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Information.

NEW DIRECTIONS.

After the pleasant dreams and revitalizing sleep from last night, it's very likely that you feel a bit more ready to face the world, even if the world isn't fully ready to face you - it's still seeming as lifeless as ever, but after the successful talks with Darkrai and Cresselia, things are starting to seem a little less hopeless.

Cynthia seems to agree with them, as the morning is slightly interrupted by a request to meet with her in the Canalave Library for a talk.

She isn't alone, should you choose to join her; she still has Lucian remaining very close to her, sitting next to her at one of those seating areas, and Riley... Well, he's here, though he's lingering near one of the shelves, and if looks could kill Cynthia would be dead and buried six feet under by now. But he's keeping his silence for now, even if he's still visibly displeased; the common goal is more important than personal disagreements for now.

"I've got some good news and some bad news," Cynthia tells you, smiling softly as she always does. "To get the bad news out of the way - since the world was reset again, it's been confirmed that contact has been lost with those Gym Leaders we'd managed to find the whereabouts of in the past. I don't know what's happened to them, but I intend to find out. If you could go to Oreburgh for me to verify that all of them are gone, I would owe you one - the Gym Leader there is named Roark, he's the son of the Leader here. His father, Byron, hasn't been seen in a while; I'm hoping they're together in some way, and Oreburgh seems a good place to find some sort of indication of where they might be, if there are any.

"The good news, however, is that Riley has decided to work with us here on the mainland for a while; he'll be staying to try to help Lucian and the others, and to update you if I can't for whatever reason. Thank you for speaking to him, and also for your help with Darkrai and Cresselia.

"Take today to rest up, and then head to Oreburgh; after that, one of us will be in touch if we hear anything."

[OOC: Welcome to the start of Week 16! Hopefully it's been a good one.

No NPC response will be given to this post, though you can thread here amongst yourselves if you wish; take the time to catch your bearings and top-level here with any remaining adventures you get up to in Canalave, and we'll see you tomorrow at noon with a new log for your further adventures!]

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[Michael seems like he's in a really good mood this morning! He's visibly a lot happier to see Riley than Cynthia, but he's not gonna be openly rude to anybody this morning. Even Cynthia apparently deciding the group's course for them passes without much comment - normally he might have put up some token argument, but it's not like they had plans of their own anyway, right?

For breakfast, he's having chocolate chip cookies. There's a big surplus after last night, and he may have discovered that these are...actually really good, humans have good taste.]

Man! I had a dream! And now I wanna tell everyone about it all about it at length even though no one cares, that's two very human things!

[...There is so much to unpack here.]

You know what, I'm happy for you. You wanna talk about it, go ahead.

You sure? "Telling someone about a dream you had" is usually like, a fourteen-point deduction.

[granted, eating cookies for breakfast isn't great by that scale either]

...Really?

[I mean, he can see why, but.]

Consider me curious about what you'd dream about.

No kiddin'? What was it? ...And is eating cookies for breakfast really a good idea?

[You know, all things considered? Yesterday was pretty good. He couldn't even be too annoyed that Cynthia was sending them off in another direction; at least there was some semblance of understanding what they were doing this time.]

[...Speaking of which, he did leave a small box with Riley's name on it at the library, with a small cake and note thanking him for his efforts and apologizing for the trouble. Heavens forbid they chase off an ally he actually liked.]

[Rest up? Not a chance. For most of the day after the meeting Ignis could be found back in his uniform, training at the edge of town--this time himself, rather than his Pokemon. He'd almost lost a sparring match to Camilla the night before, after all, and he couldn't very well have that. So he'd taken a pair of dagger-sized sticks in hand, in combat against an invisible enemy in fluid and graceful motions.]

[...he also seemed to favor flips as an evasive motion to earn distance and counterattack, not to mention outright jumping forward to gain ground on his would-be enemy.]

[What even is Ignis Scientia, no one goddamn knows.]

Possibly not. I've never tried.

[He considers the cookie for a second, and then continues eating it.]

Okay, so, I was in my Neighborhood, but it was on Earth? Like - [He chuckles.] - that doesn't make any sense, it wasn't even a real place!

[...This is about on par with Resident Evil standard levels of extra, really, so Jake will just watch for a while before just- ]

You having a good time over there?

You could say that. [He finally stopped and lowered his hands, out of breath but clearly pleased with the effort.]

What about you?

[He shrugs a bit.]

Don't let me stop you, I could watch all day.

You should be careful, some people might mistake that for flirting.

[Ignis laughed softly, tossing one makeshift dagger up to flip it around and catch it again.]

Don't suppose you're looking for a match, are you?

Alright. Well - I was in my Neighborhood, except for some reason, it was on Earth. And instead of mostly demons living there, pretending to be human, it was all real humans. You guys were there, and my humans, and a bunch of random people I don't know. In the dream, though, I did know them.

[First sidebar:] Boy, that's a weird thing, huh? How you can know someone in a dream, but they're not real?

You asking me for one?

[From the sound of it, he doesn't mind that prospect at all.]

I don't do weapons, personally. Not gonna stop you from using yours, though.

Right...? Just a bunch of randomly familiar people you've never seen before. Only apparently you have? I think I heard somewhere that you only dream about faces you've seen before, you can't just make people up out of nothing.

[...]

Dreams are kinda weird places when you think about it.

[Okay, so like. Someone's really got to tell Cynthia to stop voluntelling us into what we're going to do next, but at the same time Jake can't say that he's opposed to it right now - this is better than having no direction at all, and it's not like he isn't in a reasonably good mood after the dream last night was actually a nice one.

He doesn't usually have nice dreams, so that was a good change of pace.

He's still got the pantslizard and the vinebeast out with him today; Albert's in the practice of just kind of...hiding behind Jake's legs whenever he comes across anyone, whether they're people or Pokémon doesn't seem to make a difference, and Jake is not sure if this is just shyness or what but for the time being, here we are. Either way, he can be found in the Center for a decent period of time today - namely in the kitchen, where he actually seems to be making something? Something that does not involve sugar, fruit and nothing else. Holy shit. Shocking.

I mean, he's also cutting up vegetables like they owe him money as opposed to doing this with any sort of finesse, but you know what he's got meat browning in a pot over there while he does it and he's actually surprisingly competent despite the fact that he's not even gonna bother making this look pretty in terms of technique, and he's managing to do this without tripping over his Pokémon. God only knows what he's making but he's apparently making enough of it for like thirty people, so you know what, Ignis can have the night off tonight if he wants to.

Later he'll be in the Center, though, toying with his phone and picking at his...creation, food-wise; looks like he successfully made plov, good job Jake. He's not really doing much, phone-wise; it seems like he's typing something on it once in a while, like he's texting someone, but it's not like he has anyone to send any texts to...]

Heh... I guess having a normal life is a pretty big dream for a lot of us. I felt kinda the same last night.

More like inviting one, should you want it. Camilla and I find it a very nice way to work out frustrations.

[Ignis shrugged, setting aside the improvised weaponry.]

I can't say I'm as skilled in hand-to-hand, but it would scarcely be polite to have an uneven fight.

What did you dream about?

[He leans forward, apparently really interested in this.]

Guess I had my home planet on the brain after the whole, y'know, Darkrai thing. But everything was a lot better. I just kinda felt like I could trust people there again. Angelica was there, too, and even May an' her sisters. Stuff that never could've happened in real life.

Is that normally what it's like? I know this one was deliberately pleasant, because of Cresselia.

I mean, I haven't been to Sandvil since I found out the force was corrupt and quit my job. But the people in general? They're worth it. I want things to get better, y'know?

[He was speaking about dreams, but he can roll with it.]

Yeah, of course. I can't ever go back home either - not sure if you'd call it "corrupt" when being evil is the point, but you know.

Not really polite, no, but I'm not gonna politely ask everyone I fight to disarm themselves in an actual situation.

[But hey, he's not complaining, either.]

I've just never really been one for blades, which is what I'm assuming you were going for with those. Kinda comes with having been stabbed in the face a few times.

I specialize in twin daggers. Lances on occasion, but I'm not quite as adept in those.

[He laughed softly, adjusting his gloves as he did.]

Don't really care for being stabbed myself, so I can't blame you.

Messed up, either way. Right?

[That is definitely enough for Bucky to raise an eyebrow at Michael, before it occurs to him that dreaming is probably something Michael doesn't normally do.]

What'd you dream about?

Oh, sure. I guess it's different anyway, I wasn't that attached to mine. Beyond it being the only realm I'd ever spent much time in. But I guess you enjoyed your planet...?

Oh, it was so weird! I was in my Neighborhood, which doesn't even exist anymore, and it was on Earth, which is obviously impossible. None of it even seemed strange at the time, I don't understand it. And my friends were there!

[spoilers: nothing that remarkable even happened]

I think I would remember them now, even if I didn't then. Hadn't really thought to try identifying them... [wait he knows a lot of people through having done heinous things to them] It's probably not important.

They are weird, though, aren't they? I've heard that they're supposed to be your brain's way of processing things that have happened. Like some kind of hallucinatory data dump.

[This sounds like the most positively mundane dream. Bucky nods a little, clearly regretting the question.

At least Michael was given a mundane dream?]

Yeah, that's how dreams usually work. They have their own internal logic that doesn't make a lick of sense when you wake up.

Yeah. It's kind of out there and no one really comes there, but it still felt like home. Guess even when you decide you wanna travel around for the rest of your life, home's still gotta be somewhere.

[He frowns thoughtfully for a moment.]

All demons do is work, you know. We don't have homes. Everything I know about the concept, I've just sort of picked up from humans.

[He chuckles a little and shakes his head in wonder.]

Nightly vivid hallucinations about nothing! And it's actually fun!

[except for when it isn't, but we can all just assume he knows all about that by now]

[If nothing else Bucky's nearly daily nightmares are probably well-known by now. He doesn't wake up screaming, but he is That Guy who leaves the Center in the middle of the night.]

Yeah. Dreams're like that. I know sometimes people talk about how if you realize you're dreaming, you can control your dreams.

[It's almost like Michael's not great at considering other people's feelings unprompted lol]

Really? [hm] I don't know, I've already had control over a pocket of reality. Just going for a ride is kinda fun.

[Hey, it's not like it bothers him any.]

Just letting your brain run wild can be fun, yeah.

You seriously don't have anything for yourself but other people's misery?

Nothing but work. [.....] So, actually a fairly accurate assessment.

Oh, man... I mean, I know what it's like to suddenly have stuff go off in your face and have to rethink your whole career path, but for you, that's a whole 'nother level.

Yeeeeeah.

[He tugs at his tie a little, like he's straightening it out.]

Well, it actually is nice to do non-work things.

Even if it's in this whole world-saving thing?

I guess? I don't know, I feel like the world-saving thing just sort of happened. [He spreads his hands.] Didn't exactly go out looking for a world to rescue.

In my experience, that just kinda happens.

Does it?

[He's unfamiliar.]

That seems very...inconvenient.

I'd say "traumatizing" or "really, really weird," but that works just as well.

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