[hatch log / mission: hyrypia] the winds that will be howling at all hours

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - Naerstone House
WHEN: DAY :002 - :003
SUMMARY: New hosts hatch on the Station, are briefed, then make their way to Hyrypia to join the rest of the hosts… while they attend a very important history lesson.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :002

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP are are suddenly changed. --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 surfacing up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and everything is because 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.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small, faintly hexagonal chamber with 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 calmed. There's something peaceful about waking up here - like you belong. 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. A matching dread. An easy comfort. 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 nearby 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.In fact there are lots of you and none of them are the strangers they should be. Some even seems like people you've known for a very long time.They are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a hollow shell.

--Or it does until a voice separates itself from the white noise in your head:


BRIEFING
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD isn't really a voice at all. It's the warm tang of camaraderie, tinged with a flash of impatience like ticking hands on a clock face and a flicker of wonder: a falling star. It says:

( My, you're all very fresh aren't you? Unfortunately, the multiverse waits for no spring chicken. Once you've figured out which way's up, won't you all join us? )
Join 'us' where is the question. And yet, once you're ready to meet the owner of the voice in your mind, your footsteps simply lead you there naturally. Two strangers sit in a small circular briefing room - a tall being covered in short brown fur with a rigid demeanor, and a pale alien with yellow washed frills at her jaw and throat who is smiling cheerfully.

"Hey there, sunshine," says Rhan, her frills humming as she speaks. "Why don't you take a seat so we can get started?"

[ooc note: please see here for the catch-all briefing thread]


THE STATION
WITH A LITTLE UNDER 24 HOURS before it's time to make the trip to Hyrypia, this is as good an opportunity as you're going to get to familiarize yourself with Station 72 before you leave it. There's plenty to see, but a distinct lack of people to make conversation with. It's lonely and quiet and there's a sensation of dust gathering even where there is none. Maybe studying the briefing files on your databank and going over your mission kit is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

HYRYPIA - NAERSTONE HOUSE
DAY :003

MEETING
A SINGLE SHIP LANDS in a field the color of burnished gold, returning to the place it had until late the night before occupied. It's carefully inserted beside dozens of other spacecraft bearing more than faint similarities, though each has its own unique aesthetic. When the gangplank drops, the loud engines powering down, it reveals--

New hosts. Seven fresh faces - obscured as they are in layers of intricate fabric - are led down the gangplank by Rhan There to greet them is a number of other hosts - any who answered to the sweet crystalline ring of Collector’s voice in their heads hardly a half hour earlier, speaking with certainty born of truth:

( Rhan and Siva’co are returning. Shall we see what stories they have to tell? )

Despite the solidarity that both combined groups provide, there's a feeling of eyes here. A number of guards along the edge of the shuttle field are watching the reunion like hawks. Better perhaps to return to the apartments where they'll be able to speak in private and teach the new hosts what it is that has been learned since their arrival. --Or explore, for those who prefer not to rest. Naerstone House's grounds are vast and they are almost entirely open to the parties of the pilgrims to explore.

THE PERFORMANCE
AS THE SINGLE RED SUN of Hyrypia dips low on the horizon there is a long, low, mournful sound. A deep bell-- or a horn? Or maybe it's something else entirely, but the call is heard and answered as any nearby servants inform the guests of the house:

“There will be a performance of the First Journey in a quarter turn. All guests are invited to attend.”

There's no mystery as to where the event is occurring. A steady trail of guests and servants lead out past the Veranda into the central garden where a number of pillars have been mounted and a large tiered platform festooned with with numerous draped curtains and abstract representations of trees and mountains - a great stage - now sits. The stage is surrounded by numerous low settees and tables, piles of thick cushions and richly colored rugs around which guests can be found clustered, lounging while sipping thick, syrupy drinks.

Each table is illuminated only by a single glowing orb at its center. Otherwise, as the sun sets it pitches the garden into darkness as even the castle itself has been left unlit. There are no lights in distant windows or on Naerstone House's high walls; these small orbs and the glitter of stars in the black sky might very well be the only points of light in the whole universe.

The allotted time passes and the performance begins. A sun rises over the stage. It's a much larger, more intricate glowing orb and reveals a number of players dressed far more simply than the Hyrypians the hosts have met. They wear complex machine masks upon their faces that shutter into different expressions as their hands flitter across their faces: dramatic caricatures to accompany the droning sound of their singing voices as they unfold the tale at the center of the performance - the one which drives this pilgrimage and for the Nest's very presence in the universe at all. It's the story of lost Rabadoceans coming to a planet near barren intent on brutalizing them - about loss and hardship until finally a single player separates from the rest. The orb of the sun over the stage turns, it's mechanical face shifting and resetting to indicate the passage of time as the very central platform of the stage begins to turn so that this lone player might walk. And walk. And walk through deserts and scrub land, through dark woods and dark caves, against the wind and with it. Through it all, the orb over the stage slowly lowers until at last this lone player can take it in their hands.

It cracks like an egg and brilliance streams from it. Braziers catch fire in the darkness. The garden illuminates itself. Every light in Naerstone House comes to life.

With that, the silence of the crowd breaks. There is applause -- each culture in its own unique fashion -- and then there is a rise of chattering conversation as the guests are served several small dishes and talk about the show they’ve just seen - and whatever possible clues it might give to the pilgrimage they themselves would soon be undertaking.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts as well as the evening's performance. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find a more detailed overview of the host hatching process HERE and additional setting information about the Station HERE. Please be sure to review the MISSION: HYRYPIA ooc information. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

v.

[wrackful]

[The black cloud of Murphy's mental presence shifts as she approaches - not dispersing, nor growing larger, but more opening to the sense of the familiar that she carries. His poor mood isn't directed at her, no matter that her arrival might have set it off, and he makes no move to avoid her. There'd be no point in that anyway. He'd have to say hello some time, Clarke likely to push the issue if she got it in mind to do so. Might as well get it over with.]

( Depends. )

[Dry, but not cutting. He assumes she hadn't realised it was him - just another Host, wrapped up in fabric - and there's something in his tone that's almost deliberately giving her room to recognise him.]

( Have you managed to get a lid on your brain yet? )

[skaikru]

( You tell me. )

( which, essentially means no. at least not in any tangible way she's managed to measure, aside from the relief of being around people who've been at this longer than she; older hosts who've erected mental barricades and had the good sense of human decency not to drag through her mind with a rake. but clarke is trying. despite the very blatant wave of pleasant surprise at inadvertently seeking out the one other actually familiar person with whom she'd not had a proper reintroduction to, she's trying.

settling in beside murphy comes with the added weight of poorly controlled emotions; compartmentalized and thoroughly ignored, but not completely walled off. clarke is still a wash of questions, concerns, and frustration, but it's all tinged in the heady light of post coital bliss reunion with lexa. it's enough to, at least momentarily, overshadow everything else. )

( I'm sorry about earlier. )

( for the hallway. she gets emotionally messy sometimes, they all know this. )

[wrackful]

( Don't worry about it. This isn't exactly a great mission for newbies to get dropped in on. )

[Unbothered, though there's a curl of some blame there, directed elsewhere than Clarke. He doesn't consider anything about the earlier moment at the door to have been unique to her, and he doubts she was - or would be - the only almost-slip.

Cathaway should have kept them on the station. But he can already imagine how she'd respond to that: the exact same as she had on why any of them were being sent on this one at all.]

( You'll want to work on that, by the way. ) [One gloved hand lifted, a lazy little gesture up by his head. Mental walls, he means.] ( Things aren't going to stay this quiet. )

[There's a ring of certainty in it. One rooted in a low, steady fear.]

[skaikru]

( she's been working on it, with the walls. has taken to heart the brief lessons on focus from shiro, but concentrating on metaphorically burying all of her thoughts in a dirt grave on earth while simultaneously holding a conversation is proving a little difficult. being calmer helps; being grounded by bellamy's presence and conflictingly elated by lexa's has put a temporary stopper in those darker thoughts that had leaked around all her hatchmates. and sitting with murphy, who is collected if not a little on edge, that helps too. if all else fails, they can simply zero in on the mission at hand. )

( You're expecting all this to end badly? ) ( a question that isn't really a question; an agreement, more so, because clarke certainly expects mishaps and danger. something like subterfuge against an enemy powerful enough to wipe out entire planets doesn't feel like it's going to cut it. )

[wrackful]

[Murphy gives her a look, and though she can't see it, the mental impression is there: dry, a little derisive. It isn't cutting, though. He can feel her expectations chiming exactly the same chords as his.

Maybe that should be surprising. Faced with it directly, though, it really isn't.]

( You didn't think this place was going to be different to back home, did you? )

[He doesn't mean just this planet, this mission. He means the Nest as a whole.]

[skaikru]

( she'll see your dry, derisive face murphy, and raise you a deadpan attempt at humor. )

( Not after waking up in space and dropping down on a potentially dangerous planet we could all die on. )

( sure, the aliens are new. and the symbiote. but was it really? once upon a time, less than two weeks ago, lexa had jolted from sleep and told clarke that the commanders before her spoke to her in her sleep. when the flame had burrowed into clarke's own neck and she'd blinked blearily into a new form of consciousness, it'd been with the pressure of other souls in the back of her skull; with confidence and decisiveness, certainty in her actions, and a plan. whether that had been becca or lexa, she'd not been able to parse out before taking the chip.

the station was more advanced than the ark (or at least better made). it made a sort of round about sense that the mental additives would be too. )

[wrackful]

[Curls of amusement rise, sardonic but genuine. This is easy, maybe easier than it should be, with her so new. But the pieces of familiarity fall into place just like they had with Bellamy. It's almost comfortable.]

( Should've seen the last two places. )

[Glimpses flicker: Concordia's shining buildings, neon brights, crowds and crowds of people; Waypoint Shril pulsing and shifting with thousands of different races, all of them enraptured in some way by the overwhelming insanity of the Aurora Blue Arena contest.]

( Actually could've used you in Concordia. Trying to get the bug cut out might've gone better with some real med knowledge. )

[A thread of bitterness tangled through that, but again, it's not directed at her.]

[skaikru]

( they're not that close, and it feels wrong to try to soothe whatever undercurrent of thought has murphy soured and angry. by this point, clarke had essentially accepted that's just who he was, but that does nothing to quell the tendrils of concern, poorly contained. she's turning her head to actually look at him through the obscuring black cloth over her eyes, like the folds of fabric wrapped around would give away the same tells as his face. )

( You tried to get it out? )

( like okay man she's been here less than 48 hours and hasn't completely backburnered the idea of shocking the crap out of herself to short circuit the symbiote like they had the chip. but even without being expressly told the details of the trek into brain surgery territory, clarke can tell it had been a bad idea. )

( Tell me you didn't try to cut into the back of your head by yourself. )

[wrackful]

[There's a mental impression, again, of the look she can't see he's giving her: flat, unimpressed. Do I look like an idiot.]

( I kidnapped a brain surgeon to do it. )

[And he still stands by this being a solid plan. Not a good one, but necessary to the end he'd wanted to achieve. There hadn't exactly been any other options on the table, just like how there hadn't been any since.]

( She managed to call security on us. We landed in jail, but we got out. Obviously. )

[And this is the bitterness. The failure of it. The chance lost. He can't even know for sure that anything Kulap had said to them had been true, or just what they wanted to hear, keeping them placated while security bore down on them.]

[skaikru]

( and again, she'll match the tone of unimpressed: mouth in a thin line, barely restraining an exasperated sigh. stupid? maybe not. but reckless seemed like a safe bet. speaking of reckless friends — )

( We? )

( there's that sigh, exhaled sharply through her nostrils. she could hazard a guess at who his accomplice in crime could have been, and blows over any response; content to piece the smaller pieces together through assumption, and move on to more important questions. )

( Did you at least learn more about it? Even if you couldn't get it out? ) ( her tone is edged by anxiety, dragging up the brief discussions of the symbiote she'd shared with kaji over a half assed game of chess. it was a living thing, different than the chip, different from the flame. her hopes of nerfing their unwelcome brain bug with a haphazard emp had been rather spectacularly quashed, but clarke still stubbornly clung to the hope there was some way to fight the thing. it's a slap in the face, coming so close to freeing themselves of one parasite that trekked through the neural pathways, only to be saddled with another. )

[wrackful]

( I had a scan. I can show you how to do them, back up there. )

[The memory rises for her, the first scan a 3D rendering on a datapad, native to Concordia. He'd looked at it, over and over, enough times to memorise the details: the symbiote an almond shaped mass near the brain stem, the image - the scanner - not designed to examine it closer, but there, if fuzzy, the signs of it sprouting.]

( She said she could cut it out without killing me. But it's too late now, even if she was telling the truth, and it'll be too late for yours by the time we're anywhere they even know what brain surgery is. )

[The image shifts as he talks, fades into another, a different place, the Station's strange lighting. Two thin rods held a few handspans apart, a model between made of thin white lines like strands. And darker, as though a dye had been applied, the almond now a nexus within a tangle of thin tendrils reaching, starting to spread forward into the rest of the brain.]

( It grows, Clarke. All the time. It's like some kind of... screwed up brain plant. )

[For all that he called it a bug. But that had fit with the idea: symbiote, parasite. He'd imagined something like a crab, to begin with. Something in one mass that could be killed and removed. But nothing was ever that easy, and suddenly the cloud that's been gathered to him all day condenses, pressed down into something identifiable, heavy and black. Anger. Defeat. Grief.]

( I haven't found another way. And those two... )

[A look over the seats at Bellamy standing guard at some other Host's elbow, Lexa seated, recognisable in her posture alone. Bitterness swells, but in the moment all he can remember is Clarke's tears in Polis, and he swallows the worst of it back down.]

( Let's just say I'm the only one actually looking. )

[skaikru]

( clarke is staring straight ahead at the staging area, but her gaze is unfocused. hazy, shifting, glued to the projection of those bitter memories. the three dimensional scan in particular draws her attention, a map of tendrils wrapped tight like ivy around passive plant life. she's reminded of the bite of the flame as it had drilled into her neck, painfully aware of the rough and gnarled scar tissue that had healed over along her vertebra while she slept. but this wasn't the same; this wasn't technology they could hack, nor a simple tumor that could be removed. not at the size and growth rate.

it's hard not to follow murphy into his despair. harder not to ask questions neither of them would likely have the answers for. how long until they ceased being their own persons? until the symbiote started to impede on their memories and sense of self? until they lost where one conscious ended and another began? ripping herself from that path of thinking is a physical affair; demands she exhale sharply, and readjust her posture. sit up straighter and readjust her attention, honing in on the waves of misery rolling off murphy like a waterfall. her own sorrow is temporarily waylaid. )

( Hey. If we can fight it, we will. )

( there's no plan of attack to be shared here. clarke doesn't know where they'd start to finding a solution for their parasitic companions, but her tone carries conviction. they'd scraped through life as it was, narrowly surviving every curveball earth and space alike had thrown at them, and this was just the next one. what she lacks in terms of ideas, clarke more than makes up for in the palpable determination to this find one.

if feeling the dedication in her thoughts isn't enough, she's raising a hand to grasp his shoulder, squeezing lightly. )

( We'll figure this out, too. )

( like always. )

[wrackful]

[Like this, Murphy can almost feel how she does it. The moment where there's a conscious decision to be the Clarke that did that, always pushed forward, made the choices, made people follow her. It means there's more behind it, under it, but that isn't a surprise. She's still human.]

( That's a big if, Griffin. )

[But there's something relenting in it, all the same. Some spark of something which could be called belief, maybe. The situation's impossible, but he's seen what Clarke does with impossible situations. Alien brain bugs might still be the one to beat her, but he isn't ready to lay his bets yet.

So he takes a breath. Accepts, on some level, the reassurance in her hand on his shoulder. Shifts to relax more in his seat again.]

( I can help you with your walls. If you want. )

[Bellamy leaking all over the place was more than enough to deal with. She wasn't going to be much good if she ended up like that.]

[skaikru]

( that level of acceptance, belief — of trust, that's enough. some of the initial palpable tension has melted, given way to something that couldn't be called content, but was still all the more comfortable. clarke lets out a breath, like that sigh is the marked closure of their deal; the final cementing of their briefly acknowledged plans to wage war on the symbiotes. one more light squeeze of her fingers, and she's withdrawing her hand back into her lap. )

( If you have suggestions, I'll take them. )

( and gladly. she'd had a taste of silence whilst holding hands with shiro. it was enough to set the basis for craving a little solitude in her own mind. there were miles of rocky emotional terrain to climb still, and clarke recognizes the benefit of keeping some of those thoughts to herself. )

[wrackful]

( Not really a suggestions kind of thing. )

[Curls of amusement, again, but not sharply directed at her. She's been here a day. Expecting any of the new arrivals to be able to wrap their heads around what's going on inside now would be stupid.

And by the same line, expecting her to pick it up right now would be the same. She might manage it. It wasn't like they'd ever had the luxury of time to figure things out on the ground. But they have the time here, if only a little.

She's going to need to get used to that, too.]

( Later. )

[There's some kind of performance to watch now, anyway.]

[skaikru]

( there's the urge to pick — to push and pull, prod and annoy until there's a sliver of the instant gratification that would be mastering her own mind. the sooner she gets that sense of control, the sooner she could get her feet under herself; dive headlong into the mission, get them off this planet, back onto the station, back... home? that's still a far off thought, the sort that drags at the raw wound in her pride, still too fresh to be called homesickness. but bellamy had mentioned returning like it was inevitable, and damn if his hope wasn't contagious.

clarke wants to learn now — if there's no suggestions, then how? — but relents. with a huff. turns her attention to the stage, with the bright lights and dimming background. right, there was a performance to watch. as wrapped up in their thoughts as she'd gotten, clarke had almost forgotten why the entirety of naerstone had gathered in the gardens in the first place. she shifts as his attention seems to, moves to sweep her robes around her legs and stand. )

( I won't disturb you. )

( but there's a pause in the moment before actually taking her leave. poised on the edge of the sofa and struck with the dormant need to know the truth. )

( Murphy? ) ( struck with a renewal of that hurt. the frustration that'd ebbed in proximity to bellamy, then been totally eclipsed in the wake of lexa. still, it had run bone deep, and eaten at her resolve. some facts needed to be heard from the source, even if fear of the outcome made the question hard to form. clarke persists after a moments swirl of dark, downtrodden thoughts. ) ( Did we really find the kill switch? )

[wrackful]

[Honestly, he hadn't really expected her to leave, but her moving to do so isn't that much of a surprise. They weren't friends, not beyond it being the easiest descriptor for skaikru, members of the 100, companions in witnessing and surviving the screwed up crap they'd had to deal with on Earth. The last time Murphy had sat next to her with no motive except to drink and talk had been right after the massacre at the grounder village, and she'd made her feelings pretty damn clear. He knows things aren't the same now. But that doesn't mean they're totally different, either, which is why he doesn't bother to point out she isn't disturbing anything. He just lets her go.

But then she stops, asks something he'd just assumed she knew, and he has to laugh. A little incredulous. A little bitter, and more than a little resigned to this: always knowing something someone else was missing.]

( Guess I'm the only one who remembers how that all ended, huh? )

[When Bellamy had confronted him with this question, he'd been five minutes down on Concordia, still wearing the lingering pieces of caution and paranoia and distrust. He'd pried at Bellamy's mind, certain in that moment that the one piece of familiarity he'd found wasn't anything of the sort; a trick, a trap.

He doesn't need to do the same with Clarke. But he still reaches memory out to her alongside his words, lets the throne room in Polis unfold for her.]

( You found it. )

[The suddenness of it being over. ALIE's soldiers fallen, all reeling in the first grim moments of freedom. Murphy pulling his hand free from Ontari's cracked-open chest, black to the elbow, Clarke's face as she said thank you, and--

He cuts it, there. There's enough for her answer, for her to know she saved the world, again. She doesn't need to see how the Enemy came for him, right in those moments after.]

[skaikru]

( it feels like watching a movie that's abruptly cut short, but it's enough. feels like letting out a breath clarke hadn't realized she'd been holding, but lacking the waves of relief she'd expected. it's enough, but was it really? knowing the facts, knowing the outcome of her venture into the city of light didn't do much to alleviate the twisted tension in her chest, not when she so clearly remembers almost dying on the damp concrete streets. not when she remembers running away from the danger.

but there's no deception in his memory. none that clarke can pick out, at least, and none that she wants to. still, she needs to sit and mulls over the visuals presented; lingers a little longer than necessary on ontari's open chest cavity, the black bubble of blood beneath her nose from his eyes. you, he says. you, bellamy had said as well. but that wasn't how it looked, and wasn't how it felt. )

( Not by myself. )

( no, there'd been the spirit of the commander pushing up against her consciousness. her mother to one side, bellamy to the other; octavia, (raven,) even pike, and murphy. it's easy enough to tell what he'd done, how he'd saved the mission and most likely her life. clarke feels the weight of a thank you she's apparently already said sitting heavily on her tongue, but swallows it. stands. leaves the impression of fleeting acknowledgement and gratitude — thank you for telling me, thank you for being there — before peeling off through the crowd before the underscore of guilt becomes the loudest component of her thoughts. )