[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

[earthborn]

Shepard might have the temper of a dragon and the killing ability to match, but you can't survive as a biotic without self control. There's a rhythm to this part, and if she were disappointed with the set-up, this part of the let's fit in to a new unit song and dance comes right up to her expectations. There's always a point like this, always at this time, and though the aim is always the same, the exact response varies. For a street gang, you might kill someone, though you only needed to go as far a breaking a few bones if you're in a prison-- no sense in extending your stay any longer than necessary, after all.

Not that she isn't tempted, mind you. But that's nothing special.

But this, this right here, is the bit in the mess hall where some idiot with the idea that they know what's what and you're the new bitch, thinks they get to call you out. Shepard knows better than to rise to the bait; the familiarity of the motivation behind the mental nudge, despite its strangeness, is both comforting and amusing in its transparency. She doesn't nudge back.

Nor does she complain that the coffee is cold, only throws it back in a display of stoicism that would have been more effective with alchohol than caffeine.

"At least it tastes like coffee, right?" The fact that that had been in question was not a notion Shepard had acquired on her own-- a deliberate admission. Of course I know you know, that's hardly the point, "Where's the commissary around here? I'm working off a debt, need some damn calories."

What Misato may soon find out, however, is that Shepard's disapproval isn't a good way to keep her attention: she has no use for the unworthy. Too soon for that culling, however, but all things come in good time.

[wille]

This is no dick-measuring contest as far as Misato's concerned, nor any time to prove her worth (as deficient as Terminal Dogma is deep, but that's a subject for another day with more alcohol to help the self-loathing go down more smoothly). Like all human interactions, this is the part where one fits stimulus to response, action to reaction, in an attempt to tell self from other, and the lack of engagement from Shepard is well-noted. No game. She doesn't repeat her attempt, content to remain in the periphery to watch and learn.

"Right this way!" Complete with a broad arm gesture and a skip as she heads toward one of the corridors, too chipper for the occasion. This charade is the grease that keeps society turning. "It's hard to tell the days apart but I've been here long enough to find the food stash in my sleep. Not that it's easy to sleep in that weird pod. But hey, between this and dying, it was a hell of an easy choice to make, you know?"

She seems happy to chatter on without encouragement, halting her monologue only to turn around and offer Shepard a handshake and a grin. "It's Misato by the way."

[earthborn]

Shepard never refuses a handshake, though it doesn't do to seem too eager-- but she is good at it. Firm contact, good pressure, not too long, dry palm, and release. Textbook. You see, Misato, everything is a dick-measuring contest, for some people.

"Shepard," Is the reply, simple enough, and even if the mental link throws back a confusing overlay of optional appellations, the chiefest of which is Commander, none of them find physical voice. Apparently, she needs no further explanation, "Yeah, I wasn't making that choice, myself. Little harder to kill than that."

This said with utter, unshakable confidence; she truly believed she could have won that fight, and gotten away. Even in your own mind, never let them see you sweat... or, could be, she's just that delusional. Maybe she's not.

"So, this is your first time in space," That much takes no thought at all, "They must not have set a day/night cycle for us. Makes sense, given the--uh. Relative biologies. Where you from?"

She's not certain, but at a guess; not everyone here is human.

[wille]

Misato's handshake is a tad too hard, withdrawing her hand to give Shepard half a salute. Major Katsuragi reporting, Commander. It's too casual, lacking the clean-cut movements of true soldiers. NERV is a paramilitary agency with metaphysical biologists as commander and vice-commander, not quite the paradigm of military discipline. Her die-hard quip earns another smile from her, this time with an accompanying whiff of chagrin. That reminds her of herself, the rock-hard belief and the willful delusion, and she isn't sure she likes seeing herself in other people.

"New Tokyo-3. Japan. Earth, uhm, Milky Way?" She descends in specificity in case her company doesn't recognize any of the names she throws her way, which is highly likely.

"My father said location is relative in space, time too. But he's never been out here so what does he know," the mental link sends back too much hurt and contempt for mere irritation over a know-it-all parent, but she tries her best to lock that shit down real fast. "Where are you from?"

[earthborn]

"I'm earthborn too. Couldn't tell you where, though, got offplanet as fast as I could, never looked back," Bit of a chuckle for the question falling off the end of the galactic designation. Ground-bounder, some quiet voice offers, as a label, "Tokyo's tough, though. Major cities got hit hardest, from what I heard. Don't get much bigger than that."

That's sympathy, of a sort. You're alive, Misato, and that much is impressive enough to merit a few points in your favor.

"Right now I'm with the Alliance Navy, so technically that makes me from space, for all legal purposes."

[wille]

Tokyo barely survived the massive tsunamis caused by the Second Impact, but it was men who dropped the nuclear bomb that obliterated the city along with half a million lives. Misato knows this as cold, hard facts from textbooks. Her mind flips through two scenes: a constant rocking motion, lost in an endless red sea, purple skies above. It's always nighttime in Antarctica. She pushes this aside in favor of a blank white wall, utter and complete silence, the comfort found in a fetal position. Tokyo's tough. She wouldn't know, she wasn't there. But she is alive.

She thinks: There are too many ways the world could end. Beth's home has zombies.

"Earth treated you that bad, huh?" Her steps have slowed to suit the nostalgic mood, and she crosses her arms above her head to be flippant, casual. "I wish I'm still there fighting for it though. Call me sentimental."

[earthborn]

Shepard stops.

"You are sentimental," She says, eventually, arrested by circumstance, expression gone sour. "Look, can I be honest with you for a minute?"

Not that she's actually asking, mind you. It's rhetorical; the sea doesn't ask permission, it simply floods the bay. There's to much signal in this noise, and too much noise in the silence. Deep breath, now-- what she doesn't want to know is more than she does.

Beth. Someone who's world has zombies. (Husks, she thinks, having no better reference, but the concept is an imperfect match.)

Tokyo.

Antarctica.

Dishonesty and cowardice-- you can't tell the truth from the inside. She doesn't want to know these intimate details of someone else's pain. Sympathy, sure, that's only human, but empathy? That wasn't part of the deal.

"I get that you're having a little adjustment period here, and this is all kinda new territory. For everyone," That's an admission of weakness if you's like, Misato. Even Shepard is only human, "But how about we do our best to keep all our feelings to ourselves, huh? Just for starters."

[wille]

Misato stops in place the moment Shepard takes a breath, because that always heralds Important Things, like a confession or a long-buried question or-- this, an admission followed by the offer of a truce, a ceasefire, when she believes that she has been tossing tributes and presents over Shepard's tall walls rather than bullets. Plainly, it's a rejection.

"I'm not taking that from someone who's giving me hot flushes just by showing up." She's openly miffed by the request, face drawn in irritation and words clipped, but there's no real anger underlying it. The link only returns a faraway sense of hurt and a measure of amusement. Being annoyed at Shepard doesn't stop her from walking --stomping-- on through a nearby doorway that leads to the promised stash of canned, dehydrated and shrink-wrapped assortment of food and drinks strewn about from floor to ceiling.

"You feel like a bad hangover too by the way." She throws another bite, taking her perch on a reasonably empty counter, arms crossed in front of her like some petulant child. "We'll get better at it anyway, you just need to be patient."

[earthborn]

"Trust me, I'm going easy on you."

Because going hard-- well. She doesn't have to think of examples to know, exactly where that one lead. You got statistics here, easy calculus. Ruthless calculus, runs the memory, turian flange, but she's focusing now, so it doesn't last.

Of the fifty N-1s in her class, twenty-six had washed out, quit, or never come back. Of that number, less than half had made it to N-3, and only two others to N-6. One of those had died in the training, the other was killed in action. That was before Torfan. The name was enough to summon the memory, ruthlessly suppressed. Just a smudge of blood in the dark, not taken out, not explored, but copper-smelling of death just the same. A warning.

All that, and the math added up to: don't break your people. They're all you'll have to fight with, and a brittle blade is better than an empty hilt. The message there is simple: We may not have the time patience takes.

Shepard doesn't say it aloud, because it's stupid. Training takes necessary time, always; whether it'll kill them in the end doesn't make the effort culpable. Misato is right, even if she's making few friends with it. So Shepard doesn't say... anything.

She simply loads up her arms with non-perishables, and takes them on her merry way.

That was day one.