[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]

That's what the hive mind's for.

[ If he doesn't sound concerned about the question, it's because he's not. ]

They put the symbiote in our brain, it takes care of us. Faster, stronger, whatever, but more importantly...

( This shit. )

[ A careful tendril of connection, dialing in, trying to keep his firewalls up and still send something: he picks his own skill, which is coding. Useless, on this mission, on this planet, but fine for an object lesson.

What Joshua gets isn't the image of a computer screen, it's Elliot's understanding of how it works, of flickering strings numbers that he finds so easy to hold in his mind, of where the root folders are and what file extensions to look for, what strings to modify. It's baseless, without anything to practice on, and the skill itself is unpracticed, but. ]

If you're worried about not being qualified, don't be.

[whereabout]

[ Joshua's world isn't so much for technology, with the Orbal Revolution still being within the oldest generation's lifetime. And while he's had more exposure than most, thanks to his time in Ouroboros, there's no getting around the fact that computers are a rarity, in his world - he's better informed than the average person for even having an idea to attach the word to.

So the sudden sense of understanding is strange, to put it gently - but it's information, and wherever it's coming from, information has always been far easier for him to handle than emotions. It's a welcome distraction to latch onto, and he goes after it headfirst. ]

I'm not worried about myself.

[ It's somewhere between simple fact and self-depreciation, and while he doesn't make the effort to project anything, the memories attached to it are in plain view. The well-practiced silence of a flawless intrusion, the smooth motion of a blade slicing a throat. An exit made like a shadow dissolving in the sunlight. He's not worried because he's long since learned how to handle himself.

(And because what does a tool care, when it breaks?) ]

[raw]

[ Assassination. Quiet murder. These are not exactly concepts Elliot is unfamiliar with, but they're also not something he's often exposed to. In his world it's guns, sudden and loud and jarring, more likely in a public place than the privacy of your own sanctum. So while he sees this demonstration of Joshua's capability, he doesn't try and pick it up, try and learn it the way he's offering his own skills to learn. It feels too distasteful, somehow, especially when— ]

( Seriously? You seem like just a kid. )

[ Kids hate to be told they're just kids, so he kind of regrets saying that immediately, but he still means it: the guy doesn't look old enough to have that kind of skill. But the memories are right there, and he can't deny it. ]

( But I guess you can handle yourself. That's good. Makes it easier to work together. )

[whereabout]

( It didn't matter to anyone in Ouroboros. )

[ Renne had said it best, once - the Grandmaster saw only two kinds of people: useful, and useless. Using children had been more the exception than the rule, but it was an exception the society wasn't above making, given that there was one particularly useful quality that was harder to find the older one was.

Malleability.

So the flicker of distaste in Elliot's reaction doesn't offend him. Nobody hates what he's become the way Joshua himself does. But it's also beyond undoing, and so his own age doesn't matter much no matter how disgusting the general principle is. He is what he is. There's no fixing him now. ]

[raw]

( Matters to me. )

[ Because he's protective of other people's childhoods, given his own was pretty imperfect.

But Joshua is right — whether or not he's actually projecting that sentiment, Elliot would agree with the practicality of it. What's done is done and cannot be undone. ]

( Just don't try and do everything on your own. )

[ He's been talking to Bakugou, you see. ]

[whereabout]

( Don't worry, I'm not that reckless. )

[ He'd like to think he's not that reckless, anyway.

Then again, his big plan to stop the society's evil plan was "get aboard their ship and crash it so hard everyone dies," so one might not want to trust his self-assessment too much. (Joshua's problem, unlike Bakugo's, has nothing to do with boundless ego and a tendency to act before thinking. Joshua's problem is a dangerously low sense of self-preservation in pursuing what he thinks is the most logical course of action to get the thing done.) ]