(no subject)

[initiates]

Date: December 1st
Location: The Observatory.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Observatory after their initial briefings.
Warnings: None.

Your arrival here has been very unceremonious. One second you were somewhere else, and now, very suddenly, your feet hit the glowing white of the Transporter pad, and you're here. You aren't alone, either. There's a crowd of others around you, each seeming just as bewildered, angry, or confused as you might feel. At the head of the group is a woman in purple robes, solemn and taciturn. She hurries over a quick overview of your intended purpose here, and gives direct answers when asked for them, but to most things she simply shows you how to access the tablet you've just been given, or tells you that the DITR's greeters will explain everything. On the tablet, you can find the history of this place and a record of what your new cohorts have experienced. Someone stands on hand to give you a weapon, and though the armory is now greatly reduced, you should be able to find something to suit you.

You're shepherded down a walkway tunnel and into the Observatory, where you will find screens mounted on three sides of the wide room; they show multiple variations of satellite images, focused on... somewhere snowy. It's difficult to say more than that, but those that record heat readings seem to suggest there are people there, where ever "there" is. It's night outside the great wide windows, and the lunar landscape isn't much to look at right now. But, hey, at least all the lights are on, right? No more creepy red emergency lighting upon arrival — not that you'd know anything about that.

You're free to explore the base, visit and use any of the VR rooms, or discover your new room and roommates, but try not to step out of any airlocks if oxygen is a requirement for your system.

Welcome to the moon base, and to the remains of Exsilium.

[[ ooc; As a note for players of current characters: please keep your root comments confined to the various groups and organizations that set up root comments to greet new characters! We highly encourage tagging around here, but since it's a log meant for new characters specifically, we ask that they be the ones to set up root threads to the entry. Thank you, and happy playing! ]]

Comments

a!

[reassures]

[...Well. For a moment when he just sort of appears at the end of the hall, Nill pauses and blinks, wondering if she saw that wrong. Or maybe she hadn't noticed him..? Who knew. But he looks potentially new, and if not new then at least a little lost, so she quickly hurries over, pulling her tablet out to type on it before she even gets there. She stops beside Nico and waves a hand in greeting before holding the tablet up, a notepad program open on it with something typed up for him to read.]

If you're looking for something I can help you find it.

[mortuaria]

[ Nico's usual brooding scowl eases away as he looks from the girl to the tablet. It's not hard to figure out what's going on: this girl clearly can't talk. His expression softens. ]

I'm just having a look around, that's all.

[reassures]

[It makes things so much easier when people don't think she's doing it for kicks. A small smile spreads across her face.]

My name is Nill. Did you just get here?

[mortuaria]

Nill. Did I say that right?

[ no his heart is already warming to her fuckshit ]

I'm Nico. And yeah, I did.

[reassures]

[Ah! People never asked if they were saying her name right. Her smile widens, and she nods. She's very quick with the typed up responses, so it's a bit obvious she's been using that as a method of communication for a long while.]

You did. How do you spell your name?

If you have any questions about this place, I can try to answer them for you.

[mortuaria]

N-I-C-O.

[ Geez. She's so frickin' sweet. Why do all the girls like her die? ]

Have you had a chance to go down to the surface?

[reassures]

[She shakes her head, though it takes a second or two longer this time for her to type up a reply. She keeps backspacing.]

Not recently. I was here before we were all brought to the moon base though, and I've been on missions.

[mortuaria]

[ He wonders if that's when she died. However and whenever it was, he can sense it was brutal. ]

Has the base been safe?

[reassures]

[That's an unfortunate sort of question, to say the least. She looks visibly uncertain for a moment, her wings shifting against her back. On the one hand, it's not the best thing to spring on a newbie, but on the other... it's probably something he should know about.]

We haven't had any trouble with the United Earth. However, we opened up a previously closed off wing of the base some time ago that was full of very dangerous monsters. Not long ago there was also a mutiny, and most of the Transports that were involved with causing it are in jail.

[Her wings fold in now and settle against her back, mostly out of view. Again. That was the second time. She'd thought before that it might be a misunderstanding, that she wasn't hearing quite right, or that he was thinking about something else. But he wasn't. He was thinking, very specifically, about her death, even if he didn't know the details. How...?]

[mortuaria]

[ He tries not to focus too much on her wings - it's not their existence that unsettles him, but that they're such a pure white that of course he's reminded of stupid Cupid and his stupid confession. But this girl is nothing like Cupid. ]

So I take it the mutiny failed.

[reassures]

[She certainly hopes not. Nill has experienced and seen a lot of strange things in her life - angels that aren't all that angelic, snarky demons, an alcoholic christian God. Cupids, though, are not on the list, and it just makes her think about the holiday that tended to involve upset teens and chocolate.]

Yes. I don't know how much they would have accomplished if they had succeeded.

[mortuaria]

[ Nico shifts back to lean against the wall, his hands in his pockets. The Stygian iron sword at his waist shifts to poke out at his side. ]

You don't sound like you had much confidence in them.

[reassures]

I don't think they could make a mutiny work unless they had all the Transports involved. If they didn't, then there would be another mutiny later.

[As long as there were two very separated sides in all this, it wouldn't really end well. It wasn't that she didn't have confidence in them. She just knew that if they were going to make it work, they would at least need a majority on their side. ...Or the people here with the most versatile powers.]

[mortuaria]

Mmm.

[ He looks away, remembering taking Manhattan with his father, remembering sitting on a hill in Epirus as Annabeth explained her new insight into the final line of the Great Prophecy with the shadows of Tartarus deep beneath them. Foes bear arms to the Doors of Death - demigod and titan lord and giant king working together.

Nico doesn't work well with others, but at least he's capable of acknowledging it's necessary. ]

Something like that's not going to succeed unless everybody's willing to work together.

[reassures]

[It was especially necessary in a place like this. Until they could all go back down to the surface, with stuff like this going on, they couldn't even get away from each other if they needed to.

At the same time... They've been stuck up here for months. When she'd realized what was happening, she wasn't that surprised.

She doesn't respond at first though, instead momentarily distracted. It's easy to overlook and ignore - most people think about the same things at the surface, just in different ways. Nico's thoughts aren't really like that, and Nill doesn't know how to process the flickers of images.

She's had a long time to get used to things like this though. She wills it away with a few blinks, and readjusts her wings against her back.]

There are a lot of people here who don't get along. Right now they have no reason to work together.

[mortuaria]

Yeah, well. That doesn't mean you can expect them to work together.

[ It's hard to work with people who hate you, no matter how common your goals should be.

He glances guiltily at Nill, feeling her death brush against the edge of his mind. It's not right. ]

Before you get the wrong idea about me, there's something you should know.

[reassures]

[That gives her pause, and for a moment, Nill actually looks surprised. She could be wrong-- he could be planning to tell her something else, but if it's about the fact that he knows she died--

It wasn't really that she had given him little credit - she just hadn't given him quite that much. No one ever really got that much. No one liked to tell people what they were thinking, and it was something she had come to expect from people.]

What is it?

[mortuaria]

[ Nico isn't the type to tell people what he's thinking. But if there's one thing the last few years of his life have taught him, it's that while death may be a universal, shared experience all of humanity gets to enjoy, it's also intensely personal too. Seeing all the people who are here who have died, it's like seeing into a secret part of someone's life without them deciding to share - and Nico knows what that's like all too well.

And Hazel. It's the right thing to do because Hazel, too. ]

I can sense death.

[reassures]

[He's a good kid. Better than she is in a lot of ways - she'd spent a good portion of her time, her life the past several years, convincing people that her only method of communication was through words typed out on a screen. So few people knew she could 'talk' to them in a sense.

She was very, very tired of it though. She looks back, thinks of the friends she had who lied to every single person they knew, and she doesn't know how they lived as long as they did.

After a pause, Nill folds her tablet in half, and tucks it into her jacket. She holds her hands together in front of her, and lifts her head to look him in the eye. The voice he'll hear in his head is quiet and gentle - so very careful.]

Thank you for telling me.

You should probably know this about me, too.

[mortuaria]

[ You know how the brain has that funny way of thinking about things you don't want to think about them? You think, "I really shouldn't think about this," and then that's all you can think of?

Now couple that with demigod ADHD and finding out the girl you've been talking to has probably been able to read your mind for the entire conversation. (And he's pretty sure he thought about that entire mess with Cupid more than once.)

His immediate reaction is horror, because Nico doesn't share things about himself for a reason. But he forces that down and swallows back the emotional recoil, because this girl reminds him too much of Hazel and Nico knows what it's like to be shunned for what he can't control. Take a risk, a voice that sounds suspiciously like Jason Grace whispers in Nico's mind, and he really doesn't want to, he wants to turn and run and hide because Nico di Angelo can't let anyone in, but--

But he lets his eyes drift closed and slowly draws out specific memories to show her: battling ghosts in the Labyrinth, Minos leering at him, and Nico stabbing his sword into the ground and forcing the ghosts to submit to his will; fighting off Kronos's army as they emerged from the Labyrinth into Camp Half-Blood, an army of skeletal soldiers crawling from the earth to fight at Nico's side; the other campers afterward, keeping as far away from Nico as possible. ]

Okay.

[reassures]

[It's something that Nill is actually a little used to, and it makes a small crack of a smile spread across her face. When people realize that someone is listening in, they immediately start scrambling around, trying to hide minor details that she's probably heard half a dozen times before now and never been bothered by them.

She watches Nico in silence, one of her hands coming up to rub her arm, uncertain of what else to do. She listens though, and realizes, with a quiet, sad sigh, that he's had a tough life. The kind that most people should never actually have to deal with... and he was so young, too.

It had never been an issue for Nill, because she'd always kept it a secret. Fractured memories of a lifetime in a world where she was belittled for her muteness and her wings, or her own world for being less than human-- then, after knowing a dozen ninjas it had become an easy instinct, one she never needed to question beyond growing tired of it.

Except-- once, over the summer. Sometimes she still thinks back to it, to the man that thought the worst of her, the man that thought she would pry into his mind simply because she could. He had thought it with absolute certainty, and she was so upset she shook, and the only thing he could evn think beyond it was "sorry".

It doesn't compare to him; not at all. But Nill wasn't sure she'd told more than four people about what she could do in the months since then.]

I don't mean to do it most of the time. It only really turns off when I sleep.

[She pauses slightly again and rubs her arm, before lacing her fingers together in front of her.]

Does it hurt you?

[There's only so much his thoughts can tell her, and there's only so much she can comprehend from something she's never experienced. But Nill knows her death was bad, and she hopes - really, truly hopes - that even if he's aware of it, maybe he can't feel it; can't see it.]