Third.

[azumods]

ENCOUNTER 3. Snowpoint City is small, cold, and definitely not covered in waist-high snowdrifts. The traveling becomes far easier as soon as you enter the city limits, and the bright orange roof of the Pokémon Center is easy to spot among the white blanketing of snow dusting the ground and the local buildings; it's warm in there, and the attendants inside seem used to this sort of thing - people wandering in bedraggled and cold, unprepared for the weather and the routes leading up to this place - and they'll give you warm, fresh blankets and mugs of warm drinks that steam in your hands. The taste is difficult to place - it's definitely made of berries of some sort, though it doesn't seem to be proper tea or coffee; the point, however, is that it's good at warming you from the inside, and while it doesn't have proper medicinal properties, it'll at least perk you up a bit and make it seem like facing the rest of the day might not be so terrible. Which is fortunate, really, given what's to come. Come mid-afternoon, there's a loud, sharp whistle from the doorway of the Center - it's high and shrill, the sort of thing that's designed to get as much attention as possible, in as little time as possible. It'll stop before it goes on too long, but it's definitely enough to be heard, and the source isn't exactly hard to spot. She's another one that isn't dressed like the other members of Team Galactic, her hair and outfit far different from the usual grunt attire; she seems a bit older than Saturn, her expression harder and more experienced. She's smiling a bit now that she's holding the room, but the expression is strange in that it doesn't reach her eyes, even though those are just as bright and alert as her fellow Commander's were. It's cold. Unwelcoming. And deeply, deeply wrong in a way that's both vaguely similar and completely different to the way the emotionless people here tend to present - it's unfeeling, but in a way that's natural rather than enforced. Dangerous. "So you're the group that left us before I could get to know you properly," she says, and her voice is as cold as the rest of her; it's cordial, perhaps overly so, but there's a firmness to it that heavily implies that she's only being nice because she's expected to be nice. Because maybe if she's nice, this will go nice and easy and nothing will happen. "I'm Commander Jupiter, serving Team Galactic under the orders of Master Cyrus. Sorry I couldn't meet you all properly before; things got a bit hectic. But we can change that now." Her tone implies that that isn't a request.

Comments

[enjoymyatelier]

Like up here, for instance.

[azumods]

Exactly.

[NO ONE HATES SNOWPOINT MORE THAN JUPITER HATES SNOWPOINT.]

[enjoymyatelier]

You'd think if you lot were going to rewrite the universe you could at least make places like this habitable.

[azumods]

Unfortunately, that's on Master Cyrus, not me. He doesn't have much argument with the world, geographically speaking. Just human nature.

[enjoymyatelier]

Ah. I suppose you don’t notice the temperature much when you’re spending that much time staring at your navel.

[azumods]

[she's trying so fucking hard not to laugh oh my god please don't do this to her]

I'm pretty sure this is blasphemy or something nowadays.

[enjoymyatelier]

Well, that’s basically part of my usual job description back home, so unless he’s going to strike me down with lightning in the next thirty seconds, I don’t care much.

[azumods]

He was pretty good at blasphemy too, back before we changed the world. But then, I guess that's necessary if you're going to become a god.

[enjoymyatelier]

Oh, well, of course. Can’t become the supreme god without displacing all the other ones.

[azumods]

Oh, exactly. He did a pretty good job of it, too.

[enjoymyatelier]

How many gods are we talking, anyway?

[azumods]

You don't know...?

[...]

What are you trying to do, anyway? All of you.

[enjoymyatelier]

Look, we haven’t made it to this place’s singular library yet.

Anyway, I’d like to get home and publish my findings on parallel worlds and hopefully keep this from happening to my world. It would make things dreadfully boring, to the point where I’m pretty certain things would just implode at a certain point.

[azumods]

[...]

I'm not sure if Saturn would have wanted to keep you to himself or if your nerding out would intimidate him.

[enjoymyatelier]

Well, I managed to dig up that I was apparently assigned to Mars, so I assume it was the latter.

[azumods]

[...]

That is absolutely hilarious.

[Like, she's really deadpan when she says it, but ohhhhhh my god.]

[enjoymyatelier]

He’s the sort who can’t handle not being the smartest person in the room, isn’t he.

[azumods]

Definitely. He defers to Master Cyrus, of course, but they both do the same sorts of things. I imagine that's why Master Cyrus likes him so much.

[enjoymyatelier]

Oh they must be insufferable together.

[azumods]

They're...

[...there is no polite way]

..."interesting."

[nailed it.]

[enjoymyatelier]

I can imagine.

[azumods]

We haven't been in contact with Master Cyrus for a while, though, and Saturn has been weird lately. Not like he usually isn't, but weirder than usual.

Could be worse, I guess.

[enjoymyatelier]

Hm. Well, gods do seem like they have a tendency to do that.

[semistableman]

I don't think there's much that doesn't intimidate the guy.

[azumods]

[YOU GUYS ARE SUCH ASSHOLES, SHE LOVES IT- ]

He's perfectly competent when it matters, at least. I'm not saying you're wrong, but he does what he's here to do.