Week 13.

[azumods]

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.]

Comments

[eudaimonikos]

[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.

[bloodspent]

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.

[eudaimonikos]

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.

[bloodspent]

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

[mmmmnnnnnngh.]

God, I hate everything.

[eudaimonikos]

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?

[bloodspent]

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.

[eudaimonikos]

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.

[bloodspent]

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.

[eudaimonikos]

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.

[bloodspent]

[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.

[eudaimonikos]

[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?"

[bloodspent]

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.]

[eudaimonikos]

[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.

[bloodspent]

[He'll kind of turn that over in his head a bit, actually.]

I think it was kind of - ...Sherry gets really mad at me if I call myself just something that she thinks is negative? Like, her first thought is to jump in and tell me that I'm not and get all up in my face about it. So it was more something like that, we don't like hearing people we like talking shit about themselves, and the thing you were talking about was about how we don't see you as just some sort of torture demon, and we don't, so people were gonna jump on that.

Part of that stupid human pack bonding experience, I guess.

[eudaimonikos]

[Michael takes this all in seriously, and nods thoughtfully after a moment.]

I...can see where that might be upsetting. I might be upset if that happened with someone else. [Huh! He kinda gets it now!] Still a little embarrassing, but I guess there's worse reactions.

[Cool! Cool cool cool]

Do you - wish that Sherry were here?

[bloodspent]

[Oh, uh.]

Sometimes? She'd be better at this shit than me. On the other hand, she's a lot more important than me back where we're from, so it's probably not great for her to get dragged off for months.

But I'd like having her here if it was an option, I guess.

[eudaimonikos]

Hm. That's fair. I forget about the time away sometimes - it still hasn't been very long by my normal standards.

[But like, he gets that it's significant for other people. When he thinks about it at all.]

If my human friends were here, they'd finally be safe. It'd be a nightmare in the long run, but I just...would like to talk to them sometimes.

[bloodspent]

[...]

I know Camilla and Kiryu have talked about that sort of thing before. Bringing people here, staying here.

Would that be something you'd want, too?

[eudaimonikos]

I - [Michael hesitates, curling one hand over his stomach.] - I...don't. But I think that might be wrong of me.

If my friends came here, they'd be alive again. Which means sooner or later, they'd die. And then they would just be gone. Reincarnated as a Pokemon, or something, I don't know. [He spreads his hands helplessly; shaking his head and not really looking at Jake.] They wouldn't be at risk of eternal torture anymore, but I wouldn't...

[bloodspent]

[He's quiet again for a moment.]

I dunno if I'd say it's wrong. They're your friends, and yeah, wanting what would be good for them is part of that - but it's not like it's not going to fuck with you, having that shit happen.

Mortal shit sucks like that. We all kind of take it for granted that we're gonna die someday. Doesn't mean it doesn't fuck up the people we leave behind, at least for some of us.

[eudaimonikos]

Mmmm. I don't know, maybe they wouldn't want it anyway as long as there was a bit of hope back there. They were very keen on sticking together - wouldn't be possible in this afterlife.

[He lapses into a moody sort of silence.]

When I started going to Chidi's ethics class, he began by telling me to really think about how possible retirement was for me. Oh - retirement's the closest I can come to dying. Sort of like an extreme public torture that lasts forever. I'd still be technically alive, but the ones I've seen happen...they don't seem cognizant of anything besides their own eternal agony anymore. [That story went a little off the rails immediately.] Anyway, I'd never really realized how much being mortal has to suck before that.

[bloodspent]

[Jake takes that in before just...shrugging a little, though it isn't dismissive.]

Like I said to you before, I'm kind of fucked in the head. I've never really thought being mortal sucks, but that's because I've never cared if I died. I lost the last person I could possibly leave behind when I was a kid, and after that it was pretty obvious that no one was gonna give a fuck about me but me. And after a while I stopped giving a fuck, too.

So death was never really something I cared about, I guess. If it happened, then fuck it.

[eudaimonikos]

But you have people to leave behind now.

[There's a little bit of a lilt at the end of that, but it also doesn't totally seem to be a question.]

[bloodspent]

[...]

...Yeah, I guess.

[eudaimonikos]

[......]

So you shouldn't do anything stupid, either. I mean, if I'm not supposed to...

[You definitely shouldn't.]