station72 | [hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

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[hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - The Red Coast
WHEN: DAY :025 - DAY :026
SUMMARY: Somewhere deep in the void between multiverses, a fresh clutch of Hosts hatches; getting them down to Hyrypia proves to be more complicated than usual.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :025

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and the universe and you in it are suddenly different. --No. That's not right. You're you, the universe is as it's always been, and there's no 'suddenly' about it. But it's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or coming up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and yet everything is.

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. Some of these emotions might be 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. There are a handful others very like you here, all of them somehow intimately familiar.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room, the vast Station is quiet and still. It feels for all the world like a shell for some vast dark thing.

Eventually, a sensation manifests out of the hollowness:

PREPARE YOURSELF
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD is sound and sensation: a brilliantly warm shaft of sunlight through smoky glass - a gauzy curtain twitching in some summer breeze - the blooming pleasure of a familiar face after a very long time away. It says or feels like:

( Come meet with me, won't you? )
Where exactly this meeting is supposed to occur isn't immediately clear, but head in the direction that seems correct and eventually Station 72 gets you where you're meant to be: a small grassy lawn in the center of the lush, circular gardens where an aging woman waits on a stone bench. The pin straight sheet of her hair hangs like a graying curtain and the sensation from her is lovely and golden, real delight pouring through her like light through a pinhole camera. She smiles and sets aside the book in her lap.

"There you are. Unfortunately, you won't be here long but we'd like to answer as many of your questions as we're able before you leave this place."

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 other than the people you woke up with there's a distinct lack of company 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 is the most proactive distraction? Otherwise-- well there's plenty of places to get lost...

By the simulated morning, a strange archaic ship has arrived on the Hangar. Its very alien pilots are in the process of unloading-- bodies. No, scratch that, they're clearly still alive, though in some kind of comatose state. One of the pilots - a pale female alien who calls herself Rhan - says, "Well, this is awkward. We were supposed to be done with this already. Uh don't mind us, darling. We'll finish up here and get on our way. In the meantime, why don't you go through your packs and get changed?"

She nods toward two trunks on the hangar deck where assortment of pre-prepared packs are waiting for each new Host. In each pack is a series of items, including a set of beautiful and very all-encompassing robes. Better get comfortable. Not hot on the fabrics or patterns in your pack? Mixing and matching with your new best friends is totally acceptable.

Eventually, you leave the Station. If you're lucky, you might one day make it back.

HYRYPIA - THE RED COAST
LATE DAY :026

A PURPOSEFULLY SUBTLE WELCOME
UNDER THE COVER OF DARKNESS, Collector and Lyr make their way through the barracks where the Hosts on Hyrypia are meant to be sleeping. It's nearing whatever the Hyrypian equivalent of midnight is; if you're awake, all the better. If not? Expect to be roused (gently and silently by Collector, rudely and abruptly by Lyr).

"Get dressed. We're going for a walk."

There's nothing quite so suspicious as bringing a bunch of reinforcements to the planet in the aftermath of a rather public murder, which means a highly ritualized midnight procession of Carbasuchians into the highlands. It's easier to secret a handful of newbies in an anonymous group, right?

That meeting in the dead of night in the rocky wilderness above the Red Coast bears even a passing resemblance to the strange occurrence on DAY :010 is probably just a coincidence. Besides, there aren't any mystery circles burned into the stone and grass here: just a stealth ship materializing out of the black night and touching down in a stony outcropping where it disgorges the freshly hatched (or newly reawakened) Hosts.

((OOC Notes: This log covers the hatch on Day :025 as well as the arrival of new Hosts on Hyrypia late on Day :026. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find additional information pertaining to the Red Coast on the previous mission log (located here); newbies are welcome to utilize that log as well as it occurs within the same time period as the hatch.

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're brand new to the game. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • GAME CALENDAR • MISSION: HYRYPIA • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[Maybe there are pieces of Cathaway that want to say No, nothing like that, but they're so small as to be insignificant - erased by the popular vote of everything else. What use is a lie of convenience or comfort in this situation? So the thought hardly occurs to her before it's slipping away. Instead, the wry lines of Cathaway's expression moderate. She sighs.]

Yes. [She offers the tablet out to Rogue. There are pages of information laid out on the screen - and however it makes sense for Rogue to page through them seems to be how the slim piece of technology operates. (Is that a strange coincidence, or something else? Some other benefit of the thing in her mind?) Regardless, there in the pages of the tablet lay neat blocks of text and illustrative images outlining the mission that lies ahead.] Unfortunately, at the moment we find ourselves fighting defensively - our numbers are small and the priority is to minimize the damage our Enemy can do while simultaneously keeping this Station secret from them.

[She laces her fingers together around the sharp point of her knee, deceptively idle given the topic of conversation.]

The Prince would say it's not much of a war at all, but we disagree.

Very similarly, yes. The creature that hunted us might not have appeared the same as what came for you, but they're all part of the same Enemy force. Most Hosts arrived here after being rescued from otherwise lethal circumstances.

[Most, she says. But-- she touches her fingers to her throat, a clear reference to herself, her own presence on the Station:] It's how we came to be here anyway.

[She listens, perched just half a degree forward on the stone bench so as to be the picture of attentiveness. If she knows any pleasure from him knowing her name already, it's just a flicker compared to the general pleasant quality of her presence. What a novelty - to be happy, to be patient with a boy intent on talking ahead of her, to find this delightful instead of wearying.

(Consider her very pleased with herself. The Prince should be glad to know she's so recovered.)]

It matters to us, actually.

[His name. Consider her pointedly ignoring the rest of it.]

[ That's not the answer he wanted. ]

I can be patient. I'm patient right now, see? S'this patient enough?

[ -- oh, he's not even the slightest bit capable of waiting for the ability to come to him. He'll pursue it, however, with the singleminded viciousness of a boy who has always excelled at the things he sets his mind to, who has been rewarded for his deeds - even when they were simple things. Who despises that now, because it has hindered him, held him back, left him ill-prepared. ]

Teach me. I'm already sick of turning corners and finding out that I've wandered to someone my mind's telling me I ought to recognize.

We do, but we've been told it's rude not to pretend otherwise. [She offers her hand - long fingers, delicate bones, skin goes thin around age-sharpened joints; but there are callouses there at her fingertips and the pad of her thumb, across the base of her fingers. She getting old, not incapable. (Not yet anyway).] Our name is Cathaway. Technically speaking, it's the name for this specific body, but we're aware that's sometimes troubling to very young Hosts.

[Her sedate smile transforms briefly into a grin - undeniably shit eating -, then she moves to lead the way through the overgrown pathways of the vast circular garden. Upright, there's very little to her: she's quite short, narrow through shoulder and wrist. But beyond the most basic shape of her sits something... else. The youngest Hosts on the Station are loud, the buzzing of their minds pressing and pressing. But she is warm and pleasant and removed, the bright outline of her presence defined by some deeper, darker silhouette.

It's not quiet. It feels like the keyhole on a lovely, well-familiar door and behind it some unknown creature has its eye pressed close to spy.]

Bakugo Katsuki. U.A. High, class 1-A.

[ He gives it the way he's used to it; though the symbiote will arrange it, naturally, to make sense to those who give their surname last. Bakugo. That's who he is, a proud, clever young man who doesn't feel an inch of shame for who or what he is. However brightly she focuses on him, he keeps his chin up. Shoulders back. Eyes on hers; wary of what she may try to sell him, but not disinterested in her existence. ]

Do you work for the League?

[ He's curious about that story, although it falls under the purview of "things that will probably keep," so the next point he decides to pursue, instead - ]

Is the "we" royal, or collective?

[ Where he comes from, it would be a stupid question, but the cacophony in his head that he's trying very pointedly to ignore suggests otherwise. ]

It's not like there's anything better to do, right now.

[ This is why he hates playing catch-up, especially when there are adults involved. None of them are pro heroes, none of them understand the immediacy of what he can do, what he has to offer. It's safe to say that, for the moment, he's sulking -- but below that, he's thinking. Going over what he knows, what he does, organizing himself and readying himself to participate.

He's here for a reason, right? It's not like the team was getting anything extraordinary done without him. ]

I'm here to find someone.

[ there's no startle when someone answers him, just the pull of his attention — he knows he hadn't exactly been talking to himself in secret, and anyone that overhears is bound to either think he's talking to the symbiote, to them, or he's just straight-up lost his mind. better to be spoken to aloud than have to deal with the invasive feeling of foreign words in his head, anyway. so he leaves the Theia aside for now, moves on to this because it's easier: ]

Guess I'm two for two, then.

[ he doesn't elaborate, but there's the sense, not deliberately, of more roots tangled up in his head than the symbiote's; another thing he regards similarly as a parasite, an ache behind his right eye that creeps into his temples. his irritation sharpens. ]

You'd think they'd have the courtesy to write one up if they've been doing this for so long. [ he sounds just as bitter as he feels, a paranoia he doesn't bother concealing in the bite of his words. ] They sure don't make 'em user-friendly.

Should have found yourself a corner and lost it quietly if you wanted time.

[ Nobody's come back at him the way that Juno does. They're patient, they're understanding, they're neutral. He's none of these things, this warheaded youth with his own brand of nuclear fission prickling along his skin's surface. Juno snaps back, and a light comes into Bakugo's eyes - contentment, vicious and spiteful as it is. He's even got an inch on the lady, and if he tips his head back just so, he can look down on him with ease. ]

I don't know about you, but I made no such deal. It was a pretty decent set-up: throw the illusion of an impossible threat at you, and then present you with the ideal resolution. There's no devil, just slimy scum that think they can pull one over on me, and that I'll just quietly go along with it. [ He talks big, but there's something in the back of his mind. Something that tastes like sour limes and feels like unrecognized guilt. ]

Lady, you have no idea what I can accomplish in ten seconds.

I'll leave some of her teeth intact, so she can talk.

[ Don't tell him what to do, he's the only one even remotely capable of doing anything right now. ]

Don't tell me you're adverse to applying a little pressure to get those answers.

[ There's another mental nudge, encouraging this time. Like a pat on the back, despite the tense anger he senses there. ]

Lunacy? I suppose lunacy is an element to participating in this journey. Yes, we might all be a bit mad for carrying on with it despite that three have lost their lives along the way.

[ He pauses to shift the instrument to his lap, stretching his freshly recovered right hand, then his sore left. ]

And I am very sorry to hear your family could not make the voyage with you.

[ Whether that is part of his lie, there's a genuine attempt at understanding that rises to meet the boy's anger. He's been transported from his home and everything he knew, which is absolutely something to be angry about.

There is also music to fill the mental silence, playing from across the connection should he wish to listen. Less complicated than what he was practicing before, and more than just a single violin - scores of them play together. It isn't a soothing song meant to calm to change his mood. Rather, it is fittingly dark - one that Gildor hopes might channel that negative energy rather than suppress it. ]

[ it's like a thrumming crescendo and he turns on his heel easily, a figure dyed deep red and black, tall and lean, facing him now. bakugo stands in a posture that overlays against another almost instantly in mind, stubborn and squared off, feet planted firmly like he's ready to take and dole out kinetic energy by the fistful. by contrast, his own posture is sinous and if one could lounge upright it's very much like that, hip and shoulder, even beneath billowing robes. his presence isn't poised to strike, merely observing the green robe in front of him, staring him down behind the veil.

peter smiles, the impression of which is sharp like a predator, but soft like something you'd catch in your own jaws. contradictionp. there you are, it says without words. (tugging of all kinds from the unloading of the ship's very precious cargo of hosts have kept him listening out for something that sounds as strong as elliot does in his mind, tastes just the same).

there's a breath of rest before music held in an artful sort of suspense,

and then too cheerful. ]

I take it the repercussions for doing so are explosive.

[ The incredibly deadpan look he's giving you, Bakugo.

He's not honestly all that keen on that stuff anymore, but the stories he could tell you.

(He's not going to tell you.) ]

Try me.

[ Aloy is taking her own walk, wandering the shore and gazing out over the strange sea. She has never seen an ocean before and the sight still leaves her a little breathless, even if the water is not the color she thinks it should be. The crack of an explosion sets the hairs on the back of her neck upright, though she seems to relax when she notices it's just someone skipping stones in some new way.

Someone she hasn't met before, at that.

She makes her way over towards Bakugo and stands a few feet away, watching as he skips rocks for a few moments more. ]

Hello.

[ A quiet greeting, polite and curious. Who's this new member of their nest? ]

[ They're observing one another.

Even underneath layers and layers of soft material, built-in panels to hide the shapes of their bodies and faces, overlapping to prevent even the most minute sliver of bare flesh from being exposed - from exposing them - he can tell what Black's posture means. A clever, serpentine thing. More like Midnight or Uwabami or Gunhead, with an internal grace and appeal, something fancy, something that catches the eye and distracts. Bakugo's entire being recoils from it, the way one might twitch from a sprig of poison ivy that's been thrown directly into one's lap.

He's allergic, deathly so, to people like Black. Weird people, social people. Chameleonic and composed.

The repercussions, though. Black makes mention of them, and Bakugo snaps. A slow burning thing that finally comes to a crescendo, the feeling of being invaded, strangled by bonds he never asked for. That fighter's stance allows him the mobility, as he lunges forward and takes fists full of Black's robe, seizing hold of him, dragging him down, getting into his face, even if they can't see one another eye-to-eye. Bakugo is a shot fired, fast and direct.

His voice, however, is quiet: ] You heard what I said. I don't want you crying later on 'cause you got hurt.

[ host. he doesn't like the word, feels it in his teeth — wants it to feel wrong where instead some part of him decides it fits. whatever they put in his head is no different to the telepathy that used to sit behind his eye like a tumour. if he's a host, then it's to a parasite that will probably end just as badly as the first one did. hopefully it takes out something less important than his fucking eye this time. ]

Yeah? [ her calm unsettles him in the same way a too-quiet room makes hair stand on end. but he does want a better grasp on the situation: ] So how many poor saps have they roped in?

[ simmering distrust, his arms crossed and fingers tapping restless against his arm. there isn't any hostility in his question, just a sharp-edged cynicism that makes almost every interaction read as one between a victim and a perpetrator to him. ]

[ It'd be a stretch to say Mat's "in-the-know", but he's at least been here for a handful of days at this point. A full few weeks, nearly. Long enough that he's begun to settle, and long enough that his general presence is easy — laid-back, observant in a way that's more passive than it is tactical.

Most of the time. There are exceptions, and this is one of them: sitting at the crest of the beach, on a low hill. The way memories and thoughts lap at his mind isn't unlike the water at the shore, a deceptively calm and careful creep with a vast ocean at its back. He remembers battles on beaches just like this one, open and difficult to defend; ships turned over, burning.

Mat doesn't dwell on any of it, though he's gotten in the habit of idly noting the thoughts instead of ignoring them outright. He's doing just that when something gives him pause — catches like a fish hook, the sudden realization that someone's looking at your answers in the middle of a test. He doesn't throw up a wall in response. The connection goes a bit bristly, irritated, but it's more like a dirty look than a slammed door. ]

( I hope you're new, for your sake. )

[ At least then there's a valid excuse for prying. Sort of. ]

( You should still know better than to stick your nose in someone else's bloody skull. )

[ he rests his cheek on his knuckles as he finds a nearby seat and drapes into it. they say all kinds of things about plants. sing to them, speak to them, they're living things too, aren't they? but the silent attentiveness she'd given them hadn't gone unnoticed.

true there are green, growing things on many of the planets he's been, but none that look like this (humanity has grown out of small things, so it's almost humbling to look between them all.) ]

Necessity? A hobby? A bit of both?

[ The first thing Mat thinks when they come to rest in the fishing town is that he'd kill for a good, properly land-locked village; the second is that he isn't actually that particular, and it only takes a brief tour of the humble buildings and its several bars for him to abandon his reservations altogether.

A sense of déjà vu prickles at the back of his neck more than once. While he's scoping out a vendor's wares or at the sight of the docks, or when he catches a glimpse of tall white towers across the water. It doesn't feel like home, but it feels eerily familiar in a way even the trek across the desert hadn't. Déjà vu tips over into something sharper once or twice — an unassuming stone building torn apart by a blast, docks overrun by women on the backs of strange, scaled creatures.

Still, for the most part it's so blandly comfortable that the stray spark of unabashed curiosity and enthusiasm takes him by surprise. He's only confused for a second, then he rightly nails it as not his. A glance to his left reveals someone as bundled up in robes as he is, transfixed by the jewelry lined up in the cart in front of them. ]

You'd do better with a necklace under all those robes. Or a bracelet — I'd pass on the rings.

[ Irony quirks at the very edge of her lips. The natural set of her mouth is too sullen for it to immediately appear as a smile, but the idea of it is there: a glimmer in the eye. Patient, but so impatient. She purses her lips briefly, licks the lower one. ]

I am happy to instruct you, but even with instruction it will take time. Our new powers are like muscles, they build over time.

[ But it's rare to find someone so eager. So many were so quick to immediately squander the new senses they possessed, to deny them. She has her own eagerness, at the idea of shaping this ball of fire into something finely honed, sharp. She does love her tools. ]

[ She is an unsettling young woman, one with deep sorrow etched into her grey blue eyes. She's seen horror and carnage beyond the imaginations of most, and this -- the calm, like a witness -- is how she has kept her psyche together through the starvation and the torture and the death. It is a tenuous, practiced calm that when broken exposes something much more impetuous and dangerous. ]

Many. More, in the past, our numbers dwindle.

[ She looks away from him, out into the empty halls of the Station with an expression of mourning. ]

I have personally met forty or fifty.

[ Pidge wants to agree, but she can't. Not entirely. There's the sense of having someone else tied into her. There are roots and tendrils and bits and pieces in her thoughts that aren't her anymore - or not entirely her, anyway - and it's strange and a bit frightening. Reassuring in a way, but frightening. The tug of the brood bond is strong and she's still sorting it out, figuring out what it means, what's going to happen, how they're all going to make it work, so many things happening at once.

She reaches up and pinches the bridge of her nose through her veil. ]

Yeah, definitely not user friendly. They kinda just toss us in the deep end. Maybe if they explained how they worked, I could actually do something about them. Right now I'm just... flying blind.

[ A soft sigh of irritation follows. ]

Has some upsides, but I don't know if it's really worth it.

[ Both, neither. ]

It is what I have always done. Mine was the only garden left in my world, after it was burned.

[ She has no shame nor reluctance to talk about her world, but it was also a topic that other hosts tended not to fully grasp, unless she brought them in: inflicted it upon them telepathically, flavored it with the realness of her nightmarish memories. She has been known to, to share, but then sometimes she is not in the mind to hurt the other hosts that way. ]

The Godking's garden.

[ it's something. a handle that's more of a makeshift sling for emotion, but peter's always been good about pretending he's more than he is, believing it too. the sad truth is, he can barely contain it, all this grief anf guilt, and no doubt there's bleeding sensation regardless, loud between the both of them. but it's better than juno spilling over without some kind of stopper.

his wrist feels like a vise, but one peter doesn't want to be free from. his other hand catches his elbow. digs a little with his thumb. are you real but without words, just stepping closer because the proximity makes this easier, makes him ache a little less from the mounting pressure. they feel separate but together in a different way now, divided. juno doesn't feel like elliot, wound up in him too tightly to untangle.

it's almost a little disheartening.

peter's fingers flex against him, thumb smoothing out over a gloved hand.

—anyone that died, that's— ]

Beyond your control. [ regretfully, but not at juno, and tenderly than he should probably offer him, but peter can't find it in himself to be bitter or angry or anything but rueful: ] I need you to focus.

[ each word enunciated slowly, clearly. he's no doubt that juno can hear him, doesn't need to be spoken to like a child, but it's to cement the words in his mind somewhere among the guilt the comes off of him. less so than before (but because he siphons it into himself, isn't that so). peter's veil sways back and forth as he shakes his head, clutches onto juno in a way he privately wishes he could have in a moment long past sunrise, but knows wouldn't have been right in the end. ]

Whatever it is that's happening... is not something we can change by fixating on it in this moment. Do you understand?

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[hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

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