[mental link: day 41] darling you got to let me know

[isorropia]

[Somewhere out there in the universe, something shifts for the members of brood SARGAS and ALKAID. It's like a puzzle piece clicking into place; a key sliding perfectly into a lock; the satisfying arrangement of colors in some perfected gradient. Out there in the space between spaces, a hatch is happening.

--But here, now, on the Morran ship:]

( It seems we'll be meeting more Hosts once we reach… wherever it is we're being taken. ) [Lyr's mind is the ripples of a still pool after a pebble's been dropped into it.] ( Seeing as we now know the identity of the envoy harboring the Enemy presence, this seems like a perfect opportunity to broach the possibility that some of you might prefer to return to the Station rather than stay here. --Or rather, that it may be necessary. The work ahead is likely to be delicate and dangerous. To very poorly quote one of our own, it might be considered unethical for everyone involved to ask anyone who isn't committed to our purpose here to remain. )

[You're welcome, Bakugo.]

( Make your decisions. After we disembark, Cathaway will meet us with whichever new hatches choose to make their landfall and take whoever wishes to return back to the Station. )




((ooc: Splitting the party! We'll be handling a few drops by sending characters back to the Station (we'll let you know which characters will be returning to the Station via autopilot and which will go comatose when the Hatch Log goes live on the 24th). This is also an opportunity for active players to return their characters to the Station and continue play there. Please be aware that characters who return to the Station will be there for the remaining duration of Mission: Hyrypia and will not be able to participate in mission based events; conversely, please be aware that characters who remain on Hyrypia will not be able to participate in Station based events. Brood connections will remain open, but seem radically more tenuous.))

Comments

[greentech]

( Well, that's kind of standard isn't it? Especially when you're sneaking around... )

[ Pidge doesn't always like it, but she understands it. Hell, she snuck into the Garrison to find her brother. Even if the situation was very, very different. ]

( If I can improve our odds by staying, I'm going to stick it out. I'm not going to leave everyone else in the lurch. )

uses the wrong account every day of my life

[isorropia]

( How noble. )

[Sounds blandly unimpressed; feels like a quiet kind of approval.]

[greentech]

( I'm a Paladin of Voltron. It's kinda what we do. )

[isorropia]

( So I've heard. I can't pretend you haven't made yourself useful. )

[greentech]

( What else am I going to do? Sit around and do nothing? )

[isorropia]

( The Station is excellent for developing myopia and very little else. )

[That sounds or feels or has the sensation of agreement to it.]

[greentech]

( I wouldn't know. I haven't spent enough time there. )

[isorropia]

( Perfectly fine place to visit; dreadful to live in. )

[greentech]

( It does feel a bit sterile. Not really where I'd wanna live my whole life...

Where do you guys live, anyway? Are you just on missions all the time? )

[isorropia]

( More or less. We're more useful out here than there. ) [Tick, tick, tick, says something in the back of his mind. It isn't the second hand of clock moving forward, but rather the winding of some complex mechanism. Tick. Tick. Tick.]

( We've been in this one preparing for this work for some time. )

[greentech]

( Kinda how I feel, honestly. Even if I'd rather go home-home. You ever think about that? Going back to your real home? )

[isorropia]

( In passing, but I find it more productive to speculate on things that are slightly more probable. Besides, for all I know the place I left would be very different now. Time passes strangely between multiverses, but I've never known it to stop. )

[A pause. A breeze sighing through distant tree tops, stirring some remote foliage.]

( Are you homesick? )

[greentech]

[ There's the sense of... longing. Of missing something that should be in her life. A missing piece of the puzzle. ]

( Not exactly. I was looking for my family when I came here and now I don't know if I'm ever going to find them. )

[isorropia]

[There's some tang or texture of something blue or cool, some element of observation - not disinterested, not detached, just beyond reach. A small bird on a branch, its head swiveling this way and that while it's large black eye watches the wind through the trees and over the grass. Its wings twitch. The branch sways from the world around it, not from the weight of the sparrow.]

( The common theory is that what makes us suitable hosts for the symbiote is a physical mutation of some kind. I imagine it could be a hereditary trait, or the cause of some environmental factors that a family or group of people who grew and lived and knew similar circumstances might share. Like with you and Shiro, or as it is with Bellamy and Lexa and so on. It's not impossible to imagine that a member of your family might find their way here. Or that you might find some different version of them somewhere else, I suppose. )

[It isn't meant to be discouraging. On the contrary, as far as realistic expectation go surely this estimation is optimistic?]

[greentech]

( That's not what I mean... )

[ There's a quiet sort of resignation there, but it's followed by a spark. A littl electric jolt that suffuses everything, turns the link red-hot. ]

( I was going to find them - am I just supposed to forget about them now? Accept that I'm stuck here and that they're probably out there in some prison camp? That they're gone and odds are against me EVER seeing them again? Because I'm not going to do that-! )

[isorropia]

[That metaphorical bird on the branch blinks it's beady black eye.]

( If that's what you think is rational. )

[There's no derisive note to it. Merely-- interest. A finger tapping on the page of an open booklet where studious notes are kept. Rational is such a strange word, isn't it? Who decides what is reasonable?]

[greentech]

[ There's a sense of... disbelief. The sensation of being splashed in the face with cold water. ]

( You're not listening to anything I'm saying, are you? )

[isorropia]

[A flicker - real surprise. As if he is genuinely taken aback.]

( Haven't I? Are you not determined to be reunited with your family and the place you know? Won't you refuse to accept the appearance of the universe disallowing it as fact? I suspect you're mistaking a lack of participation on my part with disbelief. )

[greentech]

[ Pidge flounders for a moment, anger and embarrassment mixing in equal measure. ]

( How can you just accept that we're never going to see these people ever again? )

[isorropia]

( Perhaps it's a cultural difference that makes it easier for me. But I suppose I'm also comforted by the knowledge that until this task before us is finished my presence would be a danger to the people I care for were I to return to my home universe. Better to be elsewhere. Besides-- )

[A pause, thoughtful. Gears turning. A pen tapping on paper. Hmm.]

( The opportunity is a unique one. My companions would never forgive me if I refused the study of places like this one. )

[greentech]

( The longer I'm here, the longer they stay lost. They might already be dead, for all I know! )

[ She doesn't understand why he doesn't understand; nor does she comprehend his detachment. ]

( At least if I found them, I'd know they were alive. )

[isorropia]

( I don't recall disagreeing with you on any of this. I can see how this would be important to you and am sympathetic to the desire to see your way back to where you come from to reconnect with the people you care about. )

[There's a flicker of-- irritation, maybe. Or exasperation. He'd been trying to be kind, to be easy, to be gentle because children deserve the benefit of those things even in dangerous places like this one. Even when they come from grim universes where their families may be dead, where they've become used to fighting dark things.

But he has only a small capacity for any of these and eventually only frankness serves:]

( Unfortunately, I've never known anyone who went back to the place they came from. I don't mean to discourage you - by all means, pursue what you feel you're drawn to -; I only mean to be realistic as I know it. But I wish you all the best; There may very well be a way to do what you would like to. I hope if there is, that it can be done safely. )