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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!))
no subject
His fingers flex, jaw setting. Suddenly, the Lucian king feels uncertain when he had felt merely addled (and tired, so tired) before. She can probably feel all of this in return, of course. But he doesn't stand in silence long, and eventually a reply finds its way past his lips.
It's a little wry.]
Yeah, because that's a great explanation.
[Even though, to be fair... probably accurate, all things considered.]
no subject
[ She flaps a hand, like flapping away a fly. Her movements are all very easy and fluid, what she says moves through her whole body, as if her mind doesn't bother to delineate the different pieces by separating hands from mouth from posture. But it does.
She is acutely aware of her body as a cage, and she a festering thing inside it. ]
They've already completed their tests on us, and now we've got free reign to fuck around. I bet the fuckin' doors got bio-sigs, we won't be able to get in anywhere we're not supposed to.
[ A bet, and not entirely right, but she speaks with a kind of authority on alien abduction. Technically, she was abducted by an alien at birth. And then raised by it. So. ]
What else do you need explained?
no subject
Noctis' body language is the opposite of hers. His feet are firmly planted to the ground, the line of his back straight, his shoulders even more so. The only gesture his hands make are the way his arms cross against his chest, betraying his uncertainty, that spike of indignation that threatens to turn into annoyance at the way she sounds so... patronizing.
To his credit, Noctis has at least mastered the art of outward composure to not let it show. (Letting her feel it, though, is another matter altogether.)]
How about you explain just how you know all of this? [He pauses, but not long enough to let her respond just yet.] I heard a voice in my head to go to the hangar... I've been hearing whispers ever since I woke up. And you, you feel like-
[He loses his words, unable to form them in a way he finds satisfactory. And when he does speak again, he still finds them wanting.] You're too close. That is you, right? [Mentally he means. That disturbing sense of something nearby.]
no subject
[ She repeats incredulously. Rude mouth curling, but her tone does not match her insides. She sounds condescending, but it's just words. She doesn't care an awful lot about words, sticks and stones. She doesn't care an awful lot about people, at least not as themselves. She cares about certain people as ideas. Her students are an idea: a penance, a future. Noctis has the misfortune to not need anything from her. He is capable of himself, and thus she is dismissive. Years of actively misandric doctrine don't help. She'd been raised that men were weak, slow, cowardly, and basically useless, to be dismissed from service and to allow more capable soldiers do the job. ]
You have that fucking port in your neck before you woke up? Didn't think so. They fitted you with that, special, to hook you up to their fucking pods. And if you think that's all they did to you. [ A wide, expansive shrug. ] That'd be fuckin' naive, is all I'm saying.
And there is sure as shit some telepathic fuckery going on.
[ There is indeed, the longer she talks to more uncomfortable her attention is. Like she could swallow him whole at any moment. It's not quite a warning when he notes she's too close, and it doesn't put off her mind getting closer. She's listening to him, but for whatever lives inside of her... it's not enough to just listen to something. Everything is hers, enveloping. ]
Haven't found what's-her-bitch yet though, I figure she'd give a shout if I was goin' the wrong way.
no subject
Sorry for not making the immediate leap to alien abductions. I figured I'd at least start with "immoral science experiment" and work my way up.
[A flicker of something shines in his mind, a memory. Soldiers, mechanical, soulless. Crumbling to pieces in defeat, darkness swirling upwards from their corpses. He pushes back against her own mind with these images, as if it'll put space between them somehow.]
Whatever's going on, let's just keep moving. If we find her [what's-her-bitch? What a mouth on this one] then maybe she can shed some light on all of... this. I have more important things to be taking care of right now. I'm just going to assume you do, too.
no subject
She tries to push back at him, out of curiosity, but she does not accomplish it. It's like a muscle she can't pinpoint, an unfamiliar exercise trying to reach out with her mind and touch something other than herself. But others can touch her. Telepathic fuckery in-fucking-deed. The voice from before, his clockwork soldiers, but he hardly seemed to realize he'd done it. Was confused by the voices. Her eyes narrow, suddenly all of her presence on him recedes, like hoses abruptly rolled in. She feels inside of herself, brushing against the idea of the symbiote.
She exudes in that moment, a queer unease. There is something new inside of her that was not there before. ]
Well, bucko. [ She begins, to fill the silence, attention still inward. ] I came here to lure a definitely fucking alien entity away from a school full of sleeping kids. So, pretty sure this is the important thing I have to take care of.
[ Her eyes flicker back to him, a crooked, heavy-lidded smile. She puts her hands in her pockets and starts to walk. Gotta find what's-her-bitch. ]
This tech's 100% not fuckin' human though, just sayin'. And aliens are definitely perfectly capable of immoral science experiments. Although I guess that's only if we make them adhere to our shitty morals.
no subject
Still, Noctis remains oblivious (for now) that it's a two-way street. That his thoughts can be hers just as easily. Maybe it's better that way for now. Ignorance grants him a false confidence, an assuredness in each step, as they make their way down the long corridor.
Walk tall.]
Are aliens a normal thing for you? ["A normal thing." He frowns and tries again.] That... entity of yours, are you saying it had something to do with this? [He's throwing out questions, seeing which will stick. Maybe missing the mark a little this time around.]
no subject
There's just too much, when he asks her about the aliens. She has no intention of answering that question in full, but her minds explodes with it.
The Coral Thing and Daylight in their fake bodies, their jittery smiles and rapid bird-like had movements. As if humanity was restrictive to them, how familiar. She knows what they had looked like without their fake bodies as well, fat swollen sacks of meat and appendages that eclipsed the sky. Bodies raining from the sky where they swatted away those who had come to defend their world like so much dust. Not even like insects, like particles.
The wet sensation of blood raining on to her face. The world burning. The numb and helpless horror of realizing how very very small humanity was until--
Like a rush of euphoria, she remembers shedding this body. Being immense, and glorious in her so longed for authenticity. Her oceans, so very deep and full of predatory, sinewy life, her toxic and tumultuous atmosphere that was no suited for human lungs. Her jagged mountains, and tarry swamps. Not just their existence, but her force behind them to exist. The slow sensual curl of growth and of death.
It is a memory on the other side of a mirror. Real, but distant. Disassociated from this skin she's in. Her human body does not have the faculties necessary to experience it. Only her mind recalls, a memory of light and freedom, motion, and a rage to destroy. To protect what was no longer hers in that mighty hulking form. A rage lacking anchor, but a purpose all the same.
She and all that lived from her guzzled down alien blood, soaking it into soul, and through drooling horrifying maws.
No one but her has ever felt this way. Been so terrible and so grand, so directionless and so motivated, so small and so lost all at once... She is an anomaly, a mistake.
And now Noctis is a mistake with her. Glorious and miserable in the same undying inhale. ]
no subject
It's unlike anything he's experienced before, even during his time when he slept in the Crystal, wrapped up in eternity and fractured light. That had been... ethereal, timeless, a reawakening. A drifting in a space of unfathomable color and luminosity, surreal and bizarre. It had been, at least, comforting in its own way.
This was the sensation of blood on his face, running warm down his cheekbones. This was a burst of immensity that he couldn't understand (but he was understanding it now, wasn't he? The same way she did, the way she must have), oceans expansive in depth and space. The feeling of being, in a way he had never been before.
Not human. Certainly nothing so small and restricting. There's blood again, more blood, coursing down the maw of whatever glorious thing this is, and Noctis, he feels-
He simultaneously feels enormous and wretchedly small. His body wants to writhe, revolting against the contradiction, and in some miracle of cognizance does the king manage to place a hand flat against the corridor walls, leaning his weight into it and hunching over. He feels like he might be sick. He can't be sure.
The ring on his hand clicks against the cool surface, and the noise is somehow enough to spark words from him.]
Stop... stop!
[By the Six, stop.]
no subject
Even as her mind is exploding, she's still looking at him the same way she has since he first approached her. Calm, incredulous, always a bit bored, half-amused. Though something changes in her eyes, a light going out as she realizes what's happening. She doesn't react with concern for him, merely sorrow. Icy cold waves of it, numbing. It helps. It does not make her forget, but it helps to suppress the feeling. ]
I've encountered some aliens, yeah.
[ She sighs with a shrug. She waits for him to compose himself, leaning back against the wall to fiddle with a crumpled pack of cigarettes that isn't going to last her nearly long enough. She holds the pack out to him if he wants it, lighting the one in her mouth single-handed. ]
no subject
His own breath. In and out.
In his periphery, he thinks he can make out-- cigarettes? Noctis turns his head, looking at her. His hair, still too long for its own good, falls in his face, obscuring his gaze only a second later. What a hilariously mundane gesture, after all of that. He shakes his head. And finally:]
No. [No to the cigarettes, no to the notion of just "encountering some aliens".] That was... Those were your feelings. That was inhuman. What are you?
no subject
That's a pretty fuckin' rude question, and didn't I just get finished telling you they'd been modifying us with shit?
no subject
I'm not trying to be rude, I'm trying to understand just what the hell was that. [Words that sound rude on paper, but Noctis' inflection is just tired now. Interwoven with secondhand sorrow and the wake of something unfathomable. The reverb between them just seems to make everything all the more acute, and he's not sure how to stop it. And he's projecting it all in return, completely unaware. Because Annie remains unflappable, so how is he to know if he's affecting her?]
no subject
[ Like she needed some motherfucker all up in her suffering. She's done just fine so far having absolutely no one understand her pain, what the fuck. She looks away from him, blowing trails of smoke down then hall, watching the way the air filters stir it. Shouldn't smoke in a closed environment, but someone is going to have to pry them from her fucking cold dead fingers.
Finally she turns back, shifts around her hair and her clothes to expose the edge of the scar in her chest. It runs the length of her sternum and even a little further, but you don't need to see that much of it to get the idea. She doesn't try to hide it, when the portal was open she had gotten used to shirts having little meaning, when the creatures had stuck their tentacles out they'd regularly disrupted her clothes, so whatever.
The scar is many years old now, no longer burning and dripping pus, but it is still an ugly color, still looks like a traumatic wound that no one really should have survived. ]
It's in there. The rest of me. Used to be open, now it's like this, and what you got was that one time when I brought what's inside, outside. [ The cock of an eyebrow. ] Happy? Everything fuckin' explained for you?
[ Cuz she's not happy. She's never been happy. She's always been incomplete, she just masked it with madness and drugs. She'd kill someone for a hit right now, and it starts a drum beat in her of want. Humid, lusty. She sticks the cigarette back in her mouth, giving no outward indication of this, and crosses her arms over her chest, looking impatient, expectant. ]
no subject
Even though some of it is obscured, it looks like an injury that should still be painful. And with it comes a feeling of deficiency. A dearth of completeness, and he experiences it, too; it makes him frown even more than before, uncertain how to parse this information. When she brought what was inside, outside.
What he had seen, then, all of that bundled up inside of her — he can’t even imagine what it must have felt like. And for a moment, he realizes that he doesn’t have to.
Noctis feels… awkward now, and the bluntness of her words force him to say something in return, not as insightful as he’d like.]
Better than nothing.
[He’s distracted by a spike of want, and he knows this is something else that doesn’t belong to him. Noctis tries to swat it away, mentally, drawing up within himself, sliding back into a cool darkness (how ironic), the thoughts of a quiet sleep.]
Just… Sorry. [Sorry for even asking, sorry for even being close enough to feel any of that. Sorry for that discontentedness, despite still feeling on edge just by being near.] I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve… seen a lot, lately. [Of monsters. Daemons.]
no subject
[ She gives him a look of total irritation. What the fuck's he apologizing to her for? She doesn't give a shit about any of this, not about his opinion, none of it. Can't he tell that? Can't he tell that she's so used to being this miserable half a person? She's fine, she can walk and she talk, and that's all you need to be a real girl, right? Her frustrations and hurt buzz. ]
Don't be such a fuckin' puss.
no subject
Right now, he just drops his hand back to his side, then steps forward. He’s not prideful enough to be offended, and his response is just lined with a lazy irritation at best. He feels even more tired than before, and suddenly pushing forward seems like the simplest option.]
So you’re annoyed when I pry, then you’re annoyed when I apologize for it?
[He steps past her, fully intending to continue down towards the hangar, or wherever this path happens to lead.]
no subject
[ Short, bland, she doesn't follow him, still leaned back against the wall with her cigarette. She honestly assumes he could use some space from her fucked up bullshit, and maybe she could use a minute to tamp down the thud thud thud thud of her cravings -- some booze would make this freakazoid male more tolerable, would make this whole adventure more giddy. She grinds her teeth, slowly and purposefully, before stuffing the cigarette back in her mouth. ]
no subject
[He doesn't hear footsteps following him. Noctis had merely assumed that she would walk along with him, and when it's obvious that she's not going to, he turns around, several feet away by now.]
Are you coming?
[Exasperated, maybe, but not enough to willingly go on alone when there's company to be had. Annoyed company or otherwise. His mind pulls at hers with the question, tugging like a child at someone's sleeve.]
no subject
What am I, your fucking babysitter?
[ But she's coming, trailing smoke, regret. The set of her eyebrows is annoyed, but her brown eyes are baleful. ]
Why are you in such a fuckin' hurry anyway...
no subject
Cigarette smoke wafts in his direction, but it's so small of an annoyance that it doesn't even register. It's odd in how he doesn't even wave it away; something else to blame on the closeness of their shared link.]
I want to know exactly what's going on, outside of just "abducted by aliens". I need to get back to Eos, I can't afford to waste my time... here.
[He continues walking, now that she's coming along with him.]
no subject
[ She repeats that, utterly unconvinced. ]
That sounds fuckin' imaginary.
[ What she means is that she's never heard of such a place and it has a ring to it like it's out of a fantasy book, not that she literally doesn't believe it exists, but she's not going to waste that many words on the sentiment. ]
no subject
[Though Annie thinking that it sounds like something out of a book isn't really that off the mark. Noctis does come from a world of gods and magic and prophecies, never mind the cellphones, the fast cars, and the metropolitan skyscrapers of Insomnia.]
It's just as real as wherever it is you come from.
no subject
[ Kind of? Mostly? This body had been born on the grounds of that world, for... whatever that was worth. ]
Big blue ball, mostly covered in water, and named after its own dirt. I figure it'll manage without me.
[ Sotiro and Jenny would take care of the kids, like they always did. There was a sort of larger question as to whether or not Therese could keep her newly grown egomaniac power boner in her pants, and also what the fuck stupid scheme Diana was concocting in the heads of twisted up cult. Guilt flares in her chest. Shouldn't have left. Was there another choice. Is there ever really another choice, why is it always aliens and what happens the next time something too big to handle gets and eyeful of Earth. ]
Anyway. [ Because fuck every aspect of that line of thought. ] What's so fucking special about you that Eos is gonna implode without your fuckin' majestic presence?
no subject
He feels guilt at the very thought. It's sincerely his own, this time.]
My world is covered in darkness and daemons. [A flash of images, of creatures pulling themselves out of writhing dark portals in the ground. Obsidian giants with swords, floating, eldritch-like necromancers, small green creatures with kitchen knives in hand.] The man responsible... I needed to stop him. I had almost finished it.
[Killed him. Put him finally to rest. He only needed to sacrifice himself to destroy his soul, and-- well. Now he's here.]
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