[hatch log] wake up, starshine

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY :009
SUMMARY: What's this? It's a whole new set of tools!
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

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

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. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But when the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. 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 happening 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. Maybe it's time for a change? 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 the closer you are to these strangers. --No. That's not right either. A sense of familiarity runs so deep between you it might as well be cellular.

Welcome to Station 72. It buzzes with activity - a pulse of life that beats beyond the four of you and this strange nesting deck. Somewhere deep in the Station, other minds call to yours. They are bright, shining spots in your subconscious. They are sun-warm gentle, or the back and forward lapse of some tidal wave pushing in and pulling away, or they are fire and the taste of ash, or they are a cold black stone, or they are a tangled garden. No two links are exactly the same, but you know for certain that you are connected to all of them in at least some small way.

It's time to figure out how - and why.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for the new hosts and anyone looking to greet them after their hatching. You’re welcome to make your own logs separate to this going forward!l and tag any old logs that have been forward dated to this point or beyond (there's a lot of catch-all's on the comm right now, and we encourage you to go snooping on them!).


Additionally, you can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. You can find additional setting information about the Station 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

damon salvatore

[blooded]

» all your plans and all your reveries stagger on (awakening, closed to elena gilbert)

( waking up somewhere unfamiliar disoriented and alone is... something of a familiar occurrence for damon. maybe disturbingly familiar, really. it's happened often enough, anyway, that even without the unnatural calm that's settled over him, he wouldn't panic. the peace is unnatural, though — for as long as he can remember, damon's mind has been chaotic, a veritable minefield of fury and insecurities and fear. what will set him off when has always been a crapshoot, but there's always been something simmering under the surface, just waiting for someone to trip over it and trigger his more destructive tendencies. now, though, for the first time ever, his head is blissfully, amazingly quiet. he doesn't want it to end.

the cable connected to his neck is a concern, though. he should probably take that off before he tries to go anywhere —

bad idea. the second the cable disconnects, a million emotions flood into him, and he's not sure they're all his. that's not even the most pressing realization, though — he'd almost forgotten about elena, about mystic falls. he has to find out if she's okay, if the town is okay, where the fuck he's ended up — damon pushes through the disorientation of all the emotions pressing on his mind to make his way out of his chamber, pausing to grab elena's necklace out of the cubby first, and down the ladder. he has to find someone who knows what's going on here, he needs answers.

he hadn't expected to find elena so quickly. or to find her at all, as the case may be — whoever took him from the woods promised that elena would be safe if he went with them, but this isn't what he'd had in mind. he doesn't even know if this is safe. her back is to him as she climbs down the ladder from her own chamber, but even without being able to see her face, he'd know it's her — he's watched her so much over the past ten months, he'd know her anywhere, even with her bitchy doppelganger running around. that her scent is filling the room around them is only just a small part of what confirms to him that this is elena.

she's here, and she doesn't seem to be hurt, so that's something. still, it wasn't what he'd agreed to. it's not what he wanted when he said that he would come with the person who found him in the woods. )

Elena. ( even despite his reservation, the relief in his voice is almost palpable — is palpable, if she cares to connect the thread of relief that washes over her with a specific person. he approaches her, hand reaching for her cheek. ) Are you alright?

» can you hear me?

( after his... encounter with elena, damon's first concern is finding people who know what's going on here. he has to do recon if he has any chance of fitting in here the way he did in mystic falls — finding out who's in charge is priority one, but the availability of blood sources, knowledge in this community of a supernatural element, who to befriend and who to intimidate... he needs all of this information, and he needs it fast.

his search through the station brings him nearly everywhere, but the place he stops is the rec wing. the library is a point of interest, certainly, and he'll direct elena here when things are less crappy on that front, but what he's more concerned with is that any of this is here at all. )

What the fuck, ( is all he can manage, staring at the room around him. where did any of this come from??? and why has he gotten involved in it? )

» wildcard

( if you're not feeling that prompt up there but want a thread, you can get in touch with me on plurk at manibus and we can plot something new out! alternatively, feel free to throw something of your own design at me — damon's going to be wandering through the whole station, and he'll engage with anyone, anywhere. anyone who can explain any of this to him gets a cookie. )

[martyric]

( in elena's defence, it's been a really overwhelming couple of minutes.

she's still trying to figure out what the hell is going on in her head, which thoughts are actually her own and which ones belong to someone else, and all in all it's just not a great time. now that she doesn't have the zen of arrival floating through her she remembers it all in startling clarity -- stefan, she remembers stefan, and she remembers that he was a vampire.

she remembers running.

her mind is basically going 'vampire, vampire, vampire' when damon approaches, and for a fraction of a second there she's so relieved to see someone familiar she almost doesn't care that it's damon. and then, very quickly and very abruptly, she very much does care about the fact that it's damon.

there isn't any warning when elena draws her fist back and aims it squarely at his jaw. )

[blooded]

( it's been a while since he had to worry about elena gilbert and her fists of fury. they've gotten closer over the past couple months during the search for stefan, and damon was vaguely hoping they might be beyond their "let's take all our frustration out on damon because he's a jerk and it's convenient" phase.

so when elena punches him, he doesn't really see it coming.

it doesn't hurt, really — she'd have to work a lot harder to hurt him — but it is a surprise. so much so that for a second, all he can do is stare at the wall in utter confusion, before he turns back to her, pissed. )

What the fuck was that for, what did I do this time?

[martyric]

( it actually probably hurts elena a hell of a lot more than it ever could have hurt damon, vampire or not. she just isn't that accustomed to throwing punches, honestly, it doesn't happen that much in her every day life. so the first reaction she has is to immediately draw back her fist to her chest. maybe that was a mistake, possibly.

but she's still really pissed as well, so not that much of a mistake. )

You're a vampire, ( she spits the words out -- suddenly a lot of things make sense, caroline makes sense, and at the centre of most of them, she suspects, is damon. the salvatore brothers are trouble. ) you need to stay away from me.

prompt the second; i'm so sorry

[100mitsubishis]

[Kavinsky isn't in charge.

Kavinsky used to be in charge, but that was of a hodgepodge gang of teenagers that came to him for all the things mommy and daddy warned them about. Now, he's the lord of nothing, king of tabula fucking rasa, and sometimes it's a wound he scratches at. Sometimes it's a gift.

Right now it's a null sum. Nothing to gain or lose when he follows that thread binding him to a certified new guy. Fresh meat, hot off the line, and he wants to nibble. Sirius warned him not to bite and he has every intention of playing it cool.

The library, though? He hasn't explored that much. He'll send out feelers as he approaches, small pushes of his consciousness against the new one. Kavinsky's strutting down the hall and his mouth is a neat little 'o.']

Oh. It's you.

never be sorry

[blooded]

( damon hasn't been paying attention to the thoughts that aren't his, really — they're weird, but he's got bigger problems to deal with — why doesn't elena remember the last ten months, why is she here in the first place, where is here. mental weirdness can take a back seat until he figures all that out.

the feelers, though, are harder to ignore. it's an intrusion he's never experienced before, but it brings to mind how he imagines compulsion would feel — someone else's consciousness trying to superimpose itself on his own. that comparison has his hackles up immediately, and he gives a wild mental shove to the feelers, trying to force them out.

when he sees kavinsky an realizes he's where the psychic nudges are coming from, damon doesn't even think — he rarely ever does. he blurs up to him,grabbing his throat and slamming him against the wall. his scleras have filled with blood, the veins below his eyes dark and raised, teeth sharpened to points — he's going for full on intimidation, but has no intention of actually biting kavinsky.

...yet. )

Get out of my head!

[100mitsubishis]

[There is a jolt of emotion, one that Kavinsky knows all too well because he regularly incites it, and then the man has him. 'Man' in shape, at least, because Kavinsky bears witness to the whites of his eyes flooding with scarlet. It's a look. Kind of five years old, he thinks, but a look. And Kavinsky is already privy to this fresh new bullshit. This Dracula ass tomfuckery. They share a brood, it's unavoidable. But what he wasn't certain was coming was the order. Get out of my head.

He couldn't follow it if he wanted to.

The best he can do is retreat back, with he doesn't at the desired pace. It's more of a meander than the quivering rush of a prey animal. Kavinsky's fear is a low treble beneath much louder, boisterous notes. Curiosity, amusement, yeah-whatever-man, go ahead. The expected survival instinct just isn't there. He doesn't struggle right, either. There's the hand on Damon's wrist to try and gain some purchase, but it's lazy, not desperate.]

Doing my best--

[He grunts it out. Amusement, curiosity--]

Chill out.

WILDCARD!

[wille]

[ When one falls, another rises in its stead. Or so it seems.

The recent loss of Sirius has sent her unease into overdrive and she has spent nights and days, or the Station's equivalent of them, studying and training and preparing for the worst. Anything to mask the strange and most unwelcome sorrow in the wake of her broodmate's departure. He should be an almost stranger to her, and yet, see how massive a space he took in her mind. How empty that room now feels. But today (tonight?) something changed. Someone awoke.

The new frequency in her head strikes her as familiar to Seviilia's, not quite alive but very much so. Not quite human, like Shepard's. Chaotic, like Kavinsky's. Somehow tender, like Beth's. But the fury and the disappointment, the struggle to be good and the insistence on seeming bad, well, that is all her. Misato hates her own reflection wherever it is mirrored. Like enemies, she keeps the things she hates close. This is no exception.

She finds him in a hallway after nearly an hour of wandering and she needs no cosmic sign to know that this is it, this is him. Her extra set of limbs. Her other mind. She has on her red jacket with its small insignia, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, a wry and cynical smile on her face despite the obvious tension in her jaw. She has heard of vampires, who hasn't, but like god and true love's kiss, she staunchly denies their existence until one of them puts a gun to her head and threatens her with or else.

She would be a convert only with a bullet in her skull. ]

Have you heard? Mitten wir im Leben sind mit dem Tod umfangen. [ Her German is fluent but accented, the Ls and Rs not quite distinct. ] It's a hymn. Something like: in the middle of life, we are in death's snare.

[blooded]

( damon has been erratically wandering the station for the better part of an hour now, trying to figure it and everyone in it out. he's convinced by now that neither he nor elena are in danger here, but that doesn't do all that much to put him at ease — he still has yet to find anyone actually in charge here, and thus no one he can get any real answers from. basics, like the nest and his brood, those are helpful short term, but he needs more. he needs to know why elena doesn't remember, why she's here in the first place.

misato finds him while he's searching for someone more in charge, and her appearance gives him pause. elena was a smaller presence in his mind, a connection that was distinctly there but also somehow... removed. the woman in front of him feels more like the teenager he saw in the rec room, like an extra limb he's just somehow never noticed. by now he's accustomed to the idea of this, if not the feeling, so he doesn't shove misato into a wall and threaten her with fangs like he did kavinsky. her he just mentally shoves, trying to get her out. )

Media vita in morte sumus. It was Latin first.

( he only knows due to the translation she gave — the german is a lutheran hymn, translated and added onto from the original latin, and he was raised catholic. )

Kind of a weird hello, though.

[wille]

[ Misato accepts the mental shove as it comes, stepping back as far as he pushes her but no farther, remaining on the periphery and watching still. There's little need for force when the thresholds between them are so flimsy, blurred. If she concentrates enough, if she pushes aside the noise in her own head, she can almost feel strands of brown hair against her fingers and a deep, abiding ache.

That's what causes her to take one more step back. Outwardly, she gives him a smile. It's polite and amused, but distant. ]

You don't get to have normal hellos from me anymore.

[ Her cross pendant somehow hangs heavier against her neck. Silver, too. She fights back the urge to laugh, and the habit of wrapping her hand around it, keeping herself content with the memory of its sharp angles digging into her palm. Father, father, did you see this coming? She takes the last few steps toward him, resolute, stopping just close enough to extend a handshake. ]

Misato. Are you really--?

> 2nd option

[shiro2hero]

... Something wrong?

[He probably should know better than to go asking after people who call out "what the fuck". Or say it out loud. Either way, it's hard to ignore when you're in the rec wing, finishing your own version of recreation (namely, weights).]

[Curiosity gets the better of him. He hasn't heard that voice before.]

[His head peeks around a corner, already raising an eyebrow slowly at the unfamiliar face accompanying the voice.]

[blooded]

This whole place is wrong, ( damon says, but he sounds more annoyed than truly upset. he doesn't get this, and he doesn't like anyone else being in his head, and everything with elena is fucking confusing, and with how few people are here it makes no sense that all this shit came from them, so now there's creepy horror movie "you aren't the first and you won't be the last" shenanigans.

all in all, damon is not best pleased with this entire situation. shiro's appearance, with his stupid hair, is a convenient distraction and outlet for his annoyance. )

Aren't you a little old for shitty Hot Topic hair?

[shiro2hero]

Fair point.

[He inclines his head slightly, to acknowledge it. He felt the same way when he first arrived. And parts of it are still bizarre to think about. Or react to. Parts of it still grate on his nerves.]

[But since Sam started working on mental walls with him, it's gotten easier. He's kept them in place fairly easily. Like now -- with stars and galaxies imagined into a fortification around his thoughts.]

[... one which he lets slide down a little to let out just a bit of annoyance.]

Nice meeting you, too. You always this friendly?

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ As soon as Sam'd felt the press of unfamiliar minds on the station, he'd strengthened the walls around his mind. They're always pretty good, considering how much practice he'd put into it, but he knows that the minds of new Hosts tend to be loud. It's part self-preservation, and part out of respect for them - both giving them as much privacy as he can as well as doing his best not to be another voice in the chaos of the station.

So his mind is quiet when what must be one of the newbies comes into the rec room, surrounded by a thick cloud layer and with just the faintest hint of a calm breeze.

He grins at that comment, though, pushing himself up off the floor where he'd been looking through boxes of mismatched entertainment equipment. ]

Is it the air hockey table? That threw me, too.

[blooded]

( the stranger's mind is so quiet, he might as well not exist. everything and everyone else has been so loud, barely even bothering to keep themselves quiet, but when damon enters the rec room he doesn't even know there's anyone else there. not from the feel of his mind, anyway — he can smell a human in the room, knows he's not alone, but the conspicuous absence of an insistently pressing mind to go with it is... intriguing. )

Are you not part of this?

( this being the link — damon doesn't care about the man's question, he wants to know where his head is. if he's not part of the link, maybe he has more answers. if he is, and damon can't hear him anyway... damon needs to hid his thoughts from elena, at least some of them. maybe this guy can teach him. )

[sizeofyourbaggage]

I don't think anyone up here isn't a part of this.

[ He's not surprised that the guy doesn't bother responding to his question - it'd been mostly rhetorical, and he doesn't blame him for being a hell of a lot more focused on what the hell is going on than on the fact that there's an air hockey table.

Sam doesn't make his shields any less thick, exactly, but he does focus just a little bit on the mental connection between him and the new guy. Just enough to make himself a little more present, a step above the low level hum of awareness the symbiotes seem to have for each other. ]

I've had a lot of practice at shielding.

can you hear me?

[greentech]

[ The rec wing is as good a place as any to work. Relatively more privacy (or at least it feels like it) when compared with her "room". Pidge is perched in a corner with her computer, brow furrowed as she tries to work on some notes. Her attention is grabbed by a new face and she pauses to watch him for a moment.

Oh, there's a reaction she can sympathize with. ]

I'm pretty sure that's how we all feel.

[blooded]

( a girl in the corner with a laptop is... almost such a normal sight that it's jarring, here. it feels weirdly out of place, like you can either be on a space station somewhere in the multiverse or you can curl up in your living room with a laptop, but you can't do both. it's too weird of an intersect to actually happen.

but there's a girl in the rec room, peering at him from over a screen, and damon only watches for a second before he purses his lips and turns back to the rest of the room. )

You know how any of this got here?

[greentech]

[ Pidge rolls her shoulders in a shrug and glances around at the rest of the room. ]

I don't know. I just got here a month or two ago myself, so I haven't seen anyone bring anything on board. It's... I dunno. We're not the first 'hosts'. I guess some people collect stuff.

ilde option

[erbier]

[ The Circle Garden is an immaculate place. A large, domed space with carefully tended planters around its edges, smooth white pathways winding shapes around small packets of neatly clipped turf. The grandest tier of planters spirals up through the center of the space nearly to the ceiling. Each tier is different, almost like a little world all its own.

It is common to find Ilde here. It was the first place she had gravitated towards, abandoning her private quarters to spend much of her time with the plants. It was what was familiar to her, even sleeping in the soil among the foliage. It made her feel peaceful, and safe.

That was when she still slept. Now she simply lowers her vitals for a kind of dreamless trance, body at rest, mind empty, but most certainly awake; although she mostly looks dead to an outside viewer due to her extremely low oxygen consumption. ]

[blooded]

( finding the gardens had been as much coincidence as it was actively part of damon's search — he wants to know this station inside out, be able to navigate it with his eyes closed if he has to. the only way to do that is to wander, look into every room and commit them to memory. usually the rooms are uninteresting. usually there's not a girl laying among plants, looking for all the world as though she'd just come in here to die. if damon couldn't hear her slow, quiet heartbeat, he'd probably wonder if she was dead himself.

he could leave her here. she's alive, and not bothering anyone. it's really not any of his business what she's doing here or why.

he could, but he's not going to. he approaches the girl, watching her quietly for a moment before reaching out with his foot and nudging her shoulder, gently at first and then harder if she doesn't open her eyes the first time. )

[erbier]

[ Lord, the rudest. The whole point of the trance-like not-sleep is the quick awakening period. Her eyes open and she has sat up to scoot away from him within the first nudge. She looks up at him incredulously, ]

Hello.

wildcard

[travailed]

[Beth is like Misato: she feels the loss of Sirius keenly, like a missing limb. It's not just the loss of a potential friend, it's like a part of her is just— gone. She thought she understood how her father must have been feeling, when he lost his leg, but she knows now that she had no idea. This, though... This is not a wound, not something that will ever close all the way.

She liked Sirius. He could be abrasive and angry, but there was sadness in him, deep down, and below that, something warm and good.

She follows Damon around the station as soon as she becomes aware of him. She doesn't mean to follow him, though, just to find him— and when she does, he stops her in her tracks.

There's hunger in him that's familiar to her, and not in a good way. She thinks of rotting flesh and grasping nails, splitting the soft flesh of a man's abdomen to reach for his insides, to sate a hunger that never stops, blood and muscle and stink—]

Sorry. I didn't mean to— I'm sorry.

[She tries her best to cover it up. She thinks about mint leaves and clear lake water and the smell that clings to horses.]

[blooded]

( even if damon didn't have his heightened senses to tell him someone was coming up behind him, he'd have the link. it's stronger with this one, like it was with misato and kavinsky, like whoever this is — music, hope, exhaustion, her name is beth — is a part of him he's just never noticed before. some part of him — the symbiote, probably — welcomes her, reaches for her even as damon himself grits his teeth and frowns. he doesn't like the ones like misato, who are so much harder to keep out of his head.

so much harder meaning nearly impossible. as soon as she's close, damon can feel beth in his head, and whatever's bleeding over from him has shocked her into a memory. it's familiar, in a way, if so much darker than what he feels — it reminds him of stefan, the ravenous monster his brother turns into, heads severed from bodies and then hastily stuffed back into place —

he shoves all of that out, wrestles it away from beth and disentangles her thoughts from his. his head fills with the scent of mint and horses, and he blinks at her, finally seeing her instead of everything she'd put in his head. for a moment he's silent, head tilted as he watches her evaluating.

she feels like elena does. )

It's not like that, ( he says at last. it takes another moment, but he opens up his own mind just enough to show her where the hunger sits for him. gnawing, never-ending, but under control. always under control. )

[travailed]

[She— listens, she guesses is the word, her mind open and attentive, and then she withdraws (as best as she can, anyway) with a small, stiff nod. He's different. It's not the same, even if it's familiar.

She's anxious, still, but at least not afraid; it's just that all her instincts have been set off, and once she enters that false fight-or-flight it's hard to disentangle herself. She's not sure she could ever really be afraid of any of them; it'd be like being afraid of Maggie or Shawn or her own hand.]

I understand. I didn't really think you were— never mind. I was just surprised. That's all. [a beat] I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... snoop, I guess.