[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

[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. ]