station72 | [hatch log] everything happens so much

[hatch log] everything happens so much

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: The Station
WHEN: DAY :039
SUMMARY: New faces and old losses - a hatch occurs and a number of older hosts go comatose. Coma'd hosts include all auto-piloted dropped characters to date.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and suddenly you're a different person. No. That's not right. You're you and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or like surfacing up from the darkness of the ocean and right there in your own head there's something both familiar and strange. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye. While it’s impossible to tell exactly how long ago or how exactly you escaped the danger that had been breathing down your neck, you're certain 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 once 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. The closer you are to these stranger, the louder the sound in your head becomes. --Actually they're not quite strangers either, are they? Something is wound about and between you and these people, whoever they are, are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. The air buzzes with activity. Somewhere deep in the Station, other minds call to yours. They are bright, brilliantly celebratory spots in your subconscious. They are sun-warm gentle, or they are fire and the taste of ash, or they are a vibrant frenetic whirl, or they are a tangled garden, or they are the feeling of flight through dense cirrus clouds. 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.

Which is why it's easy to tell when something goes terribly wrong:

OLD HOSTS
THE ENDORPHIN RUSH of making it back to Station 72 (relatively) unharmed, having successfully acquired exactly what you'd set out to get your hands on can't be denied. Even if you're not necessarily the type to celebrate, there's no ignoring the thrumming celebratory sensation from those Hosts who are.

After a few hours of being back in the void, something else stirs in the air: the clear, prickling sensation of new hosts hatching on the Nesting Deck. They're a rush of mental information - as if someone's turned the volume on the radio all the way up -, a cacophony of sensation and emotional feedback for anyone unprepared to shield against it.

The swell of feeling might make it easy to miss what follows immediately after: the dull, gut-deep quiet as The Darkling, Chuuya Nakahara, and Nasu Rei go suddenly comatose.

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care do. 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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Adra can feel the sting of her agitation more deeply than he expects. He realizes, in short order, that this girl must be part of his brood. He's new enough that the concept still rings foreign to his understanding, but he's a quick study, too.

He's sitting with one leg folded over the other, palms up on his knees--a meditative pose. Because that's what he was trying to do, before she showed up. ]

Are you referring to the garden, or to the station as a whole?

[ A pause. He opens one green, glowing eye, taking her in. Her anxieties don't overwhelm him, but they needle at him; a bed of uncomfortable pines prickling along his back, poking at his throat. ]

Can't answer either question, I'm afraid.

[ Another one. Another mind with emotions and thoughts that calls out to her and drowns out the rest of the low-level hum that everyone else seems to be making around her. There's something bright and fiery about Adra's mind. An intensity that she gravitates towards. Her one good eye takes him in and she hikes the plugsuit under her arm a bit tighter, lips pursed in a frown. ]

Both, I guess. This place is weird.

[ She gives him a few more moments of a look. ]

What are you? I feel like I should know that if we're... I don't know... mind-mates or whatever the Hell they're saying we are.

[ It's all rough edges and sharp, jagged noise. A constant low-level thrum of anxiety, a whispered voice in the back of her head that says she's not good enough. She drowns it out by reminding herself that Cathaway said she was important. Needed.

That she dragged herself out of the mass of humanity so she could be her again. ]

[ Mildly. ]

That's one way to put it.

[ He was angry when the station first spat him up, too; confused and afraid. Now that anger has cooled, hardened into something more useful. If the Light wants him here, then here is where he's going to be. Still, he dislikes the constant press of minds on his own, the irresistible flow of foreign, difficult emotions. Asuka feels like a broken mirror to him, in pieces and liable to cut.

He pats the ground beside him, and breathes out slowly. Opens both eyes. ]

Sin'dorei. Blood elf.

Have a seat.

This is weird.

[ She repeats that and it's more to the air than it is to Adra. True, as far as she's concerned, it's been less then a day since she dragged herself out of the primordial soup of humanity, but still. Meeting aliens and elves and feeling like she's been shoved into a bad novel is... interesting. She's wary and cautious and a part of her wants to rage at everything and anything, especially after her encounter with Misato.

The bruise on her cheek is an ugly purple by now, but she's ignoring it. Someone's already helped her with it and she doesn't want to give Misato the satisfaction of giving in to the pain. There's something familiar in Adra, anyway: something angry and the resentment of the ebb and flow feels familiar. She knows resentment. Thrives on it. So she edges forward and carefully sits, drawing her legs up to her chest, watching him very, very carefully.

He's not much bigger than she is. Maybe an inch or two. Weird. ]

Blood Elf. That's kind of a weird name. You're not vampires or something, right?

[ That's a drawl, a sort of mockery of the name. But she appreciates the imagery.
The color red that springs to mind. Blood and violence and flickers of her Eva and her own private war flutter through her head. ]

...my name is Asuka. Asuka Langley Soryu.

[ He just nods--mmhm, yep, it's weird as hell. Even to his mind, as someone who has seen scores of things that score pretty high on the 'weird shit' meter.

His eyes flick from the bruise on her cheek to the rest of her, to the tension in her muscles, to the confluence of anger and frustration thrumming like a heartbeat through her whole body. He knows that level of stress; knows the toll it takes on body and mind alike.

He thinks to himself that she sounds different when she's not screaming. ]

Not really.

[ His own memories flash through: scenes of destruction and genocide, the dead ravaging the forests of his homeland, the sickness that nearly crushed what thin sliver remained of his people. He exhales slowly. ]

Our name refers to mourning. The blood of the lost.

[ It's a pretty heavy thing, he knows, but true all the same. It's why he wears mostly black and red, even now. A movable funeral that he carries with him everywhere he goes. ]

And I'm Adrasteius.

[ A pause. He lifts his hand, light limning his fingers. ]

Does your cheek hurt?

[ It's her life now, even after Third Impact (maybe especially after Third Impact). She's lost her reason for existing, the object and role that she hurled herself into for the least nine years of her life. She's had to face her own inner demons and even if she hasn't conquered them, she's been forced to accept that they exist. That doesn't make any of this easier. It just means that she's starting over at the bottom rather than being absorbed into the pool of LCL that used to be humanity.

She doesn't regret that choice, though.

So frustration and anger keep her going. Maybe more than they used to, when she could pretend everything was fine. When she was actually at the top of her game and at the top of the world. When things were "normal". She glances at Adra, listens to him for a moment. She's not sure she cares about the name or about him, but it's hard not to. Especially since he feels so open to her and she to him and it's pitifully easy for memories to come slipping through the cracks and open her up to the apocalypse that consumed his world. ]

Right. That sounds familiar.

[ She's a bit sardonic. She grew up in a world that had survived the apocalypse. Only there was another one coming and there was nothing they could really do to stop it. ]

Adrasteius. [ She rolls the name over on her tongue. Weird. ] I'm gonna call you Adra.

[ Easier. And a way for her to project dominance, at least for a little while. Her pride is still smarting from her exchange with Misato - and so is her cheek, but it's feeling better. She blinks at the glow that suddenly lights up his hand. ]

I - well, yeah. But Aloy gave me some weird herbal goop and now it's not as bad.

[ She's calm. At least on the outside. Wary and ready to bolt at a moment's notice. ]

...how much of that did you actually get? [ The fight, she means. It's strange for her to think about how she's sharing thoughts with other people. She doesn't want to be, but she doesn't know how to stop it. Something else to keep her anger pulsing. ]

[ He's surprised by their shared apocalypse, though in the next instant he thinks he shouldn't be. Azeroth doesn't have the monopoly on suffering. Draenor alone proved that.

He just shakes his head at the nickname. Of all the things that rankle him in this world, what he's called barely registers. He's so used to much worse than that, from so many different quarters--and he knows his full name is ornate, anyway, especially to a human tongue. ]

Whatever's easiest.

[ His fingers curl slightly. The Light hasn't faded, but he senses her animal instinct, her rabbit fear. He doesn't want to scare her. ]

I could get rid of it, if you'd like. And as for your fight ...

[ Adra's long ears twitch. ]

More than I wanted, let's just say.

[ Which is: any of it. ]

[ People with glowing hands is weird, OK? Not much weirder than some of the shit she's seen, but still pretty weird. She doesn't back away from him though (or his weird hands). She considers his offer. She could get rid of it and there'd be a little less pain. Asuka wants to keep it, though. Evidence that Misato Katusuragi was the first one to lash out. Evidence that she couldn't handle the truth.

Adra can probably feel that level of loathing seeping out of her. ]

No. I'll be fine.

[ And she can parade it around and use it as a weapon. At least for a little while. Her gaze slips to one side and she frowns. ]

Then I guess you know all about me.

[ Which is to say that she's not happy about that. ]

[ Adra is all about not forcing people to do what they don't want to do. The glow fades, and he drops his hand. It's counter to his instinct as a healer--he wants to fix every injury immediately, and as fully as possible--but she's been clear.

Still, that hatred claws at him like a poison. He shuts his eyes briefly. He's felt something like it before. An insidious, all-consuming hate. The kind of obsessive rage that can destroy a person. The Light is his bulwark against that dark pit.

He murmurs. ]

I'll tell you what I know: hatred is intoxicating. But it's acid to the soul.

[ There's something about Adra that's almost soothing; a sense of floating or joy, the distant sound of wind chimes. Asuka wants to resist that. She doesn't want to be calm. Anger has fueled her before in the past. It's kept her going. Even if she doesn't realize it, it burns her up from the inside out. She can only maintain that rage for so long before the mind and the body can't take it anymore.

She has another chance, but she's tapping right back into that wellspring of anger and hate and here she has a target for it. Someone to focus it all on and to bludgeon it with. She purses her lips with a little sneer. ]

Is that from the big book of wisdom or something?

[ She knows he's right, somewhere deep down, so she pulls her legs up against her chest and frowns. ]

She deserves it.

[ Adra's neither perturbed nor deterred. He looks young, hardly more than twenty or so, but he's an old man. He knows, too, the lovely surging of anger. The battery it provides, the clarity. He finds it difficult to deny, even now, after hundreds of years of trying. ]

No. Just experience.

[ He shrugs. ]

Maybe she does. But do you?

[ Do you deserve to suffer? To tear yourself apart, and be torn?

He doesn't think so, of course. He doesn't think anyone deserves that. ]

[ Asuka's fingers tighten against her legs and her expression darkens. It's not exactly angry. It's more of a nervousness and there's another flitter of uncontrolled memory. Lying in a bathtub in a shattered apartment building, waiting to die. Synch rate: zero. A doll hanging by its neck from a rope.

Her voice is a low rasp. ]

Yes.

[ She wants to live. That doesn't mean she doesn't deserve suffering. ]

Ah.

[ He says it very softly. The image of her broken body fills his mind's eye, tears at his gut. His chest tightens with sympathetic pain. He had come close to giving up, once. They all had, in the wake of their terrible losses. Despair is a hungry beast, and its belly was never full. Guilt, too, is a glutton that dogs his steps. Guilt because he survived. Because he drank the demon's blood, trusted his Prince. Sacrificed his integrity for security.

Or so he thought at the time. ]

That's an easy cage to sit in. But the bars aren't so thick.

[ There's something familiar in some of the feelings that filter over from Adra. Guilt and regret and vicious self-loathing. But it's healed over and scabbed in him and in her it's a fresh, gaping wound that won't leave her alone. The bars aren't so thick, he says. She's not so sure. She doesn't know what else to do or where she's meant to turn. She's never been good enough - not for her mother, her father, or any other adult in her life. ]

What do you know about it?

[ Probably enough, but Asuka's climb out of her own particular hole is going to take a while. ]

I'm not sure that matters.

[ He hasn't broken eye contact with her once, not in the whole time that they've been talking. Not since she came into the garden, and he looked up to find her voice. His eyes are bright and burning and fixed on her, as though no one else exists, as though nothing else is important outside of this moment, this conversation.

He could detail his experience for her. He could pull out his history, make sense of the images she's doubtlessly picked up from his mind. ]

What I went through doesn't change what you're going through now.

[ He smiles, ghostly and wan. ]

Besides, I'm old. We'd be here all day.

[ The unerring eye contact is almost a relief. He's acknowledging her existence and that makes all the difference to her. Even if she's not really sure what to make of him or his philosophy. ]

So what makes you think you can offer me advice, then?

[ Her eye narrows in a glare. ]

All I can do is tell you what I've learned.

[ He folds his hands--seemingly delicate and small, just like the rest of him, a body not belied by the deep resonance of his voice--in his lap. He leans forward slightly, and that voice turns sharp, insistent. ]

For example: anger is not wrong. Anger is a weapon. The trouble is, it's double-bladed. You have to know how to use it, or you'll only end up cutting yourself.

[ Asuka knows that, but anger is also all she really knows. She used to fuel herself and drive herself, but it burned out eventually and if she's not careful, it'll happen to her here, too. ]

I know that.

[ Sort of. ]

This sounds like some pop-psychology bullshit...

[ He sighs--a slow, tired exhale. He doesn't really like to talk about himself; he's always lived his life centering the people around him, and not solely out of altruism. It's simply the space where he's most comfortable, where he feels most correct, most useful. ]

My brother was so angry with the world [ and with me, for not giving more than everything I had-- ] that he cut his own throat for the chance to take revenge on it.

[ And that doesn't even strike at Adra's own anger management issues. ]

Like everyone else this world, I draw all conclusions from experience.

[ That sounds uncomfortably familiar in certain ways. Her mother lost her mind, but ultimately what made her commit suicide was having to watch her father parade around with her soon-to-be-stepmother. Maybe her mother thought it was a way to get revenge. Or maybe it was to escape the girl she no longer knew as her daughter. Asuka doesn't know, can't guess at her ultimate motivation.

A swinging corpse, hanging from a noose flashes across her memory. Something she tries to bury before Adra can snatch it out of her head, but she's not at all practiced at this. It's seen from near the ground, the perspective of a child. There's a sense of dread and shame and fear.

What did I do wrong? ]

I'm not going to do something stupid like that.

[ Her voice is harsh; not much sympathy, even if she can feel the tug of pain that accompanies the memory. The mental exhaustion that Adra puts off. ]

I don't want to die.

[ Adra's new, too, and thus has no armor against whatever bleeds from Asuka's psyche. The imagery comes to him unbidden, and the attendant emotions, too. A difficult life. But compassion is more unique than suffering.

He shrugs, and goes on, his tone mild. ]

Well, he didn't stay dead.

Neither did I.

[ Asuka's tone is acid. Her mother did, though. Or most of her. Asuka rediscovered her far too late and the temporary validation and joy that came with it has faded, replaced by bitterness. ]

Don't worry about me. I'm not going to do anything stupid.

[ For certain definitions of stupid. ]

Don't worry about you?

[ He shakes his head. ]

It's far too late for that.

[ He seems completely unperturbed by her tone--or by anything about her, really. ]

Too late? Why?

[ She shouldn't want help, doesn't need it. But she does. She wants people to acknowledge her, to love her, to help her, but she also wants to live alone. She wants to be able to cut herself off so she never has to suffer again - but she's already opened herself to Lavellan.

Her life is a confusing, contradictory mess. ]

Because of this symbiote thing?

Hardly.

[ He doesn't need an intimate hivemind connection to give a fuck. It comes to him naturally. And while he might relate to some of what she's going through--he's actively seeking a way to moderate this overshare link, after all--he still believes that unity and understanding are the greatest possible aims. ]

Nothing about our weird forced bonding affected this conversation. I'd have the same sentiments either way.

[ And the same advice, albeit not based on so many specifics. ]

[hatch log] everything happens so much

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