station72 | [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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Rogue knows a teenager's mind when she feels it. There's something different about the way they process things, the weight every piece of the world holds for them. She has a few dozen teenagers crammed into her own head, it would be impossible for her to mistake the ebbs and flows for anything else. That's why she stayed away on the station, kept her distance for those first hours — he reminds her of those psyches, of the students she lost, the innocents she was forced to hurt. But when they land on the planet, there's no avoiding it anymore.

When she hears that voice, she doesn't want to anymore. ]

( I don't think we really have much of a choice in the matter, sugar. )

[ Her mental voice is as smooth as her real one, vowels round with southern drawl, tone easy and just a touch sympathetic. It's hard when your entire world changes without your permission; she's been there. ]

[ Like a cat that's been pet the wrong way, her sympathy - the notion that she's already been where he stands - causes him to bristle. Both body and mind hunch, braced and curled sharp against the sudden invasion, the sudden sensation that he ought to seek her out. She's "of him", the way Black and Joshua were, the way Elliot was. How he was just so incomplete without her, and now that he'd heard from her, he was finally on his way to completion.

It makes him nauseous, uneasy, furious. ]

We have every choice; we made one when we got here, now we have to choose how we move forward.

I'm choosing to do it myself. I can't rely on a bunch of st--- strangers.

[ Oh, he hates how he stumbles over the word, caught for a moment by the Untruth of it. They're not strangers, after all. They're brood. ]

[ Ah, so he's one of those. The fiercely independent, probably unable to admit when he needs help and certainly never asking for it. She's seen dozens just like him, all of them angry at the world and raging in their own way. All of them hurting from something.

Maybe she's wrong, maybe not. Either way, she sure as hell can't just do nothing now. ]

( You could get to know us. Then we wouldn't be strangers. )

[ Logic might not work in this situation, but well. It's worth a try, right? ]

I don't think so.

[ Something heavy rises in his throat, threatening to overtake him with how simple she makes it all sound. Just get to know them, don't be a stranger. Don't make it difficult, everyone's on his side. Especially her. Subtle, whispering things that creep up the back of his brain and urge him to seek out "family". ]

I can't trust a damn thing I think about you idiots, because it's not MINE.

Edited 2018-01-03 01:28 (UTC)

[ He's making it quite clear that another approach is needed. One more akin to how she'd first dealt with having intrusions into her mind. ]

( You're not entirely wrong, there are things you're experiencing that aren't your own. But-- Humor me for a minute? Think about how you're feeling about me in particular, what you're thinking. Do you like me? Hate me? Do you want to protect me, or never speak to me again? )

[ How does he FEEL about her? ]

I don't -- a little of everything, I guess.

[ There's resistance in his tone, the suggestion that he's not one to unpack the way he thinks or feels. And a soft, fragmented sense that he's been made nervous. Taken off balance, by the idea that she's going to ask him to chase it deeper. He doesn't want to. What he's said is what he's meant! ]

I don't know you. But, some other thing says I do. I know I can do this on my own, but some other thing's saying I'm not alone. But. I am. I didn't connect to any of you because I chose to. How'm I supposed to get to know you, if I "already do"?

( Oh sugar, just because we're connected doesn't mean we're automatically best friends. We're allies, but everything else comes with time. I've had people in my head for half my life, but it's only a sense of them. There's a lot we don't know about each other, things that make up who we really are. Where we came from, what we've experienced. I can tell that you're angry, but not at what specifically. )

[ She takes a deep breath, feeling like she's turning in circles and not making much headway at getting to her point in all this. ]

( We might be connected and not alone because we're on the same team, but it's up to you how you all of this. You could learn how to hide things in your mind so others can't see, and how to keep out some of the pieces you're probably getting from all of us. It wouldn't fix everything, but it might help you feel a bit more like you have some control here. )

Allies.

[ Ding. Ding ding. The soft clattering of a wind chime in the window, the slice of a knife through a particularly dense section of daikon, a test score circled in red, his name - emblazoned alongside the top scores for the U.A. entrance exam. Confirmation. Recognition. "Allies" strikes more of a chord within him than "friends" or "family". He has a family, a good family. His friends are few and barely considered that. But, his allies? He can work with allies. ]

I don't have anything to hide. [ He burns too bright to ever be subtle; but even he does have things to hide, even if he doesn't recognize them. ]

I just, don't want to know what everyone else is keeping to themselves. It's none of my business. I'm here to win this for us all, and make sure nobody else dies. I don't need to get to know anybody to accomplish those things and... [ A lengthy pause, like he's considering his words: ] I dunno', it'd be like poking fingers into old wounds. Who wants that? Who feels good about that?

[ She appreciates that he identifies more with allies than any other term - these people might feel like family, but chosen family is something that's extremely important to her. The family you're stuck with has never done her any good, and she shies away from affiliating these folks with that designation. They're teammates, allies, bonded for the purpose of fighting a war. If they can become friends as well? All the better for everyone. ]

( I can understand that mindset, and I don't blame you for it for a second. When things have calmed down a bit for us, if you want to train a bit in keeping everyone's thoughts and stuff outta your head, I'll help you. I've got to work on it myself some. )

[ The symbiote sings to the tune of "family", but he already has one of those. "Allies" is a more comfortable fit, "followers" would be nicer, but everyone else is too independent to fall in line behind his lead. That's fine, too. He'll show them why he's the best in the nest, if that's the case. ]

I talked to some sleepy chick about training, just -- watch your back around her.

She's got a funny way of talking and I'm not convinced she's "all there". [ Too deep in the nest, probably. Like Cathaway? ]

I'll -- find you later, I guess. Maybe. For training, I mean. Might as well.

[ he's really trying to sound disinterested and Tough but rogue has literally all the brownie points right now ]

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

brood times

chinhands aggressively at rogue

such a sweet angry child

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