[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

wildest card

[raw]

[ The collision of two black holes is an event NASA scientists would probably document as "exciting", but maybe not in this case. It's pretty ordinary when Elliot sits down alongside Juno at whatever Red Coast arts and crafts bullshit he's doing — Elliot doesn't even pretend to pick it up. ]

You're the guy.

[ Mouthwords, because even proximal he can sense that a connection might be a bad idea, that the lurking malware of guilt and self-involvement he personally carries doesn't need to be multiplied by itself. Fuck up squared. Pass.

But he thinks better of it after a moment because they're not really alone, none of them are ever really alone here, and there's politics at play, the whole alien facade to maintain. Maybe it's paranoid, but Elliot is a paranoid person. So, imagine some old modem noises, the shrilling whine of connection, his gaze fixed and sharp beneath the veil. Network connection. Trying to keep everything else behind an encryption, a firewall.. ]

( You're the one upsetting Hadrian. )

[ Words have more textured nuance, like this, and it's obvious he doesn't mean tears and sadness, means "upsetting" the way a jug of water can be upset, spilling everywhere. He's been caught up in his own anxious-relief-guilt at the arrival of his sister, Darlene, and all his feelings have had an echo, some twin emotion twisting up the liquid black glass of Hadrian's mind. ]

[iuno]

[ the arts and crafts they're all wasting their time with is maybe the dumbest thing Juno has ever had to do for what's supposed to be a mission, but the one advantage it has is that not so many people bother him. underneath the robes, no one seems as approachable, and he's enough of a stranger to most in the Nest that they don't seek out his mind for conversation. so he's pretty irritated when someone decides to talk to him anyway, glaring through his veil at the pottery under his hands — right up until he speaks, and Juno knows exactly what the guy means.

he doesn't close out the connection when it comes with its strange static shrill, because he's left open and vulnerable by the hurt of hearing this, stricken with nauseating grief and guilt guilt guilt so violent it could choke him. upsetting. upsetting, like Peter Nureyev could ever be shaken by anything — but Juno did that, didn't he. heard it in his voice that night when he made the offer a second time for the two of them to run away together; and before that, Nureyev clawing at an airlock between them and begging, begging him to open it and live. the memories are held too desperately tight to make it to the surface, but the fever-pitch thought of love does, this keening, wounded thing Juno strangles with its own leash.

he wants to fucking die. his chest hurts like there's something wrong in him, his heart giving out or his lungs collapsing or something. a knife through him he hasn't thought to remove. he wants to just... go back to Mars, with the hideous black cloud of the Enemy crushing all of Hyperion under its mass, and he wants to tell the stranger that saved him to go shove it and then let it happen. goddamn it, Nureyev was supposed to finally be free of him when he took that deal, and instead Juno is here ruining everything for him again.

on the surface, there's less to show for his heartbreak. Juno's expression twists with dismay, and his hands shake for a moment before he very deliberately presses them in hard, destroys the clay pottery spinning away there. he stands up from his seat. ]

Yeah?

[ he's not going to keep this quiet. he isn't the discrete one, and besides that, he's best at keeping people out, not keeping his own toxic bullshit in. the yawning chasm of despair in him is obvious enough without letting anyone come in to gawk at it, and everything else is sharp, violent; the landscape of a lady who's been walking on broken glass too long to be bothered by it anymore. ]

If he's so upset, then maybe you should be talking to him instead of bugging me.

[raw]

[ This.

This, right here?

This is why when he gets involved in other people's bullshit, he does it on the other side of a computer screen.

Elliot has gone still, watching as Juno ruins whatever elegant thing was starting to take shape in the clay, and stands. He stands, too — he definitely wasn't here for pottery, has managed to make absolutely nothing since they all arrived on the red coast. ]

Hey, man, chill out.

[ Keeping his tone even. One hand slipping into the folds of his robes to double check that he has the memory drug, to be ready to use it if this new arrival blows their cover in front of the Rabodoceans. But even if they're not uncovered, interpersonal drama isn't a good look on a diplomat.

Of course, he's not heartless. He feels some small fraction of that ache, knows the metallic choke of self-loathing intimately. A woman in the boot of the car with her throat slit, a city full of poverty and anarchy, a twenty year old grave. ]

( Seriously, you wanna screw us all? Let's find somewhere private. )

[iuno]

[ ugh — this isn't in Juno's nature, all the secrecy and masks, keeping himself in check. he knows himself, and he knows he has all of two layers: the cocky detective shtick, and everything else jagged and angry. if someone doesn't get one, they get the other. the anger doesn't wait until it's convenient, it isn't something he can swallow and hold onto. one way or another, everything ends in violence with him.

but he's also not going to be responsible for single-handedly screwing this mission up. ]

( I thought I was making it pretty clear that I'm not interested. )

[ so he starts to walk, and if Elliot follows, that's his choice. Juno can't stop him — would, actually, if he could. would threaten and snap until it's not just a hint that people should stay away from him and not bring this kind of thing to him because he's thinking about it enough already and there's only so much he can take. but can't, because they're playing at diplomats, at a close-knit congregation that probably wouldn't come close to blows over a personal argument.

Juno's simmering irritation is definitely at risk of boiling over, though, and even his mental communication comes with teeth. god, he doesn't even know where he's going, he just. he's a restless person by nature. when he gets upset it's only ever worse, and he just needs to be moving right now. ]

( Whatever you want to say, you might as well just spit it out. I'm a busy lady. )

[ he doesn't even know what it might be. and more importantly, he doesn't know why Elliot cares; doesn't want to look for fear of what he'll find. ]

[raw]

[ Elliot follows him despite the jagged fuck-off spikes tearing at the gossamer edges of his probing mind. He's relentlessly nosy, and since he can't hack Juno Steel's Facebook and email and text messages and search history to glut himself on information then he's just going to have to filter through the primordial ooze of his dramatic outrage and the muckier, less pretty shit, the hurt and the heartache and the guilt.

He follows as they move towards the edge of the seaside town, maybe able to save themselves onlookers not by finding privacy but the simple seclusion of being away from where everyone else mainly is — though they're wandering so haphazardly that might not even be Juno's intent. ]

( I just wanted to meet you. )

[ Who are you, to Hadrian.

Who does that make you, to me.

These are the questions that are echoing through Elliot's subconscious, though he doesn't have the words to shape them into something he can speak aloud. It translates into twinned curiosity and wariness instead. ]

( You knew him, before. )

[iuno]

[ wanted to meet him. that's worth a laugh, and he does actually react to it aloud, a half-scoff of a sound. bitter amusement all along the surface of him. nobody who's ever wanted to meet Juno Steel has sought him out of good reputation, and he's sure that almost all of them have left disappointed in what they got anyway. ]

( Yeah, I— )

[ he stops, frustrated with the feeling of... of opening himself up and shoving thoughts out and losing whatever else comes attached; he'd figured out a better way to handle this communication, with Nureyev, but that's an intimacy he doesn't want with anyone else. besides, Cathaway's assurance that the symbiote isn't going to pop doesn't do much to dispel the way he instinctively wants to cringe away from this, given how his last stint with telepathy ended not so long ago. the torture, his eye, Miasma, Nureyev's memories. it's a lot, and he doesn't want it again.

for a while, he leaves that sentence hanging there, replaced by a restless buzz like static and the feeling that he does at least mean to finish it as soon as he's where he wants to be. and eventually, they've been walking long enough that he's pretty sure they're safe to have a simple conversation. plus, he's too impatient for anything more elaborate; whatever this is, he wants it over already. ]

Look, I've had some bad experiences with telepathy of the "lost an eye to it" variety, so if it's not too much to ask that we use our words like normal people—

[ he stops, and turns to face Elliot. it's a little disappointing that he can't scowl at him through the veil, but he supposes his mind provides that well enough. ]

Yeah. Hadrian and I met on Mars a while back. [ every time he so much as thinks about "Hadrian," it's a road flare of feelings, heartsick, pining. and then, warily: ] What do you care?

[ because it's not like Nureyev to reveal personal information, and considering Juno wasn't even here, he can't think of a reason his name would come up in conversation. Nureyev should have shrugged him off as easily as he sheds his names. and so — there's something new there, standing out bright against the dark backdrop of Juno's mind, this bristling jealousy and protective anger. the feeling when someone is being careless with something you know is important, furious that they don't understand how much it means.

he knows what he did. he doesn't deserve Nureyev's forgiveness and he doesn't expect it. that won't ever change the fact that Peter Nureyev is the most important thing Juno has in the universe. ]

[raw]

[ In service of his paranoia, Elliot glances around before answering, making sure they're truly alone, nods once he's satisfied. ] Sure. We can do that. [ Elliot is half disappointed at the lost opportunity to brush up against all that information, and half relieved: he's better when he can convey what he means with something other than words, but it still feels so alien, and speaking aloud is grounding. Like normal people, yeah. Anyway, they're talking about Hadrian. Notably, he isn't too surprised by the mention of Mars. ] We're connected. [ So maybe he has a little protectiveness of his own, though it's been abated by Juno's thrum of heartsickness, the rumble amidst the storm of his awful personality that says maybe he's not trying to fuck Hadrian up intentionally. There's some deep well of history here. ] Or, the symbiotes are. [ It's still pretty new to him, he's figuring out the terminology as he goes along. ] They were part of the same brood. Family. So that's why I care.

[iuno]

[ they're Brood. and Juno's first meeting with a member of his Brood may not have been the most pleasant experience, but it was enough for him to understand what that means. the pull of it, something necessary, persistent as a heartbeat. he's blindsided by the force of his own jealousy. it isn't a possessive or covetous feeling, nothing so violent — he's not threatened by other people being close to Nureyev, least of all because that isn't his place now. instead, it's a bright, envious thing, rooted in that same strong tide of longing that runs underneath his mind. he's jealous that it's so easy for those people, that Nureyev is tangled up in them irrevocably while Juno struggles and makes a mess of it. that someone else feels like home and belonging for Nureyev, and Juno is...

but he's the one who ruined that. he made his choice between the thing he wants and the thing he needs, even if it was a choice he didn't want to make, an ultimatum that Nureyev gave him. it does mean that guilt wells up like blood from a cut, though, and Juno is much more open to guilt than heartache. ]

Uh-huh. You said you just wanted to meet me.

[ he spreads his arms, which doesn't exactly have the same sarcastic effect beneath all the robes. ]

So, is it everything you were expecting? [ afraid of what someone would think of him, having skimmed the information from Nureyev's mind or hearing it straight from him. he can't imagine a single good thing there is to say about him. ] Don't be afraid to say no, a lot of people are disappointed when they finally get me face-to-face — or, you know, veil-to-veil. You're not missing much of the experience with that, by the way.

[raw]

[ Elliot laughs, at that. Not in a mean way, just a huff of amusement at this comment, the melodrama of the situation. Juno just getting aggressively in his face over nothing. It's not that Elliot doesn't carry his own anger around with him, but his first and foremost reaction to this kind of attitude (the kind that reminds him of Mr Robot, in the early days) is to just detach. Passive resistance. ]

I don't know yet. You seem okay.

[ Aside from all the ways in which he's really not fucking okay. ]

Whatever, man.

[ (Sorry about all the gendered terminology.) ]

[iuno]

[ something about Elliot's reaction seems to take the fight out of him, just a little; like a fire without enough fuel to keep it going. Juno knows from experience that he's good at pissing people off, and he usually uses that because he knows he can. people will snap at him just for trying to goad them into it. and he's not even sure why he does it, it just— it feels like it's the only way to know someone's being honest with him.

but Elliot doesn't take the bait, and nobody does that, refuses to give when he pushes. not Mick, not Sasha. nobody other than Peter Nureyev. so he's a little wrong-footed now, a weird feeling of momentum lost, the dissatisfaction of it. the waiting, because if it didn't come when he tried to force it out, he has no way of knowing when it is going to come, inevitably. ]

Well, we're stuck here for the foreseeable future. Guess there's still plenty of time for that to change. [ it's not even bitter. purely a statement of fact. everyone changes their opinion of Juno Steel for the worse, sooner or later. ] Are we trading names now, or do they skip that part in a hivemind?

[raw]

Elliot.

[ Immediately, in response to that question. Though there's probably more depth to it in a hive mind: names are such weighted things, it's likely no wonder Peter uses "Hadrian" even with his broodmates — a consolation prize for Juno's feelings.

Elliot's name comes with a whisper of himself, his grimy urban lifestyle and the foggy whisper of depression/anxiety/ptsd, the color: #eeeeee; of his soul. ]

[iuno]

[ he might have taken a handshake if Elliot offered; he doesn't go for one himself, though. ]

Juno Steel, PI.

[ the two things should be separate, but in Juno's mind they clearly stand together as a whole: if he isn't a detective, he isn't anything. it's not a title that has any relevance out here, and he keeps introducing himself this way even so, because he needs to be known. without his job and his city, Juno Steel is a wound in too many people's lives, a black hole, a child hiding behind the walls in a too-quiet house. there's a shadow of that in his name.

but in his title, he's a silhouette backlit by glaring neon, tired and always on his feet at the end of the day. maybe still nothing good, but... trying, at least.

he sighs. ] I doubt I'm welcome back at pottery class now.

[ not even the tiniest bit bothered by it. ]

[raw]

You never know.

[ With a shrug in his voice. ]

It's clay, right. You knock it down then just shape it back up again.

[ He doesn't really know anything about pottery. Or arts and craft group etiquette. Not that he hasn't also embarrassed himself in front of a group of people — probably ranting about how god wasn't real to a heavily Christian AA group was in the same category as Juno's little scene. ]

If it really bothers you, apologize.

[iuno]

[ he laughs and it's a tight, acerbic sound. ]

Are you kidding me? [ like the very idea is absurd, unthinkable. ] You gave me an excuse to walk out of there without even explaining myself. I'm really not an arts and crafts lady.

[ and he's terrible at apologies, besides. he hasn't even managed one for Nureyev yet; swallowing his pride is hard enough when it's deserved, almost impossible. apologies aren't something he hands out to every person he rubs the wrong way. and speaking of Nureyev— ]

You picked me out pretty easily. Did you recognise me from Hadrian's... [ he gestures vaguely at his own head ] ... or did he... say something about me.

[ it's delivered flatly, with the kind of wariness that could just be a joke, that point in of meeting a "friend" of a "friend" where you say: only good things, I promise. but he's afraid, too much to hide it under all that tar and toxic waste. he hates me, Juno thinks — knows, with absolute, sick certainty. it isn't an opinion in Juno's mind, it's a fact as sharp and cold as the edge of a blade. Nureyev hates him. he should. Juno just doesn't want to hear it out loud, or maybe he does, maybe he wants it to fucking hurt. ]

[raw]

[ Something in Elliot creases in confusion-interest at the use of the word "lady" — he's fine with seeing trans women as women, but isn't really used to non-binary stuff, still has a 21st-century-American view of that whole deal. But part of a mission to hang out with aliens means he's even more circumspect than his usual recalcitrant self, so he doesn't say anything.

Anyway, he's being asked a question, so it's easy to move on. And like, roll his eyes. ]

Last night.

[ When they were all woken up to tromp up the hill and greet the new arrivals. ]

You guys were kind of loud.

[ Even crankily half asleep he'd picked up on their frantic reunion, and he's always inclined to eavesdrop, though primarily his attention was on Juno because he's more attuned to Peter than just about anyone in the nest. He does try to make it sound like he didn't just have to hear them fucking through an apartment wall or something. ]

It was kind of a jumble, but I guess he missed you.

[iuno]

[ Juno has what people have told him is an honest face, which mostly just means that he always loses at poker. it also means that he knows Elliot gets to see him react twice here — one flinch for the mention of last night, which had only sunk in after he parted ways with Nureyev and realised that everyone else could "overhear" that embarrassing fucking mess, and then a second flinch for he missed you. of course he did. shouldn't have, but then it was inevitable when Juno left him in the middle of the night without a word. he would have been better off if Juno had just said no in the first place. ]

Right. I'm sure we'll keep it down from now on.

[ he seems vaguely pained by it. Nureyev won't have much to say to him, as far as he imagines. he'll fold himself away behind his masks, retreat into a cold veneer of politeness. and that's enough of Nureyev for now; Juno has spent six months dwelling on it, he can have six goddamn minutes without thinking about him, especially when he's surrounded by people who have a direct line to those thoughts. ]

You seriously wanted to talk to me just because of Hadrian? [ redirecting the conversation, but he is curious. it doesn't make much sense to him. could be a symptom of the way a hivemind gets under your skin, maybe. ] Guess you're taking to that whole "Brood" thing pretty well, then.

[raw]

Guess so.

[ It's a little flat, because he doesn't want to think of it as something he's acquiesced to. In theory, the whole thing sounds cultish and forced, something Elliot's natural inclination to being an individual should automatically rail against.

In actuality, it's the best thing to ever happen to him. ]

It was just us at first.

[ He explains. ]

And you've felt it, right. You've got a brood.

[ The way it feels like something that fits, the way it assuages lonliness, a better high than any fucking drug. Elliot wants to subsume himself in it, exist solely as a reflection in his broodmates eyes and never, ever as himself. ]