[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

[somnifacient]

[There's a lot to parse there. A rush of everything; a sense of self, burning bright, something loud and mighty and strong. Superhero, indeed, explosions and pride and everything in-between. Like something out of a comic. Like something out of a movie. Noctis feels overwhelmed by it, how much confidence there is in all of that. Walking tall, he thinks, a hundred times over, and then-

Something else. It's shaped like guilt, because Noctis is all too familiar with its silhouette. Blood draining, leaving weakness in its wake to bleed through instead. It lurches out towards him, this feeling, this memory, slowly, and Noctis nearly reaches for it.

And then it's just gone. He blinks. Once, twice, and then snaps himself back into reality.]

You...

[If he had tried to hide it, Noctis isn't amazing with playing along. The slow return of his words is indicative of this whiplash he just felt.]

What's it like?

[He could've asked any number of things, but this is the first that falls from his lips.]

[incinerates]

[ Of all the questions he gets, the one that Noctis asks is not one of them. Under his disguise, Bakugo visibly starts - stands up a little taller, a little more open. Underneath the sudden brightening of his mind, there's a measure of hesitation. The act of opening up has burned even him, before. Very recently, as well. He's not the easiest to understand; considered callous and cruel, but he cares. As he lives and breathes, he undoubtedly cares.

Right now, he cares that Noctis has asked him such an... an honest question. What's it like? ]

It's -- like winning, all the time. Being unstoppable. Nobody's ever got to worry or be afraid, because you're there in the thick of it. You're the best, and villains cower and everyone looks up to you. Nobody -- [ A pang, echoing the guilt, the image he tore asunder. ] Nobody can bring you down.

[somnifacient]

Must be nice.

[And it's sincere, that offering. It really must be nice. To feel that way all the time; the confidence to face anything careening your way, the ability to stand your ground even as it all crumbled beneath your feet. To not be afraid, to never worry. (To be the strongest King.) It would be easy to face every obstacle and overcome it because you simply knew you could.

No doubts. No questions. But-]

But it can't always be that easy, right?

[But that's not reality. It's not Noctis' reality, at least, and he felt that guilt, that doubt. Even for this young man, this stranger, he knows that there is a faltering there in the bright blaze of explosion. A hitch in the fire, and he will not judge him for it.]

[incinerates]

It's not.

[ If Noctis is sincere, then Bakugo is wicked in his honesty. There's nothing "easy" about a hero's work, nothing easy is ever worthwhile. The job is one of the hardest things he's ever known, built on nigh-indomitable willpower, careful and extensive training and education, and a particular type of personality ( shining, strong ). ]

It's the hardest thing, in the world. But, if you let something like doubt or hopelessness reach your heart, you've lost. And because you've lost, whether it's to a villain or a volcano, other people will get hurt. So, you just can't lose. It's simple, but it's not simple. You just gotta' get it in your head to chase victory, even it means you tear yourself apart to reach it.

[ There are heroes, he knows, who have died. He knows, without a doubt, that he could too. And he's made his peace with that, resolved to do everything in his immeasurable power to live on. Because that's winning too. ]

[somnifacient]

[He understands it, but it's a strange concept. Do these perfect people exist, the kind that are never plagued by doubt or uncertainty? The sort where the long shadow of one's own existential dread just... dissipates, as if it were nothing?

What sort of people populated that kind of world? It really is something from a comic -- that or this young man is trying so very hard to convince Noctis of it.]

Doesn't doubting yourself help you grow? Once you overcome it.

[Does that even make sense to him? He isn't sure. He tries again.]

There can't be light without the dark. Right?

[incinerates]

Sure, whatever helps you get a handle on it.

[ It's not that his world is populated by those who do not doubt themselves. In fact, it's more like everyone doubts themselves and second-guesses their ability every day, but heroes who give in to thoughts like those don't last long. They won't even be able to graduate, to be honest. ]

You just can't let anybody know. They're looking up to you, after all. If you don't control your own doubts and fears, how're they supposed to believe in you?

[somnifacient]

So you just keep it all to yourself? What about other heroes?

[He's not sure he grasps how this world of his works, honestly.]

Like... team-ups and stuff, right? Other people where it's all right to be less-than-perfect around?

[incinerates]

There's others. [ Plenty of others! ] I just got my shit on lock, I don't need anyone's help.

[ It doesn't help that the one who's describing the world is the most prideful, independent of all the fledgling heroes. He doesn't do well in teams, it's too much to accept help. ]

There's plenty of lower-tier heroes who need support, or who work in teams. There's entire associations built around particular groups -- like Gang Orca and his henchment. Or the Pussycats, even if they're...

[ A flinch. ]

Down a member.