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

[onemind]

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 )

Comments

joshua bright | COME AT ME, BRO.

[whereabout]

station: hatch
[ It's a lot of feelings for someone who's spent most of his life running from them.

For the first few seconds after he opens his eyes, Joshua doesn't move. It's paralyzing; he isn't sure what's his and what isn't and it probably doesn't matter, because he's not sure how to handle any of them -

He promised Estelle he was done running, but he can't help it. He has exactly two coping mechanisms he can rely on, and one of them - her - isn't an option.

So he flips the switch.

And then he starts moving a lot faster, as his priorities start lining up in the most logical order he sees them. Get up. Get out of the pod. Get armed. But as he checks in the cubby and pulls out knives, smoke bombs, sleeping drugs - his hand brushes something else behind them, and for a few long seconds (too long, he shouldn't be wasting time) he's standing there staring at a harmonica and a letter in his hands, before he snaps out of it and pockets them both.

The next order of business is clear enough, even if the path to accomplish them is less so. Find someone. Get answers. Whoever they are, they went to some trouble to get him here alive and in one piece. He's not going to trust it to blind altruism. Things don't work that way.

(Except when they do, and they did, and he was eleven years old and waking up in Cassius Bright's house wondering why he wasn't dead, and nobody had a better answer for him than "things just worked out that way.")

Things don't work that way. There's a purpose to his being here, and when he hears (feels?) the voice coming from the garden -

Well, now he knows where his next stop should be. ]



hyrypia: just chillin'
[ Joshua's not silent on the trip over, exactly, but he's not particularly forthcoming, either; he speaks when he's spoken to or when he's seeking information, and he gets straight to the point in either case.

He's much the same when the new arrivals begin to integrate themselves with the hosts already on-site; if he approaches to ask you a question, it's direct, to the point, and he doesn't follow conversational tangents very far before he gets back to the matter at hand.

And when he's not seeking information, he mostly stays away. Sometimes the beach, sometimes the orchard, anywhere he has a hope of finding some mental quiet.

His mental presence doesn't draw much attention to itself, seeming calm and even enough at a glance...although anyone who brushes a bit closer won't have to look very hard to find the chaos under that icy veneer.

He's having a hard enough time trying to ignore his own feelings, thank you very much. He doesn't need to get anyone else's tangled up in there. ]



wildcard?
[ I am open to all kinds of shenanigans. If you're not sure something will work, prod me and we can talk, but if you wanna just throw me a curveball I'm game for rolling with it! c: ]

chillin'

[greentech]

[ Pidge can... sort of feel the quiet, if not hear it, from one of their newcomers. He's been keeping to himself and she's been keeping an eye on him. She's not always the most friendly and sociable herself, but there's something about his aloofness that bothers her. Just a little. He can't just... avoid everything and everyone. Can he?

So she finds him the morning after their arrival, before the day's hustle and bustle has really begun to pick up. She gives him a little nod. ]

Hey. How - uh - how are you settling in here...?

[whereabout]

[ He can't, really, and on some level he knows it. He's tried before, and it didn't help much of anything.

But opening up one time took five years of false starts and setbacks and he still nearly threw it all away in the end. The idea of trying to do that again is...exhausting. ]

I'm fine.

[ He knows as soon as he's said it that there's no way he's going to convince anyone of that. Maybe without this...connection, but even if he's doing a decent enough job of not projecting, he's not having much luck at pulling the curtains shut against anyone who bothers to look in the windows. Maybe he ought to blame that one on Weissmann's "tuning."

(Or maybe he ought to just blame it on himself, for not having his shit together enough to hide anything.)

Either way, letting an obvious lie hang on the air feels like an insult to both of their intelligence, so he backtracks. ]

...it's loud.

[greentech]

[ 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.

[whereabout]

[ 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. ]

[greentech]

I'm still working on it, honestly.

[ Especially after her recent encounter with her brood-mate. It's weird to think about. ]

But I can shut out most of the noise, at least.

[whereabout]

Great.

[ This bodes so very well for his future here. ]

Any tips?

[raw]

[ Elliot finds him anyway, eventually, after all his own drama dies down. Tracks him down tucked away in quiet isolation. It feels weird to be the instigator, but Joshua is like a pebble in his sneakers even as the symbiote-siblingship makes their connection feel warm and fulfilling. Elliot's been lonely so long it almost hurts not to be, a dysphoric cold skin in hot water ache. ]

Hey.

[ Does he have to say anything else? They both know.

It's just a teenage boy, but there's a kinship there — and not the symbiotic kind. Elliot recognizes what it's like to be broken beneath the gauzy facade of calm, and he also has very little in the way of mental defenses, despite working hard on self-encryption over the last few days during all the downtime aboard the airship. ]

I'm Elliot. Can I sit here?

[whereabout]

[ He doesn't need to say anything else, not really.

Joshua could feel him coming before he should've been able to tell, but for once, the feeling that someone's approaching is...soothing, almost. Something in him calms instead of considering the surroundings, potential angles of attack, threat levels.

And that in itself is unnerving, because five years in the Bright household still hadn't fully cured him of those instincts. In five years of peace, he hadn't quite been able to convince himself that everything was over and nobody was going to come after him. Five years, and he still took note of the exits first every time he entered a room.

One day with an alien bug on his brain, and he's relaxing despite himself, and something in the back of his mind just keeps saying: it's okay. ]

Sure.

[ - he doesn't need to say anything else, either, and he's grateful for that much because he has no idea how he'd say any of it if he had to. ]

I'm Joshua.

[raw]

Hey, Joshua. Nice to meet you.

[ With Hadrian it had been immediate codependency, perhaps because they didn't know any better yet. Here, there's a little more detachment, an attempt to stay at a safe distance even though that isn't, instinctually, what he wants.

Elliot isn't the kind of person who has to fill a space with words, doesn't talk unless he has something to say, so for a moment he's quiet, just sitting with the feeling and letting them both acclimate. Though maybe that's not a good idea either. He doesn't want to end up the proverbial lobster in slowly heating water. ]

You meet Cathaway or whoever?

[ He stretches his arms over his knees. >]

Get filled in on the mission?

[whereabout]

[ Trying to keep a distance even when something in him wants the opposite is how he's functioned for most of his life, really, so it's fine with Joshua. Except for the part where it isn't, now, and wanting more than that feels like it's coming from somewhere deeper than it used to. Ignoring his emotions is fine, but this isn't really just an emotion anymore, it's on the level of eating when you're hungry, sleeping when you're tired.

That scares the hell out of him, and like everything else that's ever scared him, the only way he's learned to deal with it is to pretend it doesn't exist and zero in on the task at hand. ]

I did.

[ The mission. Right. The...possible clusterfuck, from what he knows and what he's seen so far; someone's died, and they're apparently bringing people like Bakugo into a situation that is 500% about staying low profile and not causing a scene, and from what Pidge has told him they're still not sure exactly who the Enemy is working through. ]

...hey. Are we...actually qualified for this?

[ General "we." He doesn't feel any doubt about his own presence here, but - ]

Cathaway made it out to be...a biological fluke, I guess. No other rhyme or reason to who's here, and if everyone gets sent straight out on missions...

[ It makes him wonder (worry?) whether everyone is used to this kind of danger. Has skills relevant to any of what's happening. Or whether they've also got civilians who don't have any of the experience or know-how to defend themselves if everything goes pear-shaped. ]

[raw]

That's what the hive mind's for.

[ If he doesn't sound concerned about the question, it's because he's not. ]

They put the symbiote in our brain, it takes care of us. Faster, stronger, whatever, but more importantly...

( This shit. )

[ A careful tendril of connection, dialing in, trying to keep his firewalls up and still send something: he picks his own skill, which is coding. Useless, on this mission, on this planet, but fine for an object lesson.

What Joshua gets isn't the image of a computer screen, it's Elliot's understanding of how it works, of flickering strings numbers that he finds so easy to hold in his mind, of where the root folders are and what file extensions to look for, what strings to modify. It's baseless, without anything to practice on, and the skill itself is unpracticed, but. ]

If you're worried about not being qualified, don't be.

[whereabout]

[ Joshua's world isn't so much for technology, with the Orbal Revolution still being within the oldest generation's lifetime. And while he's had more exposure than most, thanks to his time in Ouroboros, there's no getting around the fact that computers are a rarity, in his world - he's better informed than the average person for even having an idea to attach the word to.

So the sudden sense of understanding is strange, to put it gently - but it's information, and wherever it's coming from, information has always been far easier for him to handle than emotions. It's a welcome distraction to latch onto, and he goes after it headfirst. ]

I'm not worried about myself.

[ It's somewhere between simple fact and self-depreciation, and while he doesn't make the effort to project anything, the memories attached to it are in plain view. The well-practiced silence of a flawless intrusion, the smooth motion of a blade slicing a throat. An exit made like a shadow dissolving in the sunlight. He's not worried because he's long since learned how to handle himself.

(And because what does a tool care, when it breaks?) ]

chillin like krillin

[gunlock]

[going for a walk in the middle of the night isn't exactly prompto's idea of not being suspicious, but he's just here for the ride, he supposes. his eyes adjust easily, which is a scary thought, but beneath the robes hiding their appearance, there's nothing but a sleepy buzz and a yawn.]

[he ends up bumping into someone else between yawning and closing his eyes at the motion]

Oh, s'rry.

[hands on the individual's shoulders from behind, prompto goes for nice and friendly. the signals he gets through their wired brains is new, however, and he notices.]

New around here?

[whereabout]

[ It's not like he doesn't pick up that someone is coming, but between everything else on his mind and the fact that he's trying not to pay too much attention to the noise in his head, Joshua wasn't expecting them to be quite so close, and the hands on his shoulders catch him completely off-guard.

(Which is incredibly sloppy of him and he ought to be ashamed, but never mind that for now.)

He ducks low as he pulls back and whirls around, hands going straight to his knives -

- and pauses.

...ah. ]

...sorry. You surprised me.

[ didn't mean to pull a blade on you, my bad ]

[gunlock]

[prompto knows that feeling--and it's only augmented tenfold with their mental connection--of putting up defenses and getting ready to attack, only to forcefully stop oneself in the middle of it after reconsideration of the circumstances.]

Nah. You're good, buddy.

[he keeps his hands to himself, now, raising them in front to show that he meant no harm.]

Kinda sneaked up on you there.

Y'okay?

[whereabout]

I'm fine.

[ Being in the middle of an existential crisis aside, anyway. It's been a weird couple of days.

He feels a little awkward about it, as he drops the stance and resheathes his weapons, but it's less about having that kind of reaction and more that he let himself be surprised enough to go through with it. He expects better of himself.

So, awkward change of subject it is. Or awkward return to the original subject, as the case may be. ]

But, er...yes, I'm new. To go back to that.

[gunlock]

[prompto immediately offers a gloved hand]

Prompto Argentum.

It's kinda rough at first. A lot of noise in your head, huh? Guess you were briefed before coming here though.

[whereabout]

[ Handshakes. Sure, he's down for that. ]

Joshua Bright. [ There's a microsecond of hesitation between the first name and the last, because that is An Issue in itself, recently, but he doesn't stop to dwell on it. ]

I think "a lot of noise" might be an understatement.

chillin'

[stilettoes]

[ all the shells you never wanted joshua, right there in your lap. surprise! they're in a basket of course, made by one of the locals but in the gloved hands of one very much not-a-local. while joshua's presence might mostly be tucked away in the background noise of the rest of the nest, peter finds it like a needle in a haystack, straight to the fingertip, pinpricked upon touching it. so here comes peter, very much hadrian black, veiled in a deep dark maroon. his own is smooth as dark glass.

he sits himself down, smoothing his scarves with one hand, steadying the basket with the other for half a moment. ]

Tell me, do you have a good eye for color? [ a beat ] I mean doesn't matter if you don't, but it'd be nice. Could you help me?

[whereabout]

[ He feels it, of course. It may only have been a day, but it's not hard to identify that pull in his mind, the one that says: this is one of yours.

It's going to be a lot longer before he gets used to it, but that's not actually why he's staring quizzically at Peter (after a moment of staring at the shells in his lap).

Wait, what? ]

I - no? [ To the first question, that is. Left to his own devices, Joshua is about the most boring dresser ever. Everything's black or gray or maybe white. Which clearly isn't going to get him out of - well. He doesn't actually know what it's not getting him out of. ]

Sorry, help with what?

[stilettoes]

[ peter gives him all the time he needs, the sensation of what exactly this connection is slowly winding and cementing itself into place, establishing where they lie on the surface. brood. it's still a strange concept to him, even after all the time he's spent in elliot's company. what are their connections? why were they born into this strange little pod of people, this group that's closer than most. it feels far less easier to pull from than the rest of the nest, a thicker string wound tighter, more stubbornly around his fingers. jerking. ]

As I said, quite all right.

[ he slides fingers through the basket carefully, turning over a few of the smaller shells, bits of sea glass, thumbing through pieces that are both dull and brilliant, but it's clear they're so finely mixed it's A Task. ]

Sorting them! [ cheerily - hadrian is awfully bright, a lightbulb swinging in a room and bathing it in something warm. he's the parts of peter he'd left behind not long ago, pleasant, eager. ] It thought it'd be a fairly simple task, some of these are dreadfully dull and no good, but I've been at it nearly an hour and hardly a dent.

[ there's no visible smile, but if you could brush the impression forward of one, peaceable, no teeth, then this would be the sensation. brief, not too intrusive. ] I'm Hadrian.

[whereabout]

[ It's a strange concept to have this many feelings about someone he shouldn't actually know yet, but Joshua deals with it in the same way he deals with most feelings: by desperately trying to ignore them and focusing on anything else that happens to wander into his line of sight.

Ergo: the shells. He scoops out a small handful, tilting his hand and watching them shift. ]

...Joshua.

[ Hadrian certainly comes across as bright, but that in itself isn't enough to convince Joshua. He's seen exactly how a pleasant and cheerful demeanor can mean absolutely nothing, in the end. (Though the lack of feeling anything immediately suspicious helps. If he can trust all these things he's now feeling. Which to him, is still questionable.)

The brush of his own thoughts back isn't hostile, though. Cool. Wary. Detached, or trying to be, but in the way that's clearly trying a little too hard about it to be genuine. ]

Just the bright ones, then?

[stilettoes]

Exactly. This would be shorter work, but I'm afraid this - [ a vague gesture to his face ] - does absolutely nothing for one's sight.

[ josha feels far off, and peter tilts his head lingering in the touch of it, a fleeting thing, and peter glides beside it, barely touching, only perpendicular as he takes a broken off, dull piece of sea glass, thumbing over it to see if perhaps a little polish will give it back its shine. looks being deceiving and all that. ]

Looking busy does wonders for perhaps catching useful snatches of conversation around here. [ he palms the piece and gives it a very sharp toss back out towards the red water, watching it skip once out towards the deeper water before it sinks down. ]

[whereabout]

[ Well, okay. He can do that. It's not like he's actually accomplishing anything by brooding.

So he starts sifting through, flicking aside the rejects and keeping the ones that look promising. ]

Anything useful enough to figure this out?

[ From what Pidge told him, they're still flying blind on which faction the enemy is working through, and until they get that one nailed down, he can't see them making any decisive progress. ]