[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

[bracchium]

[Bucky glances at her, but nothing about her or her mental image screams mutant to him. Sure, he's not entirely positive of what a "mutant" is, but then again there's not much exposure to otherworldly beings in his history. He considers his arm, or what remains of it. Would that make him a mutant?]

( What are mutants? ) [He doesn't even think of regarding this question as something that could offend.]

[theycalledmeacurse]

[ Luckily for Bucky, Rogue has a very strict idea of what she considers rude, and asking an innocent question doesn't meet those criteria, not by a long shot. Actually, considering what she just came from, the idea that anyone could not know what a mutant is-- Well, it makes her laugh. It's quiet and born more from relief than anything else, but it's very much still a laugh. ]

( Well, that solves the mystery then. Definitely not from the same place. Mutants are all anyone's talked about in my world for decades. )

[ She takes a moment to compose herself before that laughter turns bitter, settling her emotions as best she can before giving him the explanation he'd asked for. ]

( Mutants are humans born with a genetic difference that grants them special abilities or physical mutations. Reading minds, manipulating the weather, accelerated healing, blue fur, teleportation... The possibilities were endless and there was no telling what someone would end up with. )

[bracchium]

[Bucky didn't expect a laugh from the new host. He's not entirely sure what he expected but a laugh was not high on the non-existent list. Most hosts don't mind his questions to begin with, but he's a pretty awkward guy and that doesn't stir up conversation.

Her answer, accompanied by the bitter tang of suffering, isn't what he expected, either. Her explanation sounds so similar to the powers that the symbiote provide.]

( Like the symbiote? )

[He provides the impression of his own powers, of the second-hand view of sparks and darkness.]

[theycalledmeacurse]

( Just like that. I think so, anyway; this thing didn't exactly come with a manual. )

[ At least not one she'd been privy to. Wouldn't that be nice, to finally have some guidance to the strange new aspects of her life instead of being thrown into the deep end of the pool and expected to swim? Fat chance of that ever happening, of course. ]

( My mutation isn't as pleasant, either. Is that electricity you're working with? )

[bracchium]

[Huh. Bucky's not much of a fan of the symbiote's powers, given that they cause the Soldier to resurface, but Rogue seems to have a different take on hers. He pauses to consider his response before giving it. His powers, on their own, wouldn't be so bad if they were just that: electricity. It's more of what they bring with them that causes the issues.]

( Yeah. But it scrambles everything. ) [He gestures with his arm toward his head.] ( Makes me dangerous. )

[Not that he isn't dangerous now, but he's less dangerous when he's got control over himself.]

[theycalledmeacurse]

[ A lack of control over your own powers is something Rogue is intimately familiar with, both firsthand and through working with her students over the years. It's terrible to constantly worry about losing control, being afraid of those abilities, constantly anticipating hurting someone on accident. Sympathy swells up in her, warm and soft, and she wonders if she might be able to help in some way. ]

( Have you tried training with it? Sometimes working with powers like that helps decrease the side effects over time. )

[bracchium]

[Sam has suggested training with his abilities, but Bucky has been entirely resistant to the idea. The last thing he wants to do is engage his abilities further and run the risk of activating them at all. The confines of the ship are no place for the Soldier and the miles and miles of desert even less so. Which has resulted in largely ignoring his powers and pretending they don't exist.

Avoiding violence seems to do some good, but distance can only do so much.]

( No. ) [And he has no plans to.]

[theycalledmeacurse]

[ Ah. She knows that feeling too, the desire to just ignore everything and avoid dealing with it in the hopes that it'll be enough to avoid any negative outcome. In her experience though, it never quite works out that way. ]

( What are you worried about happening, sugar? ) [ There has to be a reason for this decision; if it's a sound one, then she won't question it further. ]

[bracchium]

[Bucky's posture stiffens at the question. There aren't many hosts that know about the Soldier. Of course, he can't hide memories from the majority of the Nest, but the deeper wounds he does attempt to conceal. The memories of the Soldier since arriving on the station aren't his and that distresses him the most about his powers. He kills and maims, but can't remember any of it, unlike HYDRA.

He should remember them, but he doesn't.]

( The Nest would be in danger. )

[theycalledmeacurse]

[ They're so similar, she and this soldier, that it aches a little to see herself reflected back like this. In the early days after discovering her mutation, after the incident on the Statue of Liberty, she'd been terrified of training with her powers. To try to control them, she needed to learn her limits, and the only one to do that... Absorbing people she considered friends and allies was the last thing she'd wanted to do, and it had taken quite a while to move past that fear of hurting others before she could do what she needed to.

She has to remind herself that she doesn't know his story, that it could be so much worse than her own and so she shouldn't pry. He's made a decision and it's not her place to demand he justify it. ]

( I've trained with a lot of dangerous people in my life. If you change your mind, I'm always willing to help. ) [ And that's where she'll leave it, nothing more than an open offer for him to do with as he sees fit. ]

[bracchium]

[Rogue has joined Sam in offering training, but Bucky staunchly refuses to activate his power. Not unless it was a matter of life and death. After all, he doesn't have much control to begin with. As much as he would want to gain control, he wouldn't want to trigger it in the process- not without a failsafe to keep the Soldier in.

He bites his lip beneath all the layers of their disguise.]

( Yeah. ) [It's not a solemn oath to seek her out first, but it's more than he gives most people.]