bottlebay | 3rd Quest [Video, after completing Heads or Tails]

[It's finally a sunny, warm day, hot but not terribly humid, and perfect for laying out bolts of felt to dry after May's deluge of rain. Or, well, to let them dry after being cleaned to ensure there's no mold or mildew or anything gross trying to grow on the fabric Firoza has worked so hard to make. And as she sits in the middle of this fabric drying in the sun, her mind wanders towards her efforts with Laios and Emmett to locate a missing Pokemon. The eerie feeling, the thought that came unbidden, the state that Zweilous was found in...

She has to talk about this. She has to express this. And when she comes in over the Grumpearls, you can get that sense of concern and confusion settling around her, making the sunny day a bit dimmer as a result.]

I don't recall Zweilous having gone missing before our arrival here. Has this Pokemon wandered off before?

[She hums, little Nidoran brow furrowed. It's important to note that she's finally started to keep her bandana pulled down again, and her right cheek (her right) has a wispy scar trailing across it, like tendrils of flame licking out. It's all healed, it doesn't look grotesque, but wow it sure is there!]

There's just...a feeling I had. "No, no, not again"...and I couldn't shake how familiar it was, to know you are missing a name and face, but you cannot put it together. Though how it can be familiar I'm not sure...

[Tap tap tap goes a paw, impatient as she thinks.]

Have any of you felt something similar, from a mission? Or am I overthinking this?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes! They were ill! I don't know how they continue to venture out in such a state without anyone noticing.

[Firoza not everyone loses their collective shit when someone sick decides to fuck off into the night(?), that's just your friends. Towards you.]

Much less climb a bloody tree...

It may be something akin to sleepwalking, but that doesn't explain how they've managed to stray so far, let alone how the clinic has lost sight of them so many times.

[He sighs, shaking his head. Honestly...]

But climbing a tree? With how their body is...it couldn't be easy to do if they were awake. Surely it would be more difficult asleep!

Perhaps if they used their jaws, but even then, it would require so much coordination, even if cognizant...

[His eyes narrow as he tries to make sense of it. Literally how...?]

And it isn't as if they are well enough to properly question...

If we had a tracking device or micro camera, perhaps we'd gain some insight, but that's far beyond the technology level of this world...

...I can figure out what a tracking device does. And I know what micro means. So...what is a camera?

Essentially, they're machines that capture video... moving picture and sound, not unlike the pearls.

Ooh! I have seen things like that before! Not the cameras, the captured images!

[She sounds so excited...]

It is very advanced technology...but you speak as if it's normal where you're from.

Oh, it's incredibly mundane. Televisions have existed for over half a century at this point.

[That's not to say they've always been at the same state of technology...

His mind produces images of old, black and white TVs with rabbit ears, then box-like CRTs, then finally, modern flatscreens.]

[What she shares in response is - well, holograms, for one. Really surprisingly good ones, all with a strange kind of interface bringing them up. And Akechi's flat screens bring to mind more of what she saw in Solution Nine, so he gets a few glimpses of the cleanest cyberpunk city to ever exist, with its huge ever-changing ads and somesuch.]

See, those...the first was from the Allagans. They were a very advanced civilization, too advanced really. I don't recall the exact length of time it's been since they went to ruin, but they did - still, what remains and is found is leagues ahead of what most people can imagine. The Garlean Empire repurposed or copied much of their work through magitek, too. And then the second was an example of the Alexandrians. They...are a unique sort of case. A bit more complicated to explain. So where I'm from, for the average person, a camera would be a marvelous thing.

[~~Not me wondering if Garleans would have figured out how to make cameras for a fanfic, no sir~~]

[An advanced civilization that fell into ruin... Akechi hums. It's not an unfamiliar concept to him.]

There is many a tale of such civilizations. The lost city of Atlantis, for instance. Fantasy and science fiction thrive with concepts of ancient people whose societies met calamitous ends, their relics lost to time...

But that's the realm of fiction and folklore. Obviously, a lived reality is quite different.

Ah, well, they happen to be very real for me. You keep stumbling upon ruins of nations long gone, when you adventure as a profession. Some things are well and truly lost to time, I'm certain, but others...

[A pause, and a sigh.]

Let's just say that the Allagans are particularly pervasive.

Pervasive, but not in a good way?

[The sigh certainly implies as much, but perhaps he's missing some more context.]

The story's so bloody long that whenever we fall face first into something new that's the first question we have to ask ourselves. Is it the godsdamned Allagans again?

Calamity strikes the realm because someone decides to misuse whose technology? The Allagans. Frightening beings of pure darkness want to take over our world? Couldn't get here without meddling from the Allagans. Religious fanatic needs an incredible amount of power to become a god himself? He goes to a floating science facility thing...and guess who put it up there in the sky?

[It's like the fucking Aliens guy but worse]

I could keep going, but at some point I'm going to sound bitter. Or, well, moreso. It's not as if their mania didn't make one good thing possible.

[Hmm... It's broad enough that it isn't terribly hard to follow, even if he's clearly missing a great deal of context and specifics.

One thing is clear, if nothing else...]

So, effectively, their power and technology has enabled a great deal of tragedy and strife.

It has. [A pause.] Apologies, for the swearing. And the tone. Their meddling runs so very deep.

3rd Quest [Video, after completing Heads or Tails]

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cw: dawntrail spoilers

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