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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[ I'm fine is clearly a lie. Or at least a very creative interpretation of the truth. Pidge doesn't really judge him for it - everyone says they're fine, even when they're not. She can feel the turmoil and after a moment, she shrugs. She's trying to defuse the sense of awkwardness that's in the air. She wants to help. She knows how weird and scary and frightening the first few days... or weeks... or months... tend to be. ]

Yeah. You kinda have to practice until you learn how to adjust the volume. It's... weird. I know.

[ She eyeballs him from behind her layers of veils. Looking for someone? He's in the wrong place, then. Not like they were going anywhere but here. And who knew when this mission would actually be over? She snorts and glances back out to sea. ]

Find someone? I don't think you're gonna find them here if they're not here already.

[ Then again, Ikari and Kaji both showed up, so who even knows. ]

Is that why you said yes? So you could find someone?

[ Getting off that damn airship has improved Annie considerably already. There had just been something about being cramped up inside that place that had driven her to sit in the bar and drink until it was over. She thinks the damn arts and crafts are folksy as absolute shit, but hey. It's something to do. Something to distract her from the raging hangover she's given herself. There's something almost cathartic in surviving the day in such a miserable state, although that catharsis won't come until later. Right now: she's nauseous and her head is pounding. ]

( I'm definitely gonna puke if I get in that boat... )

[ If you lie enough, you can almost believe it. Which is the story of his life, really, and old habits die hard. ]

How long did it take you?

[ Or should the question be, how long is it taking you? She definitely seems to have been around long enough to have some sense of what she's talking about, but he can't be sure. ]

[ By "teach me", he means "show me, and get out of my face". There's little room for him to parse subtleties, and elegant gestures like hers give him hives. Even now, he asks her for her experience, because she's the first and most immediate one that he has come across who has it. The sense that: if not here, then someone else lingers between them. ]

You don't have a crash course?

[ He can't -- conceptualize her. She's frosty, reminds him a bit of some of the more distant kids in his class, the ones he doesn't honestly care to get to know. ]

I'm on a time crunch here. I got other things that need to be done.

[ smh he's so tacky ]

[ Her smile becomes a bit more noticeable, imperfect teeth in a charming, crooked smile. ]

There is no shortcut to what we learn, as hosts.

[ It would be painful. A test of endurance both physical and emotional. What would happen to this little spirit? Would he burn himself up trying to reach so much farther than his mind could tolerate? Or would he blossom. ]

-- lost their lives?

[ People have died. The thought seems to strike him hard, a well-placed blow to a cluster of nerves - an echoing illness, rippling out further and further from him, even as he turns his focus from the dead to reigning in his own mind. Just enough, so that it doesn't start brushing up against anyone else's, to keep him from having to feel out their emotions and recollections. Three, at the least, have died. Among the sagging, tired corner that he can feel in the distance ( the already-dead, among the nest, though he knows nothing of them, and cannot truly recognize the sensation for what it is ), there is a fresh ache. Someone recently lost, one of this "nests" own.

In that moment, his anger is directed at this stupid "mission" they're on. The fact that a loss such as that was not grounds for pulling those still alive out of danger. Instead, more people were sent down to the planet's surface. ]

Quit it, this is serious.

[ The music's not his style, even if it does dip into something a little harsher, a little closer to what pumps through his headphones. A little closer to something with a deep bass, a heavy beat, something he feels in his pulse and chest, more than his ears. ]

Why haven't you all been taken out of here? You meant to tell me our lives are, what? Collateral damage?

[ Honestly, he's a former middle school bully and egotistical genius. The stories that Joshua could tell him might make milk curdle, but it's likely that Bakugo can handle most of it. ( It's okay, please don't tell him. He doesn't want to Bond With You Anyways!! You're weird and something in his head keeps telling him No, You're Not, Become Close. ) ]

What, you gonna' get in my way?

If I think you're going to screw it up, then yes.

[ Very flatly. He doesn't have much use for posturing. It's a waste of energy. ]

I don't think it'll take much to get information out of this, anyway. She seems... [ A pause and a frown. How he's so sure of this, he doesn't really know, but - ] ...forthcoming isn't the right word. But I don't think anyone here is trying to hide anything.

[ am former spy, can confirm. Or at least offer an informed opinion. ]

[ there's resistance to the idea of somehow stopping, like standing in the current of a fast-flowing river and trying not to let it buckle you — not pushing against Nureyev, but against Juno, and the feeling of it bleeding over as he digs his heels in for some fraction of composure. Juno's grief has a terrible gravity to it that he's never been able to get free of himself. he doesn't think he can now, not when it's this bad, this kind of loss (like home, like Ben, like the HCPD) but.

but, he can keep it. Nureyev is right, this isn't the time. he can add it to the pyre and just let that burn a little higher and that's— that's going to consume him sooner rather than later, it just won't be now. he inhales and exhales, deep, shaking breaths. doesn't let go of Nureyev's wrist. god, everything in him fucking hurts, his chest and his head and his stupid cybernetic eye. ]

Yeah. [ it croaks out of him, tired down to his bones. ] Yeah, I got it.

[ his panic simmers low enough that he could hide it if there weren't people in his head, if he didn't know that he's pressing those feelings up against other people's minds without even being aware. he always comes back down faster when there's someone to be sharp with him; Sasha and Mick, even Nureyev has done it before, breaking down Juno's paranoia when he was desperate to have a reason not to trust him.

—which strikes him, suddenly: he's making Nureyev calm him down. Nureyev, who has a dozen reasons never to want to see him again, who probably hates this, and Juno has less than no right to reach out to him as an anchor. he fucked that up already. all along the seam where their minds meet, the dark terror that Juno had been mired in fractures like light through crystal, bright and sharp and splintering, but so easy to see in all its individual parts. guilt and remorse and so many tiny shards of self-loathing; apology that he can't put into words because he knows he can't be forgiven; love in such intensity it burns. he can't do this to him. Nureyev deserves better than that, better than Juno fucking Steel crawling back to him after what he did.

he uncurls his desperate grip on Nureyev's wrist — can't quite summon the will to move away yet, so he stays. ]

How'd they get you?

[ everyone has common elements, but he's learnt by now that the crisis is always different. and there's anger, solid and protective for the thought that they did to Nureyev what they did to him, gave him a choice that could never really have been a choice. come with me or die. ]

[He doesn't bother explaining, there. For once. Because, sour and all, it's her. He had cared, in a way, for her.]

[And if she came back, intact, for lack of a better word, then there's hope for others.]

(Welcome back, Ilde.)

[ Hmm. Something to be dug up there, but she'll pursue that more subtly than demanding he tell her now. ]

( Thank you, Shiro. )

[ What else would she even say. She's not going to let anything more negative slip past her curtains, already reigning back her disapproval for the idea of forgetting. She is too much a zealot, a martyr, for forgetting. Too vengeful too. ]

( I'm glad you've been well in my absence. )

[ Is she though. It might be convenient to her: to start anew with fresh hosts who have never seen her instability. ]

With... your eye.

[He can't help the note of disbelief there. The uncertainty. Granted, it's all that leaks through. He's too used to keeping his shields clamped down on his thoughts. His right hand curls, though, out of reflex.]

[Maybe this new face isn't the only one who has conversations with body parts...]

Sorry. I'm Shiro.

[As he extends his left hand, in greeting.]

It's okay. It's noticeable for everyone who wakes up here, at first.

[And he loosens his hold on his shields enough to where she'll know he's telling the truth. It really is all right. He doesn't mind. There are, after all, worse feelings to witness.]

[Then he's promptly blinking, a few times.]

I ... no? It's fine.

[Sugar????]

[That... is a kid. He's not sure what he was expecting, but this isn't it. He blinks a few times, automatically sitting up a little straighter. Taking stock of what he's seeing. Unfamiliar face. A lot of green. The set of his expression more like someone used to looking for a fight than not.]

[He's sort of glad he apologized first, if only to avoid said fight. He's not in the mood.]

Came with the hair and the right hook.

[A deadpan response. Probably meant to be humorous. If, you know, he was in the presence of someone used to his brand of humor.]

I'm Shiro. [And he offers up his left hand in greeting. He's not veiled anymore, but the gloves are still over his hands. Out of habit.]

[ the persistent conversation gets him to finally turn and look at whoever interrupted his bickering with the Theia, and there's very little change of his expression to acknowledge it. narrowed eyes, a tension in his mouth that belies his tired irritation without the need for telepathy. ]

It's fine. [ and it is. he doesn't seem angry with Shiro specifically. just— in general. ] Nobody sees a lady talking to himself and thinks he's chatting up his cybernetics' useless virtual assistant that doesn't come with instructions.

[ his teeth are gritted near the end, and he says all of it like the eye is going to hear him and stop inconveniencing him or something. which it isn't, just as yelling at your phone won't make it work. he's just melodramatic and exhausted with everything; this would have been bad enough back home with Ramses in his ear, and instead he's galaxies away, trying to negotiate with an eye that he needs if he's going to be any use, at all, to anyone. besides that, it still fucking hurts, a deep persistent ache. he sighs. ]

Detective Juno Steel. [ nobody here is going to be his friend, but he can be professional, so he takes the hand for a brief, tense shake. ] Not that the title means much out here.

Edited (my brain substituting 'personal' for 'virtual' wtf) 2017-12-05 08:11 (UTC)

No. I'm afraid we don't even know what the League is. [It would be easy to be a little sharp, a little over firm about it - but she's pleasant enough. If her interest is feigned, it's a convincing version of pretend.]

How old are you? What's the place you came from like?

[See, she can ask questions too.]

The latter. Though, the former is delightful. So if you'd like to give us that, we won't refuse it. [She laughs, bright and sterling and so pleasantly human-adjacent that it's almost not troubling.]

But yes, we're a collected consciousness. This body's original mind is here in large parts too of course, but we feel it's best to be candid about these things as immediately as possible with young Hosts such as yourself. Keeping secrets or pretending we're something we aren't might be traumatizing if we weren't honest.

[Besides, the Prince would find it depressing; she can't find it in herself to be so cruel to him.]

You can call us Cathaway.

[ the frustration with their circumstances is easier to sympathise with than anything else he gets from her, any of that uncertainty that he doesn't know how to wall off yet. but irritation is something he can swallow — that, if he can swallow enough of it, will crowd out all the rest, the dark and heavy parts he doesn't want to deal with right now. the parts that are everyone else buzzing like the light bulbs in his apartment that he'll probably never see again. ]

Powers, right? [ there's a small scoff for that, something kept between his teeth that wants to be sharper than it is. ] Yeah, that feels more like a consolation prize. "Sorry about the emergency kidnapping and the tumour in your head — but hey! Magic."

[ nobody needs to feel his emotions to know how much disdain he has for the idea of magic. ]

[ 1- the Station - HATCH. ]

[Darlene is freaking the fuck out.

It started in the pod she woke up in. Short breaths, echoing weirdly around the enclosed space. Living her Matrix fantasy, which is to say, her hand was shaking almost too bad to pull the plug on herself. That hurt. The interior cacophony of noise swelling in crescendo, to a tune she didn't recognize. And then she sat inside with her hands over her mouth, trying to get control. Crying, a little, which she hated, and at least that was something she could get her hand around. Hate, as a totem, is pretty good.

Now she's out in the room, staring dazedly at the pods all around her. All walls down as she takes it all in, panic oozing like a grease stain. The room looks like if someone was going to build a sci-fi temple to the neutral pleasant calm vibe that a doctor's office tries to cultivate. It looks like hushed voices, but all around Darlene, there's noise: other people, climbing out of pods. Voices pressing in on her. All of her shit is in her backpack and her backpack is on her back and this is all too fucking much, so the moment she IDs a door that looks like a way out, she books it, ignoring everyone.

The hallway is a gentle white slope like a tunnel through snow. Darlene bites down hard on her lip and walks, quickly, even though she doesn't know where she's fucking going. Her hands are curled tightly around the straps of her backpack and her mind is tearing through possibilities, explanations, panic.

After a few minutes, she realizes that she isn't alone. Someone is behind her, walking. The possibility of coincidence does not even enter into her brain; animal panic seizes first. Then she gets pissed, the best defense. Turns on her heel.]

Fuck off, psycho! Quit following me!

[The more unfamiliar familiarity thrumming in the pushback she gets from the other person, the angrier she'll be. No one is welcome here.]

[ 2- the Station - DEPARTURE PREP. ]

Hey.

[Darlene has already gone through the contents of the pre-filled pack. She works quick. Now she's staring jealously over at the gauzier scarves provided to her neighbor. Her scarves are rough-spun, and closer to the color of baby shit. She holds out one of the scarves now.]

Trade me.

[If it sounds more like a demand than a request, that's because it is. Darlene is less of a wreck than she was just a few hours ago. Not happy, not comfortable--but she has her walls up, and she's briskly guarded with everyone. She's done her homework, read the background materials on her Epad or whatever they call it. She's looked at the corpse delivery and decided she isn't going to fuck with that. These outfits are whatever, way more billowy than she likes. Limited options means she's got to get picky over colors.]

[ 3- HYRYPIA - THE RED COAST, various. ]

[Darlene is shit at keeping up the disguise of modesty. She plays along in public, for now, but the cloying layers of fabric are way too irritating to breathe through, so every chance she gets, she breaks away from the crowds and ducks down alleys or into walled gardens so she's free to shove whatever layers she can to clear up her face and get some real air. Anyone that looks twice at her doing this, she'll give them a terse command: move along, dillhole. There is nothing to see here.

Darlene is also shit at pretending not to care about technology. She's not some total neophilic geek, she doesn't stand around mouth breathing and pissing herself over new releases--but she is still interested. It's an alien freaking planet and they're into tech as some sci-fi magic power hybrid. That means whatever examples of technomancy she can get an eyeful of, she does. And if some workstation by the docks is left unattended, Darlene can't help herself. She waits, first, makes sure no one is watching. Then she steps in place and starts looking, running her fingers carefully over buttons and keypads. The shitty thing is that the real power is all in the user, and she has read-only credentials at best. She doesn't stick around for long, but she's a frequent haunter nonetheless.

At night, Darlene sits out on the beach, purposefully alone, stripped down to the first layers of her disguise. The scarves and vests and everything else she keeps balled up and stuffed in her backpack, which sits beside her on the alien rocks. Darlene has precious few cigarettes to her name, but she gets one out and lights up, her back to the wind. When she exhales, it's shaky.]

[ If names are getting exchanged, then okay. ]

Joshua.

[ Just leaving it at that is easier than navigating that awkward space between being an Astray and being a Bright, when he knows that just being here seems to be pushing him back towards the former, even after he's decided he wants to be the latter.

That's kind of the least of his concerns right now, anyway, especially in light of what she's telling him. ]

Can you explain what you mean by "hosts"?

[ Because there are some quiet bells going off in the back of his mind, even as he's pushing past them and trying to focus on anything but his feelings. "This body's original mind" can't help but sound very alarming to him, after everything with Weissmann. ]

[ It's strange still to be able to feel someone's emotions without first absorbing them, but that strangeness is quickly fading into genuine appreciation. Finally, she can truly tell what another person is feeling or thinking without completely invading their privacy with her mutation (and putting their life at risk).

His reaction, though -- it's charming and amusing rolled into one adorable ball of emotion. Smiling to herself, Rogue settles onto the bench beside him. ]

Thanks. I'm Rogue, by the way.

[ The panicking angerball in front of Rogue is starting to really grate on her senses. She's not used to feeling things like this constantly, the myriad collection of psyches in her mind kept behind carefully constructed doors within the southern plantation house in her mind, their memories and emotions alike quarantined behind those walls. Not that her shields are all that stable at the moment -- recent experiments in the lab have left her feeling raw and mentally battered, and she's eager to get down to the planet and embrace her new freedom.

The woman in front of her does not share her excitement, apparently. The sudden outburst as the other woman turns isn't unexpected, but still a bit jarring. Rogue just stars at her for a moment, her striped brown hair tucked back behind her ears, the white perfectly matching the clothes she wears that have been provided by the station (save for her own grey gloves and boots). When that moment passes, though, she just frowns slightly and informs her fellow host in a smooth southern drawl ]

Some of us are just trying to walk here, sugar, there's no reason to get all upset.

[ Joshua's been glancing through his own, and while most of what's there is dark or muted colors, the scarves are not so much - so he looks at the one she's holding out, shrugs, and passes her a bright red one.

Doesn't make a difference to him. If anything, he'd just as soon not go flashy. ]

Sure, why not.

Okay, I think there are some pretty good goddamn reasons to get upset.

[Like, a lot of them. Darlene means: this whole trip, this place at large, the smooth walls and the quiet hallways and the noise that she can feel at the back of her head even now. Like leaving the action of a party, going into a bedroom and shutting the door, and you can still hear the noise out there, ice against glasses, pop tabs on beer cans, someone laughing, a rumble of conversation, arguments, music. Only here, the wall and the door, it's soft like a membrane. Easy, to push a hand right through it.

The presence of skunk hair is not doing anything to help. Darlene takes a firm stance and points, back the way they've both come.]

There's other hallways and this one's already too crowded. Find a new one.

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

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darlene || ota

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