azume | Week 13.

Week 13.

WEEK 13

The trip to Celestic Town is an unconventional one, though it's infinitely faster than walking and doesn't leave everyone feeling woozy in the same way that teleportation does. The town itself is a small one, though it's scenic, and there's a sort of beauty to it that's very rustic in nature; it's surrounded on both sides by mountainous routes that you're welcome to go on to both the west and the east, though it wouldn't be recommended that you venture too far out, seeing as they can be on the dangerous side for those who are unfamiliar with them.

It seems Cynthia was right about one thing - there was certainly an incident at Lake Verity that went off almost as soon as you left, another of those deep pulses echoing through the surrounding area; it seems that whatever Mesprit did can be felt by the region as a whole, given that Celestic Town and the surrounding areas seem to have been affected as well despite being so far east of the lake.

Cynthia herself can be found throughout the town for the duration, should anyone want to speak to her. Sometimes when left to her own devices, she can be seen in the company of a little girl who looks very similar to herself; sometimes she's with a pair of people much older. Either way, the family resemblance is strong.

Lucas is here as well; he's still willing to speak to anyone that wants to, though he seems a bit subdued.

Either way, it's been a long, harrowing trip so far; hopefully spending some time here will help to rejuvenate you.

CURRENT LOCATION: CELESTIC TOWN
POKEMON AVAILABLE: WITHIN CITIES
SURROUNDING ROUTES: MOUNTAINS/ELEVATED AREAS

SUNDAY | MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY | FRIDAY
[OOC: Welcome to week thirteen of Azume; feel free to make as many top levels as you'd like and tag out to other characters! This post is for all of your interactions this week... at least until the weekend.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Michael purses his lips irritably. People like us...]

Doesn't mean we have to roll over for any stranger who asks. You didn't.

[He snorts a bit at that.]

Didn't have to. Zelda did it for me.

[Michael snorts.]

Yeah, I guess she did a little. At least she didn't get specific, she was mostly just being all mushy. Sucks though, man.

[He would have had SoMe KiNd Of FeELiNg if someone had done a big speech about him. Some kind of feeling that he can totally define and name right now if he wants, because he is great at feelings!]

Yeah, I'm kind of glad she didn't get specific. I've told her some stuff I'm not crazy about having yelled out in front of everybody.

[He shrugs.]

She knows better. Can't just go around blurting out things someone told you in confidence, that's obviously wrong.

[You know. The feelings that they trusted you with.

Michael has the sense that he's just demolished any point he might have made about Jake not trusting people with feelings either. Maybe if he doesn't draw attention to it, no one will notice.]

Well, yeah. I don't need her talking about the shit I've dealt with back home in front of people like...I don't know, Sena and Aya. All the...I dunno, PTSD-causing shit.

[So...yes and no. Some of it's feelings, most of it is situational stuff.]

...I don't have PTSD, by the way.

[jake.]

Oh. Yeah, that's fair. Sena gets all freaked out most of the times I talk to him.

[Michael doesn't totally get all the ways in which he scares Sena.]

No? [it seems like it's kinda a thing, but he's also no human therapist] If you say so.

I don't think so. Isn't that usually, like, an army thing?

[...jake, you- ...you know what, okay.]

I mean, this guy Chris that I...sort of know, he's got that sort of shit really bad. I don't think I'm like that, so...

[Michael scoffs.]

I've never studied your medical terms, but trust me - humans do not need to be in the army to be traumatized.

I don't have the goddamn time to be traumatized.

[...this is a clusterfuck]

I just do what I have to and move on to my next assignment, I don't really have time to deal with shit.

[oh my god]

Jake, I'm not saying I'm qualified for this, but you understand that that's not great?

Yeah, I know. That's why I've been hating this whole fucking place, there's nothing to do but think about shit.

[ugggggggggggggh just. let him fold his arms against his legs and bury his face in them for a moment because fuck his life.]

Everyone here can just go...play around in the damn flowers or cry at Mesprit or open up to me for some reason, or whatever the fuck they want to do, but I'm not here for that shit either, you know? You're the only goddamn person that actually gets it.

[Oh, that...Michael shifts to face Jake a little more fully, though he doesn't move any closer.]

...yeah. I do like that we have a goal here. It's something to focus on - training the Pokemon to fight, getting from one point to the next. If we didn't have some kind of purpose, and it were all just hanging around, I think I would have lost my mind. But even so, the rest of it is just...

[mmmmmmmm]

This sucks. And I don't even know what we're supposed to do now, this really sucks.

Maybe we'll get some more fucking direction from Cynthia, where she'll point us at something else she's apparently too important to do, but my hopes aren't really too high for that, either.

Yeah, is there some reason we all decided to let her drag us to this place now? I seriously would have stayed in Sandgem. And I knew that some people trusted her last time we talked about it, but I thought that humans generally frowned on sending children to die in other dimensions.

I mean, Lucas doesn't know for sure that that's what happened, but...

[mmmmnnnnnngh.]

God, I hate everything.

The parts that he does know for sure don't seem too morally fantastic either.

[thus judges the literal demon]

Why did we even bring him here with us? Won't that professor wonder where he went?

From the sound of it, the professor wasn't around. I dunno about you, but I didn't want to leave him by himself to deal with whatever Team Galactic was gonna do to the area.

At the moment, but it sounded like they'd been working together. Must've had some contact.

[oh, well]

What do you think they were going to do? We were around Snowpoint for a little while after leaving the last lake, and nothing terrible happened. Not to mention they're missing most of their personnel.

If we're assuming Mars didn't get her shit together enough to actually be dangerous, the only thing I can think is that this might've finally been enough for Cyrus to get involved.

We're not any safer from Cyrus here. From the sound of things, we're all doomed if he ever decides to descend from his weird god-throne.

[okay look]

So are you going to accept that I don't have answers for fucking everything and stop asking me shit I can't possibly know anytime soon, or are you just going to keep drilling me on shit you should really be asking Cynthia? Because I don't fucking know, Michael, and I'm not in the mood to get pissed off, and you're really doing a great job at getting me there.

[Woah - Michael seems a little startled, and raises both hands in mock surrender. He thought we were having a mutual bitch sesh?]

Geez, man, chill out. I just thought you might know what the group was thinking - apparently people confide things in you. If I go ask them, I'm just gonna get more "oh, Michael, you're being terrible, why aren't you more trusting?"

You're probably gonna get that less nowadays, depending on what Cynthia says to everybody.

[Because damn, as much as he does say we don't know everything that's going on, this is not a good look on Cynthia.]

I don't know why the hell people talk to me when I'm not really any better, but it's not like they don't like you or anything, either.

[The Mesprit thing kinda got awkward in that direction, but yeah.]

[oh my god now we're on this]

It isn't that I...

[Michael hesitates, and then sighs. With a grimace, he looks back over in the direction the Duskull floated off.]

I didn't say that because I thought nobody liked me. I find that it's usually pretty obvious when they don't. I just - look. Demons don't generally like each other the way humans do - like, enjoy each other's company, or whatever. We're all just that friend you party with who can be kind of fun when you're both drunk and high, but that's the only thing he has going for him. And the friends I do have, I've known for a very long time. I activated Janet myself, and I've read the humans' files. I know literally everything that happened in their lives. Then I kept wiping their memories and putting them through these experiments...point is, I do get them pretty well.

[Even if he presented "Eleanor has a thing called a conscience" as some sort of revelation.]

So, this thing where you meet people out of nowhere, and you just sort of...talk to them a lot, and at some point you're friends? [shrug] It's weird. That's all! I wasn't looking for that to happen.

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