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.]

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SUNDAY

[azumods]

MONDAY

[azumods]

TUESDAY

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WEDNESDAY

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THURSDAY

[azumods]

FRIDAY

[azumods]

lucas + ota with sena's silly team

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

[The town as a whole is rather calming, and Sena's finding it a relaxing change of pace after clinging onto a Driftblim for who knows how long while "hieeee"-ing nervously the whole time (sorry, Driftblim). That being said, his Pokemon are anything but calm - Vee's started picking more fights with Monta over the smallest things, and Monta is all too eager to oblige; the Abra seems to be dealing with some kind of mental crisis as it's not even teleporting on touch (Sena's had to snatch it out of the way of several stray attacks so far); and even Nin seems to be more eager to fight the other two. Shell seems to be the only Pokemon that's still acting largely the same, although that's not saying much. It does still tend to stay close to Sena, at least.

Speaking of Nin and Shell, that's what Sena wants to talk to Lucas about - the guy did mention he was a research assistant to Rowan, after all, so maybe he knows about them and why they evolved the way they did? It takes a while to track down Lucas, but when he does, Sena starts wondering if now is a good time to talk to the kid. He somehow seems...less energetic than before. That can't be right, after what Mespirit did. Right?]

Ne, Lucas...you alright?

[Please ignore his Idiot Trio scuffling in the distance, Lucas. They're Fine.]

[discutio]

[Some of us might be just a little woozy from the trip, leaning a little heavily on his Altaria for a while after disembarking. Highwind craned his neck to nuzzle at his trainer's shoulder in concern, not that it seemed to help Ignis work on getting his bearings back in place.]

If we could perhaps never do that again, I would accept any amount of walking in exchange.

[Eventually he'd get a fair enough idea of the town's layout that he was back to politely borrowing the residential kitchens in exchange for food and cooking lessons; today what he left at the Pokemon Center was back to basic but filling. He'd leave the others to worry about Lucas and Cynthia for the moment; they'd probably need to talk to the latter as a group anyway.]

[gekkaju]

[Atsushi is tired after their excursion, but he's left it feeling a lot more positive than he had when they started. The others are probably a lot more wary of Cynthia right now than he is, which is why he's decided to be careful when talking about her...or to her, if it comes to that again. He wants to talk to Lucas again, but he figures a lot will be approaching him at first and decides to hold off for the time being. For the first part of the day, though, he retreats to the Pokemon Center once more to give his Pokemon a place to rest off to themselves...as well as himself. You might find Atsushi napping on the floor nearish the entrance with Chazuke on his chest and Natto curled up near his head. He'll be here a couple hours.

Later in the day he decides to visit the Shop and see what there is to offer. He feels bad for his partners for having been so stressed out during their encounter with Mesprit, so he decides to let them pick out some accessories if they want. Natto gets a belled collar for her neck, while Chazuke gets a little armband patterned with stars. ...except that it won't fit on any of his legs, so it goes around his tail for now.

Sometime otherwise, if Atsushi finds you in his company or you in his, he might speak up to you while you both go about your first day.]

...Do you think Mesprit will be okay?

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

[Here's someone who was kinda terrified at being dangled over the air by a giant sentient hot air ghost balloon.]

Y-You too, huh...

[discutio]

I’ve no frame of reference for things unless I’m on the ground. It’s terribly disorienting, I’m afraid. How did it go for the rest of you?

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

Staring down at the ground from high up while being held by something that could drop you if it wanted...

[Hieeeee.]

It's kinda...nerve-wracking...

[To say the least.]

[eudaimonikos]

[Captured Pokémon will have had their full emotional range restored to them, and their personalities should be more or less intact. However, since they weren't as far along in the process as the starters were, this will likely be jarring for them, and they may have difficulties adjusting. They may be fearful of the change, or seem stressed out.

Golly, that doesn't sound familiar at all!

Since having a pretty public breakdown at a cave wall, Michael has seemed extremely disinclined to talk to anybody at length. After the group has settled down in Celestic Town, he abandons the little village entirely to go explore Route 210.

He doesn't go that far out. He meant what he said to Zelda about not splitting up the group; if he were still at a place where he was willing to do that, the encounter with Mesprit probably wouldn't have bothered him as much as it did. But he does definitely take all his stuff with him and vanish into the fog without so much as a by-your-leave, which is possibly not the most considerate he could have been.

He spends a good chunk of the afternoon sitting on one of the cliffs overlooking the river. There's a tree here to lean back against, close enough to the edge that there's a ready supply of little rocks for him to violently fling at the opposite side, sending them bouncing and clattering down into the water. Every so often, his rocks dislodge a larger rock or chunk of dirt and send that splashing down too. It's mildly diverting.

None of his Pokemon are out at the moment. Up until now, wild Pokemon haven't really been capable of enough aggression to impart the tall grass lesson. Of course that changes now, which Michael discovers when a wild Chimecho attempts to start a battle by using Wrap on him. It's more surprising than anything; he instinctively pries the thing's weird banner-tail loose from his arm and yanks it in close. The look on his face is dark for a moment, but all he ends up doing is hissing:]

Go. Away.

[before releasing it. Off it goes.

The encounter has soured this spot, though, so he relocates farther up the mountain. There's a small waterfall crashing down near this spot. Michael can be found laying down with his head resting on his bedroll, talking to a pair of Duskull that he's located.]

Really though, who does that? "Hi, nice to meet you, can you give me a list of your weaknesses?" Who does it think it is?

[The Duskull's eye-lights bounce around towards each other. They're listening, but they don't seem totally sure what all this is about or why it's happening to them in particular.]

sometime, near pond

[ventulus]

[ Ventus has his shoes off and he's danging them in the pool water because this is what people do sometimes when the question is presented to him. Klefki's sitting in his lap as well, looking pretty content to just relax for a bit.

Aster was actually playing in the pond, and Munna was right up against Ven's side.

The journey had been a long one for everyone, it seemed. ]

I think so. We helped healed Mesprit as best as we can and I think it'll be able to do better now because of that. No matter what happens.

[ And the other Guardians had been restored too, he thinks. So that must work out in all of their favors too. ]

[anythingforyou]

[Celestic Town is certainly another good place to be, if a touch of a wary one; Camilla has been alright since the trip to the lakefront, at the very least, even if she is kind of realizing she can't quite take back what she said there. Ah, well; at the very least, she has time to train, and that's what she's going to be doing on Route 211, for the most part.

...For the most part being because her Pokemon are...certainly having a time with their emotions. Arion seems to be doing okay, and seems to actually be trying to take a leading role in trying to get everyone to calm the hell down, but everything starts going haywire when a wild Gligar comes in, promptly making Eda freak out at the flying Pokemon and run around practically screaming--]

Eda, dear, please calm down! Fall back if you need to but--

[This gets Melady in all of her balloony glory to try and calm Eda down with her gentle words, but Eda is proceeding to have none of that and promptly scurries away...in the direction of said Gligar, which just kind of brings this back to square one? Haar at least tries to drive off said Gligar, but dear god this is just a mess. Even Altena, who was quite content to just sleep through training, wakes up with a yowl that's basically attempting to tell everyone to shut up so she can sleep. It's. It's a lot. At least Beruka seems to be in relative good mental shape, even if she's kind of. Side-eyeing this whole thing? Even so, as it looks like Gligar is about to go past Haar to get at Eda, something happens.

...Something most definitely happens. The white light practically blinds the Gligar, and Eda does...some sort of decently powerful move that drives the Gligar away rather effectively, even if it feels slightly chilly as a result.]

Ah--Eda! Congratulations!

[...Now that just makes most of her Pokemon happy as clams, and now Haar and Eda are just kind of jumping around and squealing a bit? Holy shit, they're energetic.

It's later in the evening that Camilla comes back to town, and she can actually be found near the shrine with Arion, offering a prayer of some kind. Her words are pretty soft and she seems a little distracted, but she's praying for the safety of everyone here, along with the lake guardians and Shaymin and the like. Once the prayer is offered, she'll likely be staying by there for a little while longer, just kind of idly petting Arion. She'll need to talk to Lucas at some point if he's up to it, but...it's kind of nice to have some damn peace for the time being.]

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

[Okay you know what. His Pokemon need to chill the heck out. Vee is just being way too energetic and starting too much shit with Nin and Monta for things to stay calm, so Sena thinks that going out to the mountains later in the afternoon would help them work out some issues.

It's not really working for Vee and Monta, who keep starting fights with each other. But Nin seems to be having fun fighting the wild Pokemon, at least. In fact, while Sena's herding Monta and Vee up the mountain path, Nin's off fighting a Gligar just ahead of them, and seems to have learned a stronger scratching attack (Slash) that's dealing a lot more damage than Sena's used to seeing from the cicada.

Actually, it slashes the Gligar hard enough to almost knock it out, and said Gligar comes tumbling down between Michael and the two Duskull with a loud CRASH. Nin follows after, blurring so quickly that the dust cloud barely clears up before the Gligar finds itself with one of Nin's claws at its throat.

Surprise.]

[discutio]

...Upon consideration, perhaps I was the more fortunate in this arrangement.

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

Um...I'm not sure what's worse...being unaware of where you're going or being completely aware...

[Nervous laughter.]

They're both pretty scary...like...really scary.

[discutio]

I trust Highwind enough to be able to follow the rest of you. It's simply not being aware of the general surroundings that I find disorienting. It's rather like swimming with one's eyes closed, if that makes much sense.

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

Um, yeah, I think I get it. Honestly, riding on Highwind looked pretty comfortable...

[Actually, now that he thinks about it...]

Did anyone tell you what the rest of us were riding?

[eudaimonikos]

Fuck!

[Michael bolts upright at the sudden intrusion and, before the dust cloud can really clear into something comprehensible, grabs a Pokeball and throws it.

It was a largely random selection, one which results in Lena emerging and, having just been thrust into something rather confusing and chaotic, summoning a Fairy Wind to attack everything in her immediate vicinity.]

[discutio]

No, but the rest of you certainly sounded...'unimpressed', shall we say.

[azumods]

[Oh, hey Sena - Lucas still seems maybe a little subdued when approached, but he'll brighten up a little when he realizes he's being addressed; thankfully he doesn't seem dampened, just kind of off a little, and if anything he seems a little less dead behind the eyes than he was before. Not completely free of the conditioning, but definitely getting there.]

Oh, hi! I think I'm doing okay. It's been a lot, though, hasn't it?

mountain

[bloodspent]

[Yeah, Jake...kind of needs to clear his head a bit, and something about Celestic Town is doing weird things to him and he doesn't like it, so he's likewise going to be spending a hefty amount of time just absolutely fucking off into the wilderness today; his first instinct when he sees someone else up here is to leave them be, doubly so because it's Michael, who seemed to be having a hard time yesterday and he probably just wants to be left the fuck alone. At the same time, the guy looks like he wants to vent at someone, so might as well see if he wants to talk about shit or have a distraction or...he doesn't know, keep confusing the wildlife, he supposes.]

...Hey. Am I interrupting another conference?

[swiftasacoursingkawa]

[Well that 1) saved that poor Gligar from getting knocked out by Nin, because it blew her away and 2) got that same Gligar knocked out by her Fairy Wind. It just can't win, huh?

Nin, meanwhile, buzzes irritably and lashes out against whatever attacked it. Which doesn't go so well, because Lena's part Steel type, and what the heck can a bug/flying type like Nin do against it? Well, okay, it kinda knows Dig from when it was still a Nincada, but how the heck is a bug like Nin supposed to Dig the way it is now? Weird.

Anyway, there's the loud sound of clanging as Nin ineffectually tries to attack Lena. Meanwhile, Sena's just barely coming up the mountain trail, holding the Abra in his arms and Shell on his head, like usual.]

A-ah? Nin?! Wait!