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THE N E S T ([personal profile] onemind) wrote in [community profile] station722017-12-03 05:40 pm

[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!))





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[personal profile] raw 2017-12-10 09:44 am (UTC)(link)
Elliot.

[ He says aloud, and: ]

( Elliot. )

[ He shares over the link, so synchronious that it's one word, one voice, his lips moving even as Bakugo gets the indelible impression of him (long processing strings of computer data sparkling with revolutionary rage, the tv-static hush of anxiety). ]

Not that that makes it any better.

[ Like, he knows how shitty this is, especially when he feels kind of intruded upon, like maybe he just wanted it to be him and Hadrian for a while, excruciatingly fucking lonely as the absence of the others was. ]

What're you doing out here?
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴘɪɴᴋ ғᴇʀʀᴀɢᴀᴍᴏ sʟɪᴅᴇʀs ᴏɴ ᴅᴇᴄᴋ)

[personal profile] incinerates 2017-12-11 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
[ The burst of something-something-anger-something, the brush of static. Thoughts that are digitized, made of light and code that he recognizes but doesn't understand the complexity of, and it all fills him up - settles around his core, and he realizes that, just like Joshua and Black, this one ( Elliot ), is meant to be one of his and one that he belongs to. They're closer than the others he's met, the ones he's felt dust over his throat or shoulder and then fade away like a cool bath.

No, Elliot sticks behind his ribs, heavy and tar-like where Black is silk and smoke and Joshua is the steady beat of a flatline from another room. Weird, weird people. Unwanted sensations, unwanted needs. Bakugo answers, without really being able to think about why he is, why he has to. He just Does: ]
I'm thinking.

About why I have to be here, with all of you. About what I have to do here, to win this one.

[ -- he puts the rock down at his feet, and lifts the layers of veils and robes, high enough to expose the tops of his mission-specific footgear as he stomps across the sand towards Elliot. A beacon of something sad, something lonely. It makes him ill, even as the shallow proximity feeds into a loop of sensation: good, yes, better, together, alongside his staunch rejection of it all. ]

It's not like I can think good enough with all your brains crowding up against mine, or anything!
raw: (Default)

[personal profile] raw 2017-12-13 09:58 am (UTC)(link)
Yeah, no shit.

[ Elliot is bland about it, like the more furious Bakugo gets the more blank void of passive resistance his emotions become. He doesn't do great with anger pointed directly at him, tends to just shut down, but also Bakugo is a kid and he's brood so it's, maybe, not as bad as it could be. ]

You wanna win, huh. Good.

[ So does Elliot, though he's more about teamwork than competition. He wants to beat The Enemy, wants to succeed in their mission — if they have to meddle in the lives of aliens then they had better be meddling good. ]

Unless you want to die ripping an alien out of your brain, you're stuck with us, so. Might as well use it strategically.
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴛʜᴇ ᴘɪɴɴᴀᴄʟᴇ)

[personal profile] incinerates 2017-12-14 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
I'm saddled with you, there's a difference.

[ It's difficult, keeping up with that wrathful core of his that's made of engine pistons and consistently stoked, when the operator that's feeding into his anger is so effectively caught off guard by someone's lack of response to him. "Derailed", that's a good term for it -- Elliot's a little bit like Joshua, the way he flattens out and fades away, into background noise. He's unlike Joshua, because Bakugo can't get a read on what he can do to get the ball back in his court.

Such is the peril, when you're "of one another" - or however the concept of "brood" had been explained to him. Missing pieces of a puzzle. Stars in a single constellation. A properly-written piece of code. A perfectly formed atom ( C3H5N3O9 ). ]


Nothing about these stupid feelings is strategic, they're just dangerous and distracting.

[ Ah, yes. The first time he's given voice to "these feelings" - the bond between them, that he hadn't wanted to recognize. ]

We'd do better, if we were alone in our own damn heads. Instead of tripping over one another.
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[personal profile] raw 2017-12-16 05:38 am (UTC)(link)
You're wrong.

[ Though he doesn't say it angrily, or even accusitorially, just as a statement of fact. ]

The symbiote lets us be faster, and better, but more importantly it's a network. A silent way to communicate that can't be intercepted. We can feel out each other's strengths and weaknesses, and form the best possible teams for a mission.

[ Or they could if half the Nest didn't feel the same antipathy towards sharing a headspace as Bakugo did. But everyone at least realizes how useful being able to speak without words has been to this undercover mission so far. ]

( It's the advantage of teamwork. )

[ Quiet, certain, unwilling to be blocked out. Also not so good at setting boundaries — the roiling darkness and nervous tension is palpable behind the chill facade. ]
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴇsᴘᴇᴄɪᴀʟʟʏ ᴡʜᴇɴ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴇᴍᴘᴛʏ)

[personal profile] incinerates 2017-12-18 07:36 pm (UTC)(link)
[ However resistant he is: he can see the use. How helpful a blind connection, mind-to-mind, could be; even Mandalay had been a one-way radio, able to transmit her words and thoughts across an area, but unable to receive anything in return. No better than a P.A. system on a train, announcing the next stop or a school-wide alarm system, pointing out the presence of invading paparazzo. It's a tool - one he reluctantly is coming to know he will use.

It makes him better, even as it highlights his own shortcomings -- unacceptable, a thing far too unacceptable for the fragile, poorly-protected thing inside of him. ]


I don't DO teams.

[ The retort is sharp, even as he DROWNS in Elliot, who is akin to a rising tide that's slipped around his knees, tugging at him, urging him to step in over his head. It feels like Black, like Joshua. The two of them spring, unbidden, to his mind -- and he tries badly to push them back out, to shove back against this lack of boundary between them. ]

It's -- I do better without bodies around me; you'll just get hurt, if you're close.

[ Somehow, the idea of hurting anyone is enlarged, stark. More than just a passing reminder, it eats him up. Do not hurt them, you can't hurt them. They're important to you, Elliot is important. The way Black was, the way Joshua was, the way a yet-to-be-known fourth was. The way something was missing inside of him. ]

Why's it gotta' be so important to you?
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[personal profile] raw 2017-12-22 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
Success is important to me.

[ The "you moron" is kind of implied by his flat tone. ]

I don't have to be physically near you for this. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You think you can shut it out?

[ Talking to Bakugo, but also perhaps to that persistent part of him that is actively against the hivemind and the Nest, wants them to be one individual, albeit one made of two. Mr Robot thinks, he knows, that they can fight this. Elliot finds that ludicrous. ]

Better to master it, man.
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴘɪɴᴋ ғᴇʀʀᴀɢᴀᴍᴏ sʟɪᴅᴇʀs ᴏɴ ᴅᴇᴄᴋ)

[personal profile] incinerates 2017-12-28 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Ouch. Success is important to him as well, and a poignant statement like that is a wicked little knife, aimed true. ]

Maybe not, but I'm not gonna' make it easy on this thing.

[ There's a lot of independence and antisocial behavior in this kid, a thing barely repressed that flinches and bares its teeth like a grimy alley-cat used to depending on its own steam and power to get by in the world. Used to being fed praise and admired for its self-sufficiency. Leaning on members of his weird mind-team is the LAST thing he desires, above all. He barely has friends. ]

And end up like that old chick on the station? Hard pass. I'm not sticking around when all's said and done!
Edited 2017-12-28 22:40 (UTC)
raw: (00110100)

[personal profile] raw 2018-01-08 10:57 am (UTC)(link)
Okay.

[ Elliot shrugs: it's kind of patronizing. He obviously doesn't really believe Bakugou, thinks this is kind of a young attitude to have, and is kind of tired at the thought that he's going to be Avior's responsibility to handle because otherwise he's going to blow everything wide open, starting with this mission they're on right now. ]

If you aren't going to be part of the team, you should ask them to pick you up and take you back to the Station and put you back to sleep.

[ Which would bring back the feeling of emptiness from before the new arrivals showed up, the strange lonely ache for someone he didn't even know... but Elliot doesn't care. He knows how to manage loneliness, maybe better than most people here. ]
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴀ sᴛᴀʀ's ᴀ sᴛᴀʀ)

[personal profile] incinerates 2018-01-08 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Why would I want to be part of a team that got someone killed? It's just so encouraging.

[ He shoots back, bitter and mistrustful of the connection, of the concept of "the nest" to his core. Stellar track record, when one who's meant to be "their own" ends up dead. Some team-fucking-effort. But -- it's not like he wants to leave, despite his naked hostility. There's no way he'll leave, go back to the Station and twiddle his thumbs ( he doubts that he can, now -- ). Even if it's on his own, he wants to complete this mission. ]

You're not going to take care of jack shit, you've all already proved that.

[ His mind digs its heels in, but his heart surges. ]

I'm here to resolve this mission, without anyone else getting hurt or killed. So, just shut your mouth and stay out of harm's way.
Edited 2018-01-08 19:00 (UTC)
raw: (01100100)

[personal profile] raw 2018-01-08 08:19 pm (UTC)(link)
[ It's kind of hard not to just roll his eyes. ]

Hey, I didn't show up 'til the funeral.

[ He didn't even know Lavellan, though he's seen the way his death affected the nest, the guilt and remorse and misery. Doesn't think Bakugou is fair to just blame it on the whole group of everyone.

But more importantly:
]

You really think you can handle this by yourself? Figure out The Enemy without letting them know we're here, or giving away that we're not aliens, and then make sure that they're not the envoy that ends up with the Nectar — even though we still don't know what criteria we're being judged on.

[ Sure, Jan. ]

We're deciding the fate of entire planets of people, here.
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴍʏ ʙᴏᴅʏ's ᴊᴜsᴛ ᴀ ᴋɪʟʟɪɴɢ ʙᴇᴀsᴛ)

[personal profile] incinerates 2018-01-08 09:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[ UGH.

What a way to silence him, though. While his heart surges, hammering like a tireless machine fueled by some sort of unstoppable faith in his own might and skill ( he'll do it, just fucking watch him, elliot -- ), there's a lot more to do. He blames it on the rest of the idiots who came before him, the ones who couldn't prevent someone's death. A pack of failures who've all professed that they "know war", like it makes them any better than him.

Before Elliot, he shrinks a little. Burning bright and shaky, as he physically pulls back from his stupid, unimpressed "broodmate". ]


Yes, I do.

[ Because the thought, unbidden, of anybody -- especially this guy before him, who he doesn't know past the quiet yearning in his mind -- getting hurt, dying, is a thought that is far more painful to him than the slightly out-of-his-reach thought that the lives of every alien on these planets is dependent on this team's movements. He doesn't want anybody to die, or even to get hurt. ]

Heroes gotta' make do, no matter the situation they're up against. You don't get to pick and choose the danger you face, you take it all. That's our job. It's what we're trained for. The word "impossible" doesn't exist, for us. I'd pull it off, no fuckin' problem, if I didn't have to keep an eye on all of you on top of it.

[ He says it, and it's cruel. It's mean, it belittles those who've come before him and those who try their best too. It's the only way he knows how to convey the way he feels. ]
raw: (00000100)

[personal profile] raw 2018-01-08 10:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Elliot laughs.

He probably shouldn't, but he can't help it. The idea that this angry teen, dressed like a wannabe gangster and talking about "heroes" like that's a word that means shit outside of comic books, is going to complete a diplomatic mission alone, is just so ridiculous that he's pushed past blank staring and right into a mean chuckle.

-- I like this kid.

Mr Robot informs him from somewhere. He sounds impressed in a way Elliot isn't.
]

Cool, man, good luck with that.

[ They're very done here. He should probably tell some people like Sam or Lexa that his new broodmate is statistically likely to fuck this right up for all of them. ]
incinerates: ID 13036614 @ PIXIV (ᴛʜᴇɴ ᴀʟʟ ᴀ sᴜᴅᴅᴇɴ)

dang broodmates

[personal profile] incinerates 2018-01-08 11:02 pm (UTC)(link)
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