[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

it's all i know how to do

[incinerates]

[ Thing is, that background noise is now everyone's background noise -- luckily, it's a thing that ebbs and flows between nestmates. Those not dug into one another's brains as deeply as some, like Bakugo. He's able to dig his heels in and pull himself back from it, withdraw his mind from where it's been butting up against Juno's own - boisterous and volatile, like a cat that's been rubbed down with a balloon until it's all on end. Ready to lash out, both consciously and unconsciously; hunkering down, ready to lunge. Ready to claw at someone to keep them away, because he'd prefer that, to any of the alternatives.

If Juno's metaphor stands, and they're all at the bottom of a long, violent fall, then Bakugo knows that he's the one already on his feet, even if it means that he's standing on everyone else. After all, he's the best suited to get out of a bad position, with just a controlled burst of energy. Like hell, if he's staying down there, if he's staying still. A secondary round of resistance escapes him, less revulsion - more indignation, when Juno mentions cities on fire. ( He thinks of Musutafu, already aflame by the time he'd left, buildings already half-consumed by the void-body of the thing pursuing him, calling his name with eager, hopeful tones -- ) ]

Tch, [ it's similar, and he hates it. ] What are you saying, who the hell walked away? Not me.

[ Not similar enough, he won't allow it to be. ]

The thing wanted me. Just me. Everyone else, they just -- they just got in the way. I'm the only one who could'a handled it, they should have left it to me.

[iuno]

They couldn't. [ they really shouldn't be arguing with so little space between them. it would be so easy to grab the kid, shake him, restless with frustration and black anger and this glinting knife edge of panic. ] Don't you get that? That thing — it'd chew through everything. It's mindless.

[ that much was explained to him by the stranger who pulled him out of Hyperion. he's thinking about Miasma and the shape of her mind, her cold determination, like clawing for to find purchase on a sheet of smooth, black ice. the horrifying inhuman force of it. her voice echoing in him, I will get what I want. it's been six months and he should be over it but she— left a mark of some kind on him. a deep gouge or maybe a burn scar, from something he didn't want to understand, something he shouldn't have touched.

it's funny; Bakugo is stuck on the leaving, he can vaguely catch that much on the periphery of his senses. taking responsibility for getting rid of the thing, as if he could have fought it with his own two hands. and leaving was bad for Juno, a bitter taste he'll probably be swallowing for the rest of his life, but — that isn't what's killing him. the guilt is because it came for him in the first place, which makes everything his fault just for fucking existing. less about what he couldn't do and more the curse of the fact that he was alive at all. and he's barely been alive these past six months, so what was it worth anyway? ]

Everyone here got a bad hand and there's no getting out of that. This is just how the galaxy works. [ he says it with conviction, the kind of certainty that comes from telling yourself this every day. ] It doesn't get better. You just learn to live with a little less every time.

[incinerates]

[ Panic.

Panic is an infestation; one of the easiest diseases to catch and spread among one another, and he can feel it thick in Juno's throat as though it's his own. Perhaps, even Bakugo feels some manner of anxiousness. This is new territory, the people here are not of his world, not of his history, they're different in so many ways, that his experiences will not serve to rally nor convince them of his might or his manner. But, panic. He can't stand the panic, he can't stand the idea that it could spread outward from this semi-hysterical lady with too many scars and a rough voice and some unknowable, unnameable part of him is whispering like whiskey-silk to do something.

Do something for this rough, battered thing before him.

Do something.

So, Bakugo punches him. Not hard, not violently. The windup is slow, the delivery is slower, as he televises his moves so nakedly that even an idiot child could see that he's not aiming to harm anyone. He's just -- he's reaching out, in the only way that he knows how. Physical comfort is not a commodity he comprehends, and he doubts that this prickly moron in front of him would respond to it well, if at all. What he does, instead, is shove the knuckles of his bare hand flat along Juno's sternum and press. Knuckling down on him, if you will. Sharper, harder, the flex of a strong bicep driving him forward, until he's toe to toe with him. ]

There's no such thing as a bad hand, lady. It's just one more hand you bluff, until you take 'em for all they're worth.

[ He doesn't keep the contact up for long. Soon enough, he pulls his fist back and spreads his fingers, before he withdraws them. Slips the black mask off his face, and stuffs it into a pocket. ( Red eyes; already on the tail end of his teenage years, already broad, already tall. Only due to grow broader and taller over the next few years. ) The gauntlet comes off next, and he holds them each in his hands, like boots he's not sure where to place. ]

Don't worry. I'll pick up your fucking slack, someone has to offset my winning streak.

[ Ah. There it is, the asshole child returns again to ruin the moment. ]

[iuno]

[ even if the punch had been thrown, Juno's not sure he would have moved. he's just waiting for an excuse and he knows it. it's not, though; the gesture is deliberate, heavy with meaning rather than violence, and Juno stands his ground against the weight of it. against the press of a fist on his chest. it's — not comforting, but grounding, maybe. makes something in him snap back into place. like he'd been treading water and just suddenly his foot hits solid ground, startled by the security of it. and the strange thing is that the feeling doesn't seem entirely him, propped up by something else, someone else. borrowing it from... from this kid.

he doesn't like this. he doesn't like that Bakugo even cared enough to pull him back from the edge, when he seemed much happier with the idea of decking Juno for his little display of weakness; and worse, that he somehow knew exactly what kind of gesture would work best on Juno, who bristles at the slightest hint of kindness. there's too much going on here that isn't quite clear. it feels like they're being played.

Bakugo backs off quickly, and Juno does the same, his posture shifting from that sure-footed anticipation of violence into something more subdued, wary. he's giving Bakugo a narrow-eyed glare — sullen and resentful for the fact that he's being led through this conversation, and by a teenager, and by a teenager like this. someone with that brazen kind of confidence in things as bright and blazing as the sun; a confidence in his ability to stand up against the world that Juno lost a long time ago, traded for the surety of the worst to come.

this boy is too much like him. it turns his mouth dry and bitter. ]

Sure, kid. Whatever you say. Gotta be honest, I'm not actually much good with a hand of cards, so I'll just take your word for it. [ he's not touching this; he doesn't even want to deal with the sore places in himself where those ideals were uprooted, he's not interested in the minefield of someone else's beliefs. ] And does the hero have a name?

[incinerates]

[ He's leaving this whole -- whatever this thing is -- behind. There's no good way to ditch the conversation, the things he's done, the way he's fostered some sort of urgency within himself. Do something, the tiny, infantile voice inside of him had said, and he'd heeded it. Foolishly, without question. Listened and obeyed, when something told him jump, now and to do it in the direction of some hysterical dame who'd apparently needed the weird pick-em-up he'd offered. A goddamn faux-pas punch, and it had been successful. Somehow, someway.

( It scares him; that he doesn't recognize if it was his own voice, or the coiling, creeping collection of emotions and thoughts and memories that now swirl within him. )

With his things in his arms, Bakugo's seconds from deliberate motion. Cutting a conversation short comes easy to him, all it takes is for him to turn his back on someone and to walk away. Just turn, just walk. If he can't see them, their words can't reach him. And he does, he really does. Arms full of heavy, metal-case gauntlets and the half-folded strip of mask that shields his face and his ears from damage and recoil. He turns on Juno, puts the dame in his mirrors and gets ready to let him eat dust. He doesn't want to deal with this weird sensation any further. Doesn't even want to think about it. ]

Bakugo, Katsuki. [ Looking back, with a devil's smile on his face, like he's just found his new favorite joke. ] See ya, damsel.