it? Something feels off - a combination of the strange and familiar right there in your own head. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye, but it’s impossible to tell exactly how long or how exactly you escaped the danger that had been breathing down your neck.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small faintly hexagonal chamber, a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been briefly calmed. There's something strangely peaceful about waking up here and that feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But when you disconnect the tube things get loud and a wave of emotion fills that peaceful 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. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party behind a closed door.

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. Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone - and that those sounds in your head are louder. For two of you, the sense of familiarity runs so deep between you it might as well be cellular; one of you doesn’t share their connection, but you still feel like you know them somehow.

Welcome to Station 72. It’s quiet, still. Beyond the Nesting Deck in Life Support, there are a series of small personal rooms, all of them without doors. Some of them have personal belongings and a sense of life, but all of them are empty and it’s unclear how long they’ve sat that way. The only thing that’s obvious is that people are missing. For the time being, you’re alone with whatever (or whoever) has been left behind.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for the new hosts. You’re welcome to make your own logs separate to this for your time on the Station, but please be aware that until the current mission ends that you’ll be unable to play with older hosts currently away on Concordia.


Additionally, you can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. If you have any questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[wille]

[ Misato catches the shirt easily with a truncated thanks! and slips it over her head in a practiced motion. ]

You know, the creepy part is how well this fits me.

[ This being the shirt, for one, but also this being the compartment and this place and by extension this entire predicament. The palpable sense of loss is much keener here, the heart that keeps aching for another, it's all familiar but sharper. She doesn't who it is she's pining for (not Kaji, his place is locked away, bolted shut) but she misses them dearly. A sigh, before she slips both feet over the ladder and hops down to land with confidence, even if lacking in grace.

Who is she then? Her hand wraps about the silver cross that hangs about her neck like affirmation, eyes studying Seviilia. ]

Katsuragi Misato. Misato's fine. [ A friendly enough smile. ] You?

[miscreant]

Then I take it you do not belong here either.

[Good. Its not exactly a comfort, but its something -- a potential ally, if things got ugly. Maybe.

She takes a moment to step back, glad for it when Misato chooses to jump the distance rather than climb. The other woman isn't nearly as sluggish as she had been, and it causes her to knit her brows. How badly had the Legion injured her to knock her harder on her butt than it had knocked this human?

She doesn't linger on the thought for too long. The smile doesn't seem to endear her, and the thoughts of loss are forcefully pressed away from the inner parts of her thoughts.]

Seviilia.

[wille]

[ She lets out a noncommittal hum that could mean either a yes or a no, leaning her weight on one leg and absently scratching at a rough patch of skin on her elbow.

All this to distract from her focus on threading through the decidedly unappealing soup of raw thoughts between them. The loss clamped away by mutual agreement, the consternation that comes from comparison, suspicion still serving as the bedrock to everything. It's unnerving, strange and downright frightening for her, but fear has never stopped her from venturing forward. This time she extends the thick and dull sense of inebriation, guessing that the initial headache came from her and offering numbness, if not healing, as a peace offering of sorts.

But the exercise comes with a backlash, a sudden rush of nausea that has her mentally drawing back, physically raising both arms in the air for a big stretch while letting out a loud yawn without the decency to cover her mouth. ]

I feel like I slept for years. [ Eyes back on Seviilia. ] Not to be rude but, what are you?

[miscreant]

Perhaps you did. Measure of time hardly exists in slumber, no?

[It'd been a few years since she truly slept, but observation had reminded her enough about the process, reinforced by recent experience. Perhaps she should be more concerned about it.

The question amuses her, enough to release a small chuckle in spite of the shared feeling of nausea. Body-based discomfort what an every day affair for a death knight, after all.]

Come now. Have you never encountered the undead before?

[She doesn't even think that she might be asking about her ears -- it was hard to identify with elven kind much, these days.]

[wille]

[ Misato doesn't respond to her quip about the passage of time during slumber. She can't say much about that. Sleep is exhausting, frightening, and whatever she woke up from was somehow peaceful. Like emerging from a mother's womb.

Childlike, she tips her head to one side in question. Her attention is sharp and overbearing, like a hundred giant spotlights all pointed now to Seviilia and her glowing eyes and skin as pale as a corpse. She has seen and heard enough incredulous truths in her life to dismiss someone handing it to her on a platter. Undead, is it? ]

Where I come from, the dead tends to stay that way.

[ For all her previous attempt at playing cheerful, her tone is distinctly bitter. She can barely hold back the grief, cold and sharp like a knife dancing in one's gut. ]

How did you die?

[miscreant]

Is that so?

[She senses that bitterness -- a mortal couldn't possibly understand the struggle of the dead, and Seviilia frowns noticeably for it. Does she seek to mock? Does her ignorance truly run so deep?]

That is how it should be.

[The question brings forth one of the only memories Seviilia has of her living self -- its a subconscious thought, brief, fleeting, but no less horrible. A sensation of fear and utter horror, a pack of undead creatures made of nothing but sewn skin, collapsing and tearing with claws too sharp to be humanoid, disease ravaging the body instantly. Blood soaking the ground, the smell of decaying flesh so thick it threatens to--

Its pushed to the side in favor of answering the question verbally. She had no real intention of recounting her death for the other woman -- its a more personal memory, for what little context she has for it.]

Messily.

[wille]

[ Misato holds little respect for the dead because dying absolves no one of their sins, and she dismisses martyrdom as the greatest act of cowardice. (No, to die for another is the highest form of love. Is it? Is it really?) It's living on, carrying on, surviving one day at a time, that's much harder than any momentary torment. She believes this, has to. But she hasn't yet made up her mind on the undead.

The sense of Seviilia's recalled memory courses through her limbs like heat, sudden and searing, the sickening scent of decay prompting a wince out of her, fists clenched in defense. Her body remains tensed, still bracing for another onslaught, even after the thought is pushed aside. She can bear it, but she sure doesn't want to. ]

I felt that. [ Accusing, almost. She has never been accused of being delicate. ] This sure sucks.

[miscreant]

[Seviilia blinks again in curiosity, and then forces herself to pass a scoff between them. This link of their's was more sensitive than her connection to the others she could remember.

Or perhaps the memories hadn't mattered enough to recall, when she was in service.]

I suppose I am out of practice.

[She's not going to apologize though, even with her accusing tone. The living were always far more delicate than the dead, but that wasn't why she had shielded the memory.

She decides to offer up less sensitive information in exchange.]

We were all returned to life to serve in a war against the living. No longer, as I am sure you have guessed.

[wille]

[ She wears suspicion on her face, uncanny against her relaxed stance and her loose white shirt. Like a little girl trying to stand up against someone twice her size yet refusing to acknowledge the difference in power. ]

Well, I'm relieved.

[ She sure doesn't sound like it. ]

I'm no one important. Just human. Honestly, I don't even know why we're in the same room.

[miscreant]

[It is clear that Seviilia seems to consider Misato beneath her notice in terms of threat level. She was only human, after all.]

Nor I. But it seems we are the only ones who have awoken.

[There are others -- one other in particular she thinks, but can't be sure.]

Perhaps you are more important than you thought. [She smirks in spite of herself.] Or perhaps something around here is hungry.

[wille]

[ She keeps silent for a moment, ears tuned to catch any other noise around them, any sign of another person. If she notices one, she keeps it to herself if only because she hasn't yet ascertained its existence. Her dear friend Ritsuko may be the scientist in their makeshift family of three, but Misato is the one who will demand empirical evidence for anything beyond the scope of her understanding. ]

You? [ In response to her quip about hunger, accompanied by a smirk of her own, though hers is less cheeky and more challenging. Bring it on. ] What do the undead eat?

[miscreant]

Come now.

[Seviilia isn't able to hold down the chuckle that bubbles out of her. It isn't an offensive observation -- a perfectly reasonable suggestion and assumption, given the rest of the undead ilk.

It is not beneath her. But she won't say that in polite company.]

Do all of the living have the same diet?

[wille]

[ Misato returns the chuckle with a wider smile, no joy to back it up aside from mild amusement. Sometimes that's enough. ]

Don't ask me. My diet gives the rest of humanity a bad name.

[ She keeps up the self-deprecating talk while absently rolling up her sleeves and tucking her shirt into her pants to show her waistline. To be a woman is to be a body, to be shaped a certain way in contrast to a man. This is how she knows to present herself. These pajamas are still too loose. ]

Anyway, we'll be working together from now on. We'll get along, hm?

[miscreant]

I should hope. If our rescuers are to be believed, we are fighting a war after all.

[Seviilia watches the way she adjusts herself with some curiosity. Her perception of what was expected of her is incredibly intriguing, and vaguely reminiscent of...something, maybe a memory.

By now, she's self-aware enough that her memories of her past prior to undeath are mostly lost to her, so she doesn't bother to pursue it.]

I am going to explore, I think. Perhaps later, we might share what else we've learned about this place.

[wille]

[ The clothes one chooses can either be barriers or bridges extended for others to more easily understand one's identity beyond what a naked body can reveal. She makes hers out as an open door when her inner self is nothing of the sort, exaggerates her womanly figure in over-the-top ways like an impostor and maybe that's not so far from the truth. She is better suited to war than all this fiddling and preening.

So contrived that even she has stopped noticing it. She offers Seviilia a cheerful smile and a little wave. ]

Alright, comrade. Catch you later!