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[hatch log] welcome to the void-- wait no, waypoint shril
CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: The Station, Waypoint Shril
WHEN: DAY :027
SUMMARY: New hosts take the universe for a spin.
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. Not suddenly. 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 is... exhausting. There's both a both deep weariness in your bones and a pulse of anticipation crawling under your skin. Your body feels heavy at first, like you're somehow too dense or too real. But maybe that sensation eases eventually. Or maybe you just get used to it?
( ▬▬▬▬▬...There you are. Join us on the hangar, won't you....▬▬▬? )
It doesn't sound like a voice as much as it just resembles sounds, the sensation of warmth and security like napping in a window at the height of summer. If it's followed, you'll eventually wind your day to a massive hangar bay peppered with a myriad of small and medium ships ranging from strange to ornately beautiful to hardly recognizable. Waiting in front of a small silver craft is an aging woman with greying hair, fine jewlery chains tinkling with a multitude of metal charms sound through her clothing and along her forearms. You know instinctively she was the one who spoke to you.
She smiles now, moving to climb into the (very) small ship. There's room enough for all of you if you pack in tight. "Come along," says Cathaway. "The line for Platform Alfa is long enough that we can answer your questions on the way."
WAYPOINT SHRIL might be bursting at the seams with activity, noise and people, but there's no missing when something in the universe shifts. For most older Hosts, they wont quite be able to put their finger on what's going on, but Chuuya and Elena? They know exactly what's happening - somewhere in this universe, new Hosts are hatching and at least one of them belongs to you.
Not that the mystery lasts long for everyone else either. A few hours after the shift, Cathaway's speaks to you. Her voice is clear as a crystal bell, suffused with an intense and simple joy that has nothing to do with--
( New hosts have arrived. Please come meet us at Platform Alfa if you're able. They'll need your assistance. )
--and everything to do with the sensation of a ship hurtling as a bullet through space, the nauseating feeling of darting between other small craft and buzzing around larger class ships.
Come fetch your new friends, everyone. Waypoint Shril could be dangerous for the initiated. After all, the Catacomb Hotel is filled with construction zones and open elevator shafts, the streets are thronged with vendors looking to make a quick Shen off unsuspecting tourists, the area immediately surrounding the Stadium Zone is jammed with intergalactic reporters and especially hot headed or famous competitors filming a pre-competition conference, and - most mortifying of all - the line to leave Platform Alfa is apparently several hours long. What's a new Host to do without a little guidance?
((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 and tag any old logs that have been forward dated to this point or beyond. We're about halfway through the first week at Waypoint Shril, so feel free to touch the mission drop post as long as you're appropriately timing your encounters.
Additionally, you can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. You can find additional setting information about the Station HERE. Information about Waypoint Shril is located at the Current Mission Brief - you may consider this information more or less ICly known. Last but not least, if you have any questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))
WHERE: The Station, Waypoint Shril
WHEN: DAY :027
SUMMARY: New hosts take the universe for a spin.
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. Not suddenly. 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 is... exhausting. There's both a both deep weariness in your bones and a pulse of anticipation crawling under your skin. Your body feels heavy at first, like you're somehow too dense or too real. But maybe that sensation eases eventually. Or maybe you just get used to it?
It doesn't sound like a voice as much as it just resembles sounds, the sensation of warmth and security like napping in a window at the height of summer. If it's followed, you'll eventually wind your day to a massive hangar bay peppered with a myriad of small and medium ships ranging from strange to ornately beautiful to hardly recognizable. Waiting in front of a small silver craft is an aging woman with greying hair, fine jewlery chains tinkling with a multitude of metal charms sound through her clothing and along her forearms. You know instinctively she was the one who spoke to you.
She smiles now, moving to climb into the (very) small ship. There's room enough for all of you if you pack in tight. "Come along," says Cathaway. "The line for Platform Alfa is long enough that we can answer your questions on the way."
WAYPOINT SHRIL might be bursting at the seams with activity, noise and people, but there's no missing when something in the universe shifts. For most older Hosts, they wont quite be able to put their finger on what's going on, but Chuuya and Elena? They know exactly what's happening - somewhere in this universe, new Hosts are hatching and at least one of them belongs to you.
Not that the mystery lasts long for everyone else either. A few hours after the shift, Cathaway's speaks to you. Her voice is clear as a crystal bell, suffused with an intense and simple joy that has nothing to do with--
--and everything to do with the sensation of a ship hurtling as a bullet through space, the nauseating feeling of darting between other small craft and buzzing around larger class ships.
Come fetch your new friends, everyone. Waypoint Shril could be dangerous for the initiated. After all, the Catacomb Hotel is filled with construction zones and open elevator shafts, the streets are thronged with vendors looking to make a quick Shen off unsuspecting tourists, the area immediately surrounding the Stadium Zone is jammed with intergalactic reporters and especially hot headed or famous competitors filming a pre-competition conference, and - most mortifying of all - the line to leave Platform Alfa is apparently several hours long. What's a new Host to do without a little guidance?
((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 and tag any old logs that have been forward dated to this point or beyond. We're about halfway through the first week at Waypoint Shril, so feel free to touch the mission drop post as long as you're appropriately timing your encounters.
Additionally, you can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. You can find additional setting information about the Station HERE. Information about Waypoint Shril is located at the Current Mission Brief - you may consider this information more or less ICly known. Last but not least, if you have any questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))
all waypoint, all the time
[ In their own environment, not trampling her world to a paste, this wide swathe of alien life is exhilarating. There's so much to see, so much new shit to see and to learn. It's almost like she could leave all her troubles behind, back on Earth. But she can't, because it was never Earth that was her problem. She carries her problems right in her chest, right inside the ugly scar down the middle of it. The emptiness lingers, the sorrow, the guilt. It's just been shoved in a corner and covered with a sheet for a moment, like hiding a mess before guests come over, but when it's just Annie-oh-Annie all on her own again... she'll draw the cover back.
For today though, she's happy. Wandering the way point with shiny eyes, laser focused on everything. She hums with it, she's not just a new host, she's also a sprawling kind of creature. Hungry, heat seeking. Any other hosts she gets close enough to knows she's there, knows she's enjoying herself.
Feels her raucous amusement throwing dice in an alley, learning lewd gestures she doesn't always have the appendages for.
Her shrewdness when she haggles for something like cigarettes. Her trepidation, concern that it might inebriate. Relief when it doesn't.
And, of course, her utter focus when an over-eager and mouthy contestant-to-be picks a fight with a whole roomful, and Annie volunteers herself to go a round. Muscle memory, easy and thoughtless, she kicks her opponent to the other side of the room in the end, taunting with one of her newly found insults, and refusing the drinks offered to her by a laughing crowd.
Even though she wants it. She wants it. Hands curling into fists. Sweat beading on her brow. ]
no subject
But even before he sees her, he can sense... she's enjoying herself. Despite everything that's happened to them, just today.
Which turns her presence in his mind from irritating to fascinating, not least because the bleed improves his own mood. A somewhat disturbing side benefit. For a while he just watches her throw dice, almost hypnotized--then he gets the idea to try something.
Obviously, these links can communicate impressions, emotions. Can they transmit something more concrete? What happens if he deliberately thinks at her?]
( Having fun? )
no subject
( What, you're not? )
[ Her psychic voice sounds far off, perhaps even from underwater, hazy at the edges, liquid and unformed. ]
no subject
In any case, he's bored of being cute, and switches to speaking aloud.]
No. This place seems about the opposite of fun, actually. It's strange how normal everyone seems to be acting.
no subject
It's a fuckin' hive of scum and villainy and it's great. Better than the fucking 'Station'.
no subject
This doesn't bother you?
[She can think of him what she wants. He just finds her curious. The different ways everyone is reacting is fascinating to him.]
no subject
[ God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Not that she's much for God, but she knows how the quote goes, knows better than to smash herself against the immovable. Her problems were immovable things. Other people's problems were easier. ]
So why be fuckin' bothered.
no subject
He leans casually against the wall of the alley, feigning nonchalance, in case it's something in his behavior that's making this girl more antagonistic. He's still thinking purely in terms of body language; it'll take him a while to adjust completely.]
What makes you think you can't do anything about it?
no subject
Maybe if I get the symbiote out of me in... I dunno, the next couple weeks, I might survive.
[ She considers. ]
But that's a hell of a timeline when I've got next to no resources. I'd have to find some back alley surgeon here on the Waypoint, blow him because I have no fuckin' money, and then probably die of infection on the operating table and get sold for parts.
[ Yep, she's pretty sure that's how that would go. She'd have to put herself in a vulnerable position for that surgery, and there's no guarantee whatsoever of surviving an alien surgeon. ]
Past those couple of weeks... It gets more and more precarious the longer our bodies get used to what's being done to them. So. My feeling is, I can't fuckin' do anything about it. Maybe if the cards had landed a little differently.
[ She spreads her hands in a shrug. She was a pretty capable girl. If their first mission had been somewhere a bit cleaner with more intelligent species around, maybe. Might've been able to plead her case and get the fucker taken out, before it was too late. ]
no subject
He's not a healer. But there are things he could do.]
What if there were other options?
no subject
[ She's not down to be a guinea pig. ]
no subject
Fair enough. I suppose I'll just have to investigate myself.
[He's not willing to give up yet. He has things to do, back where he comes from, and he's not willing to just accept this as inevitable. She's given him the idea and that's enough.]
I'll let you know how it goes, if you like.
no subject
You just hate it that fuckin' much, or what?
no subject
It's almost disappointing to find her at just another dice game.]
You know, there's better games than this around.
[In lieu of any greeting, or perhaps, unthinkingly, no longer feeling like greetings are necessary any more.]
no subject
Are you saying you want to play with me, or are you just giving me your fuckin' unsolicited opinion?
[ Her tone is rude but ultimately good humored. ]
no subject
I'd call it an invitation, actually. [Tone dry, but he smiles, genuinely amused by her manner, by the whole atmosphere bleeding off her. He takes a half step back, turned to move away.] Coming?
no subject
So who the fuck are you? Where're we goin'?
[ Her filth mouth is as casual as breathing to her, it lacks any bite even when she's being nasty. ]
And where can I get more nicotine.
[ An important, important question that may even trump what the fuck his name is. ]
no subject
Those things? Anywhere. [Not that that sounds helpful, but it's honest.] You've seen how much this place changes, right? We'll probably pass somewhere on the way.
[Somewhere which won't be there on the way back.]
And it's Murphy. [John is an echo in his mind, but he doesn't volunteer it.] You?
no subject
Fucking perfect. I will literally die without my smokes. Maybe I better get like a few cartons to stash... [ Talking to herself, fiddling out another cigarette, eyes scanning the stalls as they walk, on the hunt for the goods. ] Was worried about smoking alien shit, not down to get my brain fuckin' scrambled...
[ And then she remembers the other question, as if it had almost disappeared from her thoughts. Honestly, with the way her mind churns and reaches in al directions, not so surprising. ]
Annie. Annie Westwind. Brand new recruit to alien mind-meld fuck fest.
no subject
[She probably won't have to wait long. New hatches seemed to be happening as often as people falling asleep. It makes him wonder, a little distantly, why the station was so empty.]
And everything's alien shit here, if you hadn't noticed. [As he neatly skirts between what looks like an eight-limbed disc and a bipedal rhino.] If you think you can manage not to use all of those, we can get them to scan it or something. Or you're gonna have to get used to experimenting.
[The thought rises to tell her that her brain's going to scrambled anyway. But he just doesn't feel like it, not when he'd apparently already misstepped on thinking any old smoking product would do.]
no subject
I'm not to be fuckin' trusted.
[ A grin. ]
no subject
But you trust me already? [Raised eyebrows.] I'm touched.
[As he slides it into a pocket, hidden and hopefully safe enough.]
no subject
[ That was how betrayal worked. You had to actually give a shit before it would really sting. Annie has never been as betrayed as she is with herself, knowing she couldn't convince Therese to stay. Annie smiles through the pain of that memory, completely cheerful to the outside world, and happy to nurse another cigarette. The smoke fills her lungs, her stomach, her head, and away goes that pining emotion for a girl who'd never come back. ]
You don't want to see me without my cigarettes.
[ No one does. She's unpleasant to be in contact with now: fully in control, mostly level. Get her hankering with nicotine, take away the dully effects of the smoke, and watch that mind of hers just reach and reach and reach, coveting, covering everything it touched in slime and burning. ]
no subject
[That kind of need, that kind of desire. He's been on both sides, he knows how it works. There's always something someone wants, something they care about. It doesn't take knowing a person to find out what theirs is - just five minutes and a sharp eye.
Still, he holds his hands up.]
I'm not, for the record. [The fact they're all brainlinked makes trying anything on any of the hosts an unappealing idea, even if any of them had pissed him off enough to aim for it.] Just in my experience there's no minimum time limit on betrayal.
[But he doesn't want to think over his experience. He wants to have a good time, and he gestures at the next alley cut between buildings, narrowing as one side finishes construction.]
Here, we're almost there.
no subject
This better be good, buddy. I had a pretty good thing going with those dice.
[ Sort of. Whatever. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)