Remram
Achronum@Ambra Could I snag a Discord invite? Thinking of a knight or warrior depending.
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@Vertigo Yep, the picture definitely looks like the characters are meant to fish something out of the drain in the room. Dunno where they'd get a hook and string, but one option is the wire Pebble pulled from the cabinet. Depending on how hard the metal parts are and how long the wire is, it might work, but then again if the drain's wet then it might ruin the wire.
Doorwise, yeah, Duncan's set to just try and open it. His foot fit, so his hand probably will (unless he's that misproportioned lol). I will say, though, that if something grabs him when he reaches his hand out, I'm gonna have an internal heart attack through the screen.
Airvent-wise, totally didn't think about that! Honestly the whole drain + airvent combo said 'serial killer's murder dungeon toned down' to me since, ya know, sleeping gas + drain for clean-up. Glad the door worked too haha
Doorwise, yeah, Duncan's set to just try and open it. His foot fit, so his hand probably will (unless he's that misproportioned lol). I will say, though, that if something grabs him when he reaches his hand out, I'm gonna have an internal heart attack through the screen.
Airvent-wise, totally didn't think about that! Honestly the whole drain + airvent combo said 'serial killer's murder dungeon toned down' to me since, ya know, sleeping gas + drain for clean-up. Glad the door worked too haha
Kazuhiko Taketori
Midday || Land of Lightning
Escorting Hachiro home was a rather dull affair, if Kazuhiko was honest. It entailed a lot of slow walking, unnecessary pit stops, and just overall free time that he was running out of ideas on how to fill by the time they were nearing the Daimyo’s estate. At first the trio had kept up their training in the mornings and evenings, with Minoru joining them intermittently, or whenever he could wake up early enough. These training sessions were the same as usual, sometimes productive and sometimes not, but because of time constraints and the varying landscape. Though the group was making progress, becoming more familiar with the jutsu they had at their disposal, the training sessions still tended towards the unproductive side, usually with Natsuko becoming distracted and leading the session to a slow but eventual end.
Inefficiency aside, though, the journey was fine: mundane, boring at times, but okay. A few more skirmishes were dealt with, each of them similar to the last, as if some unknown enemy thought they’d matched the group’s level with weak, hired thugs. Otherwise, the road was calm and almost relaxing, if a mission could be termed as such. For the first time in a while, he felt himself truly relax, have a second of space to stop worrying about his priorities. Back in Konoha, he saw constant reminders that he needed to keep pushing, keep achieving. From the ranked shinobi running the genin school to his fellow genin peers, there were constantly people to keep ahead of, to match and exceed so his family could continue being proud of him.
This was a pressure he saw partially mirrored in Koharu, and it was perhaps seeing her relax a bit that he too was able to let go of what might usually keep him on his feet at home. Where Natsuko was in a constant state of relaxation, driven by whim both on the road and at home, Koharu was similar in that she was also the heir of her family. Natsuko had her siblings and cousins to fall back on, but Koharu and Kazuhiko had nothing of the sort. They were the pride and future of their households, and their failure would translate over directly.
That all said, Kazuhiko supposed there was one more individual to thank on the part of promoting a carefree environment: Hachiro. Whether it was his natural penchant for innocent yet brutal honesty or a byproduct of his young age and childish antics, he helped lighten the mood whenever he was around, and that became quite often as the journey progressed. Though he’d first taken interest in Kazuhiko, something that Kazuhiko was pretty neutral to as long as it didn’t devolve into a meaningless stream of questions like it usually did after giving the boy too much time to pester him, Hachiro had quickly realized that Koharu was a better target. Well, perhaps Kazuhiko wasn’t giving him enough credit; he meant well, and Koharu liked having him around, slipping into the role of an older sister like she would a second skin.
Still, Kazuhiko couldn’t help but remain a little cynical and attentive of Natsuko’s opinions about the boy, which often accused Hachiro of being manipulative, acting like he couldn’t open this bottle or hadn’t noticed that rock he’d tripped overnight . It didn’t help his case that Kazuhiko caught the dirty looks he shot at Natsuko once in a while. They’d been mutual, yes, but they also spoke of some intelligence if Hachiro had been smart enough to peg Natsuko as trouble and Koharu, the least assertive of the group, as his favorite.
When they finally reached the Daimyo’s residence, however, where Hachiro readily ran away from the genin to his father, Kazuhiko realized that perhaps he hadn’t relaxed enough. Even outside of Konoha, he couldn’t avoid thinking about shady dealings and ulterior motives, couldn’t help but see the worst of a situation and try and keep himself above that. It was how he was raised, he supposed, and even if he went digging, he couldn’t find any reason why he should change.
A slight cold near his feet brought Koharu’s frost growth to Kazuhiko’s attention, and he wondered whether he should say something. Personally, he would prefer to mull over his own emotions alone, but he’d learned that not everyone was the same as him. Natsuko was a prime example, in this case, and she didn’t hesitate to wrap Koharu into a hug after Koharu made her unnecessary apology.
“Aw, did someone hurt my poor Haru baby? Point them out—I’ll see that they face the wrath of Natsuko!”
She pumped an arm, clenching the fist dramatically as she kept her other arm around Koharu’s shoulders, and Kazuhiko cracked a grin. Meeting Koharu’s eyes, he mouthed his question: ‘Haru baby?’
Of course, this would probably embarrass the quieter girl further—that much he knew. But, all things aside, Natsuko had the right idea here, distracting Koharu. The ice nin was too hesitant for her own good mostly, and a little too easy to needle. He’d lay off later, but hey, they weren’t back in Konoha yet, were they?
Natsuko Rinha
Midday || Land of Lightning Outskirts
Minoru interrupted Natsuko’s cooing just when she was getting on a roll, and Natsuko would have been annoyed if it weren’t for the news he’d delivered.
“We’re staying here? Then, as the saviours of the Daimyo’s kid, we get VIP treatment, right?”
She grinned, rubbing her hands together as she took another gander at the Daimyo’s residence.
“Feasts and expensive sheets, come to momma. After she gets some training in.”
Afternoon || Land of Lightning
“This is not what I signed up for!” Natsuko yelled for not the first time that day, pressing into the rock face for dear life as some more loose rocks fell into the abyss below her.
For reasons that escaped her, Minoru had thought it a good idea to take them cliff climbing, and when Natsuko said ‘cliff,’ she meant ‘sheer face of rock with too few footholds and too many crumbly cracks to be human-friendly.’ She was keenly aware of the open sky above her which offered no relief from the dead drop below her, which disappeared into clouds when she looked down. Okay, so maybe it was fog, or mist, or whatever people wanted to call it, but if it looked like there were literal clouds under her feet, Natsuko called that a bad situation.
While Kazuhiko was perhaps a little more focused than normal, he still moved along the cliff after Minoru at a steady pace, easily staying ahead of Natsuko and Koharu. To her credit, Natsuko had managed, for once, to outpace Koharu, but it was hardly a victory when she looked behind her to see a nervous, wide-eyed mess.
When they finally reached solid ground—a stone hallway of sorts, carved out of the weathered rock face—Natsuko took a moment to breathe, hands on her knees as she glared at her sensei, who was patting a flustered Koharu on her head.
“How much longer?” she asked, rushing to Koharu’s side to loop her arm around her teammate’s. “Another cliff face and Koharu and I are heading back.”
But, as it turns out, she needn’t have worried; the rest of the trek was through the cliff structure itself. Consisting of a lot of narrow stairwells and shaded hallways, the structure was surprisingly expansive on the inside, and its architecture allowed natural light to seep into the rooms through a constant stream of balconies and windows. When they finally reached their destination, the largest room in the structure, which Natsuko was now able to identify as a temple, judging by the carvings in the ceiling and the scrolls adorning the walls, they’d also reached the biggest balcony in the building.
Jutting out of the cliff and into the air, the balcony offered a beautiful vantage point of the natural wonders of the Land of Lightning from high above the low forests and crags below. In every direction were cliff formations similar to the one they’d climbed up earlier, some taller and some shorter, but mostly of a uniform size.
A fresh breeze ruffled through Natsuko’s hair as she peered over the balcony fence, and she exhaled loudly, sighing.
“This is amazing.”
Then, remembering why she’d come on this excursion in the first place, she frowned, looking to Minoru.
“Wait, Sensei, are we training here?”
@Sunflower
Alrighty, you now @Vertigo, no matter what Al says. Fingers crossed that paper isn’t blank though cuz then I just made Pebs look like an idiot.
Pebble Meyers
@Alamantus@Vertigo
In the cabinets were a strange collection of objects, which Pebs retrieved to place on the counter after each opened door. Slowly but steadily, she accrued a pile of miscellaneous items that seemed to fit together only because each one seemed to have no explanation as to why they were in the room in the first place. Surely, if they had been kidnapped, the kidnapper would be smart enough to clear the room of possible tools before locking their victims inside?
That aside, though, Pebs waa grateful for the new discoveries. Though some seemed less useful than others, like the tangle of wires compared to the two different-sized batteries, others seemed to have an immediate use, like the screwdriver.
“At least we got a screwdriver,” she said, selecting the screwdriver and folded paper from the pile and heading over to Duncan. Then, after handing him the screwdriver with a “You’d probably get more use out of this than me,” she opened up the lined paper for them both to see. Was it as blank and innocuous as it seemed?
Pebble Meyers
@Alamantus
With a loud ‘bang,’ Duncan’s foot went through the door. It was his second attempt, after aiming his kick at the wrong part of the door the first time, but he’d figured it out after Pebs chimed in to explain the door’s intrinsic lack of substance as opposed to its solid supports, and lo and behold, his foot went through the door without much struggle.
However, a new problem soon presented itself when Duncan tried to retract his foot, and after a few tries, it was clear that he was stuck. Pebs acted as a support for him so he didn’t fall over as he tugged, and thankfully he was able to free himself after a few minutes, which was about when she was about done bearing his weight.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked, glancing at his foot. It’d been her idea for him to break down the door, so if he got hurt doing it, it’d be partially her fault, and that didn’t sit right with her.
Looking around the room, Pebs focused on the cabinets and counters, walking over to them. She counted eight doors total, or four cabinets.
“There’s gotta be something in these, right?” she said, attempting to open each cabinet to see what was inside each of them.
Ilsa Waters
The Shoal | Tavern | @Kuro
Spotting Kelvin with a group of fellow divers, Ilsa grinned, making for their table and pushing in between the middle two people on one side.
“Scooch, Ilsa’s arrived,” she said, plopping herself down when the two sides of the bench parted for her.
“Ils, heya, you sober?” Kelvin asked, sniffing at her.
“Yeah, and it sucks,” she said, snagging his drink. “I can’t be sober and pretend like you don’t smell.”
“Oh, man, ouch,” another diver said, toasting Ilsa. “Basculin bites again!”
“Wimpod evolves and beats Basculin, but no one cares about that,” Kelvin muttered under his breath.
“Lotta guts there, implying you’ve evolved!”
The conversation devolved from there, Kelvin fending off character attacks, bouncing between helping and hurting his case.
“Point is, I’ll be better than Ilsa at some point. Doesn’t have to be now,” he finished, crossing his arms.
“Someday, but not today,” Ilsa said, slamming down Kelvin’s now-drained mug. “Who wants to hear what I found today?”
That got everyone’s attention, if she didn’t have it before, and for a moment Ilsa wondered if she should have kept her mouth shut. After all, she’d shushed Murphy, her appraiser, about it, but now, with the bright eyes and attention her, why not? What was the harm? She was proud of her abilities, and hey, she deserved to brag a little, with what she’d fished up.
“Not another Poke?”
“Gold bars? I thought the metal hunters got all of them for sure!”
“No no no.” Ilsa raised her hand, shaking her head. “None of that. Today, I found this.”
Onto the table came the red ball she’d found, designs and all. There was a brief pause at the table, and Ilsa waited for the reply with a wide grin.
“It’s… a ball?”
“A relic? From when?”
After the magic word, “relic,” had been uttered, the table was abuzz again as the ball was passed around, going through hands as people theorized about what it might be and contain.
“Man, making my Clamperl pearls look bad again,” Kelvin said, sighing as he stood from his seat. “Need another drink to handle this.”
“Get one for me too,” Ilsa said as a wave of orders were sent Kelvin’s way.
“Someone get up and help me carry this all,” he said, swinging his arm over the selfless volunteer as they walked away.
“What do you think this is, Ilsa?”
The question brought Ilsa’s attention back to the orb and the divers, who were again focused on her, and she paused, staring at the orb.
“Huh, dunno. Some sort of relic.”
She shrugged, hand on her neck. It wasn’t like she could figure out what the thing was on her own, after all. Lacking the knowledge wasn’t her only problem here; she also lacked the skills to gain more knowledge because, well, she’d never learned to read. So yeah, she wasn’t proud of it, but to her defense she never used it, and it wasn’t really rare for someone her age to be illiterate. The older folks loved to talk smack about it, but she wasn’t too bothered by it. Sure she could probably use the skill, but she spoke fine, and she understood some basic letter combinations, and words just didn’t come that often in her life. It wasn’t like Ilsa was idling around for so long she could easily find time to pick up a skill.
“What kind of relic though?”
“Where’d you find it? Some cave or museum?”
Ilsa shrugged. “Can’t share my diving secrets, but it looks like it’s worth some money.”
A hand on her shoulder nearly had Ilsa jump out of her skin, and she flinched away to see Murphy behind her, looking almost… scared?
He seized her shoulders, practically shaking her as he spoke, his voice hushed.
“Ilsa, take that and run. Run.”
Ilsa stood, frozen even after he stopped shaking her, and she almost fell over when he pushed the ball into her hands, thrusting her towards the door. Then, as the rabble of the tavern rushed back to her, she blinked, confused, then glanced at the ball in her hands, which remained the dull red and blue it always was. When she looked back up, eyes scouring the tavern to try and locate Murphy, he was nowhere to be seen, which unsettled her further. What had he meant by that, telling her to run? Was there something she should be running from?
Almost as if answering her question, the tavern door burst open, rebounding off the wall with a loud bang as a harried-looking individual burst in, pale and wide-eyed.
“Team Aqua. Team Aqua is here!”
There was a flurry of movement as people scrambled around, and the tavern devolved into a hectic scramble for the door, of which Ilsa was a part of. If buying off the Rill was a crime, selling on it was even worse, and Ilsa wasn’t looking to get her loot confiscated. Out she ran, stumbling over and around other tavern patrons, Shoal inhabitants, and just about everyone who’d heard the news.
From above came a shrill cry, which quieted the street enough that heavy wingbeats could be heard, and Ilsa looked back to see a large flying Pokemon in the sky that she couldn’t put a name to. On its back was a person dressed in blue—a Team Aqua member.
“Team Aqua here. Sorry to break this party up, but we’re taking the town,” they called. “Thank you for your cooperation!”
The street regained its previous noise, and Ilsa took this chance to duck behind a shanty, intending to cut through and make for the ocean when she came face to face with a girl in a cloak. It took her a moment to place the face, but she did: Miriam, another diver, and somewhat of a social pariah if Ilsa remembered correctly. Her problem was that she’d been too good of a diver, and that exact fact had encouraged Ilsa to avoid her as well. That and the rumors that she was somewhat of a wimp when it comes to diving; Kelvin had been enough of a Wimpod for her liking, but he still grit his teeth and took a risk every now and then. For someone to not want to take risks at all, Ilsa couldn’t imagine understanding. What kind of rainbow fantasy world were they living in, trying to be a diver without wanting to take risky dives?
A crash from behind her sent her deeper into the shanty, towing Miriam along with her if the girl didn’t beat her to the punch. While their diving ideologies might conflict, Miriam had always been a good diver, and that Ilsa could respect.
“Hey, Miriam, right? Ilsa. I’m gonna make a run for the ocean, you in?”
She grinned, grabbing a piece of scuba gear off the wall of the shack. Finders keepers.
@Metronome Yup I’ll be here
@Vertigo I’m fine either way, but I’ll get a post up before tomorrow for sure. I’m probably just gonna have Pebs derail continuing to kick holes in the door for rummaging through the cabinets.
Merja “Mer” Aaltonen
Courtyard || Tuesday Morning || @Addamas@FalloutJack@Savo
A familiar, scowly voice sounded after Mer asked her question, and she cringed back, turning to see none other than Alex. As someone who called her out on the daily—or as often as she was in his presence—he was someone she struggled to like as much as she respected. There were a lot of rough edges with his character, and Mer couldn’t say she enjoyed spending time around him, especially since most of that time saw her struggling away with biology as he sped ahead and Joey trekked along somewhere between them. Still, he was smart, hard working, and often correct, so she couldn’t fault him, even if he had a tendency to slam her with some brutal honesty every now and then.
His particular word choice, ‘indecisive,’ was an accusation he’d shot at her before, and it was perhaps his most common jab at her. Though yes, she’d been able to catch herself at times these days, thanks to the penchant for his accusations to leave a mental mark or two, Mer still had a hard time shaking the habit. To her, the confidence others brandished with ease seemed almost unattainable, existing only as a constant, faraway dream that she might one day hope to mature up to. But, then again, she had thought she’d naturally develop that same confidence by the time she became an Evergreen senior, and here she was at that age with none of the presumed confidence.
Alex’s next lines, though, were aimed at the boy in the tree, and they sadly contained all the barbs that Mer had come to expect of him. Cringing on the climber’s behalf this time, she glanced up, then around the courtyard, looking for some member of the school staff to appear and resolve the situation. Unfortunately, there seemed to be none available, likely a side effect of the current time.
Ava, thankfully, took the entire situation better than Mer did, even bursting out into laughter when the boy in the tree responded. She was quick to snap back at Alex, too, about his shot at the climber, and Mer sent silent thanks to her grinning friend for being the supportive voice against Alex's harsh one. That thanks, though, stopped when Ava continued, citing her own desire to climb the tree, and Mer had to take a second to process what she was hearing, mostly because she couldn’t believe anyone would want to climb the tree in question. Here they were on the campus courtyard in the early morning, waiting for class to begin, and Ava thought it’d be a good idea to climb a tree?
“Ava, no,” Mer said, touching the shorter girl’s arm. “He just suggested he might fall, and he’s taking pictures now. We should go find some staff to help him down before he hurts himself.”
Looking back up at the boy, Mer hesitated, then glanced down at the people around her, hoping someone might say something else. But, catching Alex’s eye, she grit her teeth and looked up again, cupping her hands around her mouth to help her voice carry.
“Hi, do you need any help getting down from the tree?”
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