station72 | [hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ The recoil ripples across the link, and for the first time, Mat realizes just how young this one feels. All black and white and sure and raw, and it hasn't been that long since that was him, really, some idiot farm boy trying to tell an Aes Sedai how to do her business. Now he's an idiot farm boy commanding armies — or was. He isn't sure what he is, here.

As much as he's spoken to others here, accidentally shared, the point blank question of who he is (was) has never come up. It kicks up a thoughtful trail of memories, more idle than indecisive — a farm, his sisters. Their faces are missing, small gaps in history. The word ta'veren, attached to strings, pulling; the banner again, marked with the red hand.

He knows what other people like to call him. What he'd call himself, though— ]

( A gambler. )

[ Offered up as an evasion that hits accidentally close to home. Gambling with his life, other people's lives — still true. ]

( What makes you think you've got a better handle on all this than any of us? )

[ Or, more simply, who were you. What are your qualifications, kid. ]

[ He tries to resist the urge to wander down that trail, as inviting as it seems to be for the moment -- memories alight in Mat's mind ( words he doesn't know; places he recognizes only for their loose cross-universe familiarity, not for much else ). It's easier to withdraw, when spark gives to fire, and the flare of his temper brings his wandering, hunting gaze back to the here-and-now.

It's dangerous, how easily one could get lost in the mind of another, like this. Even one who wasn't part of his team ( his brood -- ). ]

Yeah, that sounds real helpful and not at all like a personal problem.

[ Gambling is, like, illegal for minors and also a slippery, slippery slope. Which naturally means it's on the same level as smoking and drinking in this teetotal's mind.

The same mind that bristles, when his qualifications are questioned: ]

I've been handling shit like this, basically since I was in kindergarten. Winning impossible fights? Combating natural disasters? Observation, reconnaissance, tactical manuevers? That's my school's entire curriculum, man. You're looking at the next top dog of the whole pro hero scene.

[ Don't ask him about drinking and smoking, then. The judgment's funny because of how direct it is — it doesn't feel petty or insecure. It feels clean and confident, like Bakugo's opinion is simple fact. And to be totally fair, Mat wouldn't exactly argue gambling and smoking and drinking are helpful.

The bragging? Also funny. It isn't that he doubts what the kid's saying; it's just so intensely juxtaposed to Mat's approach to things that it's hard to take it seriously, and he doesn't make any effort to relate. ]

( I was under the impression heroism was a personal problem, too. )

[ Not something "pro" (professional???), or something you're taught. Though he'd also say it was a problem for him, personally. Being heroic is usually bloody inconvenient. And while it takes a few seconds, the reality of what Bakugo's saying does sink in; there's a sudden wash of disapproval and surprised judgment across the connection when it does. ]

( Blood and bloody ashes, are you saying your world's got armies of children? )

[ Well, WATCH OUT, MAT. He's got a lot more bragging that needs to be done, and you're looking more and more like the kind of person who'll let him carry on instead of shutting him down immediately. ]

Har har.

[ The rush of surprise catches him like a sudden undertow, shocking him with how quickly Mat's tune changes and how piss-poor his listening comprehension skills are. Armies of children, what a leap to make! ( He forgets, when it's convenient, that most of the people he's met on this team are from war-torn worlds. They're used to having standing armies, they're used to fighting morally grey battles. ) ]

Absolutely not. You have to be eighteen years old before you can even apply for an official hero license, AND you have to have graduated from an accredited institution, AND you have to have passed the national examinations after that. It's a very cut-and-polished process, nobody's forced into it like an army. It's like getting a job as a policeman, or a construction worker.

[ Honestly what the fuck. Also, guess who has no real concept of formal education: this guy. Which means that very involved and very authoritative (and judgy) reply just gets a curt, mildly horrified: ]

( I'd rather kiss a flaming goat. )

[ Also, protip, being a hero is awful?? ]

( Wait — are you more than eighteen? )

I can arrange that, don't you worry.

[ The words are sharp, drawn out into a sneer. All he'd have to do is find out what passes for a goat on this planet, give it a little singe -- don't put ideas in his head, Mat. Especially ones that you don't want a teenage boy with time on his hands and a passion for antagonism to pursue!!

His tone changes on a dime, though -- cautious and ready to fucking fight, depending on what the guy's leading up to: ]

No. I'm sixteen, but if you write me off 'cause of it, I'll kick your ass from here to the ends of this world.

[hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

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