onemind: (Default)
THE N E S T ([personal profile] onemind) wrote in [community profile] station722016-03-14 01:56 pm

[HATCH LOG] IS ANYONE THERE?

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :150
SUMMARY: Today is the day you wake up.
WARNINGS: None; will edit if necessary.






A MOMENT AGO it seemed like you willingly took the hand of someone beckoning to safety.


NOW YOU WAKE UP in one of many chambers of Station 72’s nesting deck. If you had wounds, they’re (mostly) gone; if you had doubts they are - for the split second between dreaming and waking - gently reassured. This is correct. This is right. You’re safe here. The only question is what here is exactly.

The compartment you find yourself in is small, though gently padded for comfort with enough elbow and head -room to not be wholly claustrophobic. Still, it’s difficult to re-orient yourself; the best way to get to the chamber’s built in ladder and down to the smooth, polished white floor of the nesting is to simply roll over onto your belly and go out feet first.

First thing’s first though: get rid of that tube running from the rear wall of the chamber to the base of your skull. The moment you’ve done that, there’s the sensation like a rubber band popping - a string in your hand being jerked. The headache that punches in falls like the heavy end of a hammer - not serious, but surprisingly abrupt - as a of combination confusion, resolve, anxiety, certainty, delight, and fear and expectation finds you. In fades after a moment, churning to a low dull pressure and a faint hum. It’s feels like standing outside the door of a small party, sounds muffled and incomprehensible. Some pieces rise and swell above the others then fall again. Strain your ears and realize you’re hearing nothing at all.

On the plus side, you’re not hooked into the compartment anymore. Slide out and onto the ladder, though not too fast or you’ll miss the small cubicle built into the wall near the mouth of the chamber. In the cubicle are all the things you brought with you, every small piece you own of the home you left behind. There’s a neatly folded pair of something like white pajamas there as well. They’re definitely in your size, though you have the option not to wear them since you’re still in the clothes you left home in. Granted, for some of you that might not exactly be a blessing. Your clothes haven’t exactly been laundered or repaired, so best hope you didn’t bleed or sweat on them too much during your escape.

Sliding free from the chamber pod and stepping out onto the ladder, you’ll find yourself in an open space. The room is broad and pale and clean, its sloping walls featuring dozens and dozens of holes like the one you just wiggled out of. There are more ladders and a few other people climbing down, or stareing, or already down on the nesting deck’s floor but the sixteen - seventeen, including yourself - people present would hardly fill even a sixth of the room’s available accommodations.

The noise is louder when you near any of the others. It’s as if you've entered the party yourself. Identifiable now is the low wash of feelings, a hum of emotions that only serves to make the slight headache worsen. They feel genuine. They feel like they could belong to you. Still, that pressure in your head doesn't worry you --Shouldn't it worry you? Does worrying - about the headache, about the world and people you left behind, or the strange place you’re in now, the odd collection of people you’re with and the fact that you feel strangely drawn to five or six of them - make the headache better? Or worse?

If you manage to push the sound aside and listen with your true ears, you'd notice you can't hear anything besides this small group of fellow hosts: their footsteps, their oddly sharp breathing. There’s no sound of traffic, no wind in the trees, no birds, no hum of a ship. Only circulating air and silence.

You may not know what a brood is, but finding yours is easy. There are minds among these strangers that call to yours, their voices louder than the rest, their feelings sharper. The nearer to you they are, the more comfortable you feel. Is that strange? You don't know them, but you do. There are few answers to be found on the nesting deck.

Eventually you will have no choice but to head out of the room. There’s only one way out that you can see: up through a spiraling hallway that arches overhead. When it opens again the space seems slightly less alien. There are doorways of a kind lining the walls and each one opens to a small, nearly normal room. There are no doors, so it's easy to see all the rooms are vacant. In seventeen of them there are items neatly stacked on the bed. Most are hygiene supplies. Some of them - a toothbrush, comb, razor - may be familiar to you. Others less so. There's a flat horizontal ledge beside the bed with a small light and a single drawer. Another table, apparently built into the wall, sits across the room with a chair. A mirror is on the desk; it’s slightly mundane and not quite to the Station’s style.

This room is yours for the moment. It doesn't mean someone won't want to trade - or take. Beyond this life support deck stretches the rest of Station 72. It is quiet and and twisting and perfectly inert.

At its most familiar, the Station is merely a still, empty ship with broad chambers and gently mottled light. At its worst, it’s an Escher painting of strange angles and bizarre platforms that seems grown as much as built. There are many ways to many places and while it seems all doors and passages open to you, there’s an unshakeable feeling that the space doesn’t quite match up - that there’s even more to the Station which you can’t yet see. Don’t get lost!




For now, you reach the floor of the nesting deck. When you do, something blooms in your mind. A voice, disturbingly lacking any identifying traits but warm and comfortable like sweetened milk, says:

( ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬...There you are...▬▬▬..Welcome to Station 72 ▬▬. )


If you follow the thread of that voice, you’ll eventually find your way either to Cathaway on the bridge or The Prince in the training wing.








((OOC Notes: Welcome to Station 72! Feel free to check out the SETTINGS page for more information about the Station. If you have any questions about the setting itself, feel free to ask them there; otherwise, please direct all questions to either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.

Prince’s top level should be live in the evening! Keep an eye out for it if you want him to give your character the introduction spiel instead of Cathaway.

Happy hatchday, everyone! :) ))




polyphonos: (delta)

[personal profile] polyphonos 2016-04-03 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Correct.

[She draws her hands from the girl's face, her damp cheeks, and instead sets them at the top of Angel's head: smooths her hair back, touches her fingers delicately to the warmth of her scalp and hardly makes contact with the plates there at all. There's a fondness in it, a tentative warmth that's as unexhaustible as it is personal (selfish). Easy, easy, easy. Be still, be gentle. Whatever place the girl had come from was behind her, could be made irrelevant - a pain tempered.]

Whatever you choose to do now is for yourself - but that self now extends to every host on this Station, to each one beyond it. We are part of you as you are a piece of us, so we must treat ourselves fairly.
circumspector: (xx » singing to be sold)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-04-05 07:56 am (UTC)(link)
[ She calms by seconds, first the shake in her hands, then the tremor of her shoulders, the quick little rise and fall breathing of a muted kind of hysteria, that she wills gone as the fingers are so, so light, and so, so careful. It's not like when she would wake from sedatives with the ghost of scientific fingers on her back and nothing but metal adornments stapled into her spine, her head, monitors on her heart and lungs.

This has nothing but the purpose of touch to it. Her eyes shut, letting it do it's work, and eventually, she at last stills. She had never been very good at I, that this extension to we becomes natural a thought as breathing. So eager to accept that irrelevancy of the past, to erase that part of herself, like birds malt feathers, so she could leave it behind now. It was done, there was this wholeness now. From machines to herself to the great vastness this woman presented.

The pause was as she looks down again, blinking her eyes open. The most important part done, there's this strangeness to deal with that isn't her abilities or this cracked open hole in her head.
] I feel heavy. [ and she realises, at once, that what she feels ( not her mind: love,hate,hurt. but her body: muscles,skin,bone ) she is tired. It has been years and she's still just that child needing permission. Can she remember how to do it? sleep, eat? she'd done it before, so she ought to be able to do it again. ] Is it... alright if I sleep for awhile?
polyphonos: (epsilon)

[personal profile] polyphonos 2016-04-07 07:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[They are disparate pieces of ten thousand vessels made to work in symphony - salvage retrofitted to join into a whole, the gaps and unsealed edges raw until the symbiote could fill them. Until the cracks are filled, until the machine becomes a singular piece of equipment functioning in time, they must all do double the work to perform to capacity. There is no efficiency in this; their place is one of necessity.

In time, adaptability will increase the rate at which they function or they will break. There is no middle ground.

Today and in this place, Cathaway smooths dark hair back from the young host's eye then places her hands to cup Angel's face. She smiles at her like she is a child, asking silly things at the end of a long exhausting day.]


Of course. Do you know your way back to life support?
circumspector: (vii » outside the sky waits)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-04-08 03:30 am (UTC)(link)
[ She'll work hard, for this choice, she'll do whatever she's asked. More so, she craves it, the ability to move and twist and go like others do. She's no interest in breaking when she's just gotten her own legs back. But right now -- well, eridium was a hell of a drug. She'd be lying to say she was fine. Whatever they'd done to her and certainly made it possible for her to be alive. But whatever it was had to be working overtime to heal so much damage. It left her shaky, overwhelmed and weak.

She nods, brief, back the way she came. Away from others might help, give her the time to work through the rest of the crash.
] Yess, ma'am. [ Wets her lips, swallowing back on the dryness. The exhaustion builds quickly. ] I just... plug myself back in?
polyphonos: (beta)

[personal profile] polyphonos 2016-04-12 05:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Correct. There is a small scar, just there-- [She lifts her hand and places it gently at the base of her skull; she has one too, under the sheet of her silvering hair.] --that will help you find the right place. The Nesting Deck will give you the benefit of aligning your mind with the symbiote while you sleep, but if you'd prefer to rest elsewhere any room on the Life Support deck is acceptable for you to take as your own. You passed through it on the way here.

[She is, undoubtedly, talking about the open-door cabins directly adjacent to the nesting deck.]
circumspector: (( sitting ) » are you insane like me)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-04-15 02:16 am (UTC)(link)
[ Just sleeping might be good, but she's more interested in getting a control of herself as quickly as possible. Being without the collar is terrifying, but even more so if she doesn't look into how to establish that control by herself. ]

I'll go to the Nesting Deck. The sooner this headache stops the better.

[ Her hand comes up, brushing against her neck, feeling for the scar and finding it quickly. Rubbing over it, briefly contemplating. Seems that everything was sorted, for now. She could think about it more, after the slept. ] Oh, my name is Angel. [ lets go of something, all knotted in her chest that she unravels little by little. ] Thank you, again. I didn't think there was a way out anymore.
polyphonos: (gamma)

[personal profile] polyphonos 2016-04-18 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Angel.

[It's an affirmation of a kind, punctuated by the easy incline of the woman's head. She knew it already, but she appreciates the sentiment. Besides, it is a good name; there is a part of her that enjoys the meaning in it. It has been a long time since the last new hosts hatched and went; perhaps such a name is fortuitous of good things to come, of fire licked swords and justice being meted - of miracles.]

You're very welcome. Let us know if there's anything more that can be done to assist you. We are here for you at any hour.
circumspector: (( sitting ) » are you insane like me)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-04-19 01:44 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, ma'am.

[ She's going to go in a second, but she hovers. Like she's trying to work out if this is... appropriate or not. This woman is to teach her, train her? She isn't sure. It might be good, for once, to have someone that will guide her rather than use her, at least not to hurt people until she wants or needs to.

It's a lot of things and definitely rather than weigh them all, sleep seemed easier right now. Laying in the quiet dark for awhile, it will be dreamless and she will finally remember to break up time and consciousness. But before that --

She steps forward quickly, eyes down, shy, shy of rejection and being pushed away and that this isn't somehow appropriate, but she wraps her arms around Cathaway, quick and light. A second to just press her face against her shoulder, take one comfortable second just being like that -- it means nothing, not really, but as much as being reached for is terrifying, to reach back is somehow infinitely more so. She did this before, and it doesn't matter she killed the last woman that did this for her, she says into the small space. Goodnight. It doesn't matter that it's not night, not day either, space is without the same rhythms, it's normal. It's what people do, and she can have that now.

Then she lets go, and she feels -- somehow lighter for it. Ducking her head once in goodbye, and turning to go to the nesting deck and find that comfortable numbness again.
]