2024-01-14: Welcoming Committee
- Log: Welcome Committee
- Cast: Loren Voss, Sable Aomori, Nina Chiyome
- Where: Centropolis Plaza, Celadon City
- Date: January 14, 506 PC Filgaian
- Summary: Loren Voss has made his way to Energy Nede. So of course, things have to get a little worse. Nina and Sable, meanwhile, are on a shopping trip! These two things collide.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
A lot happened, to the extent that it's still been hard for Loren to parse the precise order of things even after he'd gone over all of the related reports (even going so far as to get a physical notebook and write it out). But the gist is this: some criminals from outer space had come and taken the Sorcery Globe, then went on a rocket (!!) to an ancient space station (!!?) and got teleported to another world (again??), after which a rift had opened up to this new world. Also said criminals were consuming the power of Filgaia's Ley, which was not a good thing insofar as even Solaris needs Filgaia to not perish to accomplish their near-term plans... and it's looking like planetary death is a lot further up the schedule than their own planning.
But all this most impacts Loren because among those on the rocket and now officially MIA was Azoth. No one has heard anything from the unit since. Odds are fairly good that he got teleported to this other world with everyone else, but even Solaris' agents (thorough, since they've gathered all the disparate pieces up to this point) haven't been able to track Azoth down.
The order had crossed his desk just the other day. Go alone, track down Azoth, and if possible, bring him back within the designated period. If the last part failed... then she would involve herself.
So had said Major Leah Sadalbari.
There are other people they could have used, but she's using him. Loren thinks he knows why.
So he'd gone on ahead, as ordered--
But if he'd expected another Lunar or Spira even in spite of the reports, he'd been surprised. A uniformed officer had greeted the startled Loren on the other side, saying that if he needed information that he could head over to Celadon City. ...It would seem that he's not the first non-Nedian to cross paths with the local law enforcement in recent days...
So, a little bewildered and feeling decidedly out of his element -- as much as Celadon City reminds him in some ways of the middle layer of Etrenank (or maybe that is the reason why) -- he's come to the big city.
Now what...?
The reports had said that the technology of this new other world seemed to be ahead of Filgaia and Lunar, but he's still grappling with the fact that it's probably about as advanced as his own culture. Or maybe more advanced. There's something about the landscaping that nags at him, that makes him think almost that someone has carefully shaped the world he's walking upon, and--
Something squirms in his bag and he realizes with dawning horror that he hadn't made the trip alone. "You're kidding me," he tells the wriggling something, opening up the bag to extract the--
yes, it's the cloudbear, Runeberry
of course it is
The tiny white bear squalls at him as he lifts it into the air, part of its airy mass obscuring his hand. "Why," he asks of Runeberry, gazing at it longsufferingly. He'd checked that bag! He knows it was not occupied by any troubling elemental-animal chimera when he left!
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable Aomori has taken the train to Celadon City! She was in Cerulean, but decided to get out of town while the police handled a certain unusual incident; besides which, she had preparations to make for the gym!
Namely, to acquire a couple of TMs to teach her Pokemon useful moves for the challenge ahead.
But she's walking across the plaza at the moment, and she spots a man. This is how this plays out...
A very tall girl (some 5'8", 5'9" or so with her shoes) walks across the plaza, wearing dark clothes. A fur-lined jacket, a tanktop underneath, and some dark jeans, along with soft sneakers. She comes to a stop next to Loren as he lifts a squalling bear, tiny, and tilts her head.
"..."
She thinks about it. "I don't know why either," she tells him, point-blank.
"..."
<Pose Tracker> Nina Chiyome has posed.
Nina was happily along for the ride with Anne. She didn't even have to come with an excuse since Sable wanted to evac for similar reasons and truth be told, the two have done this enough that it's probably just second nature.
She's wearing her usual transparent-ish jacket over a long tee (White!) with red shorts. She's gone with sandles herself. Stopping alongside Sable when she stops for Loren, she leans forward to get a look at the bear. "Why not's a better question. Bet'cha it thought the bag looked cozy. Or you had snacks." She grins. She's walking with a noibat riding her shoulder. Dozing there. Because she likes to have them all out at different times just for socialization!
"So what TMs were you after Sable?" She lapses right back into the other conversation!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
What's Loren wearing, you ask? (Nobody asked, but so it goes.)
For most of Filgaia, this would be pretty bare-bones ordinary. A button-down white shirt. A somewhat weathered dark brown jacket, falling no further than his waist. Black slacks. Scuffed black shoes. A belt is involved in the waist area. The aforementioned bag. Wireframe glasses.
Loren himself is blond and fair-skinned, enough that at a distance it looks like he has no eyebrows. His eyes, currently regarding the strange and semi-there bear with muted irritated, are blue. Freckles dust his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.
Immediately, he's approached by a pair of young girls with pointed ears (elves, goes some part of his brain, and at least this is better than the him of five or so years ago that would have used a different word altogether -- except, wait, even elves can't be right!). The one who is about his height immediately sasses him.
He stares at Sable for a good five seconds, as if he were trying to figure out how to respond to this and pulling a blue screen. "Uh," he starts, his gaze shifting between her, Nina, and the cloudbear. "Great?" Loren settles for, slowly lowering the bear back into his still-half-open bag.
Yeah, this is going great.
"It has food," he answers Nina, his expression growing decidedly pinched. He decides it's better not to explain that Runeberry feeds off of him. Well, or any ambient magic it finds, but it seems to like the 'taste' of his magic best. "It's doing this to be a nuisance," he goes on, pushing his glasses a degree further up his nose purely to do something with his now free hand.
Runeberry, back in Loren's bag, regards the two girls curiously, its nose wrinkling. If this is a Pokemon, it's not one that either of them has heard or of seen before... especially not in the hands of some rounded-ear newcomer from another world.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
"Is it?" Sable wonders of 'great'. She looks at Loren for a few more moments, glancing down, then up. She takes in the details of his appearance. His round ears. his lack of... no, he does have eyebrows. His freckles, and his blue eyes. And he looks older than them...
"Oh... Is it not well-trained, then?" Sable wonders of it being a nuisance.
She was here with Nina for a fun day and a practical day; neither factored in the possibility of a Visitor here who was... like this.
"I've never seen a Pokemon like that," she reflects. "I've seen a lot of Pokemon, too."
She peers down at Runeberry. "Hello."
Then she looks back at Loren. "Sometimes Pokemon annoy people because they want attention."
Pause. "Oh, the cornerstone of my strategy if I can make it work is Sunny Day. That way, her Water pokemon will be weaker, and it won't affect my Dragon... I was thinking of other moves in general. Maybe Grass or Electric."
Sable regards Loren again. "Are you from another world?" she asks of him.
<Pose Tracker> Nina Chiyome has posed.
Nina agrees with Sable, nodding sagely, "Not well trained at all." She then gets a smirk and side eyes her friend, "You know that look I'm sure." She has to tease both now. Because that's what friends do.
"I think he's one of the w-" she catches herself, "Aliens." Yes. That's not much better is it?
"I think she's right for what it's worth, it's probably bored or wants affection. Or both!" No she has no idea what the teddybear is.
Straightening up finally she stretches and rests her hands behind her head, "I was thinking the same thing. My poor Toxel's not going to want to try and do it all right? Could go back to Cerulean with me and talk to some of the trainers there maybe. Poppy and Korukiri had a field day, but uh. The place after kinda got me good! I kinda liked Lt. Surge though. Even if he told some weird stories."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Well-trained? Runeberry? Loren looks at Sable as if she has grown another head. "Hardly. I'd meant to leave it behind but it's come along for the ride anyway," he tells her, as Runeberry regards the two of them with its beady black eyes. Its fluff 'billows' now and then, as if it were being pushed along slightly by the breeze.
"But I don't think it's possible to train a bear anyway."
But the word that Sable calls it takes him aback. A... what?
The reports had mentioned strange animals past the gate, though none of the operatives had (thus far) gone through (until him, that is) -- it had been enough to piece together events from the Drifters who had been beyond and returned (and not to mention the commotion that had happened in Ignas -- Solaris does have operatives on both side of that particular fence, as it were).
Loren is not a (terribly) stupid young man and so he pieces this part together well enough. If they're calling their native animals and monsters 'Pokemon', then Runeberry is... sure. He'll go with that.
"It's special," he tells her, managing to pull back on his initial confusion about terminology into something approaching a proper pokerface. Might as well try to fit in, even if he's technically an--
"--Who're you calling an alien?" he asks of Nina, scrunching up his forehead as he just about scowls at her. "I'm not an alien." Just because he's from a different world doesn't make him some sort of... weird blue creature from beyond the stars or something. He might have read too much scifi when he was younger...
"Affection?" Loren glances down at Runeberry, who doesn't glance back up. "I think it just wants to be a pest," he reasserts, offhandedly trying to push the cloudbear back into the bag. It resists this, clinging to the end of the bag until Loren is forced to give up on the attempt.
What these girls are talking about, though is making his head spin. None of these words they're using make any sense! What do they mean by 'their Dragon'? Or Sunny Day -- that sounded like a proper noun pair! What's a Toxel?
"Is there... a library," he asks, feeling completely at sea.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
"Oh," Sable answers of Runeberry. "I see. Yes."
"It's very possible to train a bear," Sable says. "Maybe you just don't know how."
Loren gets it. 'Pokemon'. But he says it's special, and she is willing to believe that with a nod. Except--
"I know that look," Sable agrees with Nina calmly. But then--Nina calls him an alien. That seems right.
"You're not from Energy Nede, but you're here. That means you're an alien. But it's okay. As far as we can tell the Visitors are biologically compatible with our world. None of you have died of eating our food yet." Pause. "I hope you're not the first. I would feel bad reassuring you..."
Affection! "It likes you," Sable decides. Then she answers Nina, "Yes," Sable agrees. "I think I'll talk to some of the Trainers too... but I'm training up a Grass-type to help with the Gym, too." Pause. "I'll keep an eye out for him..." Lt. Surge... The Vermillion City Gym Leader.
"Oh." A library. "Yes. Since I bothered you I'll take you to it. That's okay, isn't it Nina? He looks lost. My TMs can wait." She pauses.
"Oh. My name is Sable," she explains further. "This is Nina. We're trying to be welcoming. That's what everyone says we're supposed to be to the Visitors."
"Do you feel welcomed?"
<Pose Tracker> Nina Chiyome has posed.
Nina looks to Loren's idea that you couldn't train a bear and says, "I saw a Pangoro not too long ago and you have Ursaring and.." She knows what a bear type is. Just not a bear on its own! She can kinda guess at least.
"Are too. You're from another world that makes you the definition of one." She points and grins, "Haven't seen any with funny foreheads yet though." She sounds so disappointed in that.
The disdain shown by Loren does get something of a scowl from her though, "Hey be nicer and it'd probably cooperate with you more." She bites her tongue when he asks for a library. "What questions did'ja have?"
She side eyes Sable when she mentions the food might kill the alien. "Don't tell the weird people that. That's mean and might spook them." Her pokemon stirs and pokes at the back of her head with a wing. "Alien." She might have asked them to stop her from calling them what comes to mind.
"Yeah we can lead the way. We can hit up stores on the way back!" She holds her hands up in something of a teasing Cheer as the two are introduced. "I think he feels confused. I know that look." Stop being on the nose Nina.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Maybe he just doesn't know how, Sable suggests.
At this, Loren's hackles rise. "What do you mean, I don't know how?" he counters, scowling. He glances at Nina, further wrinkling his forehead as if trying to parse her meaning. He's not familiar with the terms she's throwing around and probably it shows -- but then, would most Visitors know them?
And he's definitely a Visitor.
But he takes a breath and shakes his head. He's here for a reason, even if he's getting turned about. And he's not going to get anywhere if he's-- he's getting into a fight with literal children (who are maybe about a decade his junior, if that...). His left hand curls into a fist at his side. Okay, okay, okay, he's got this, he's in control--
"...Seriously?" Yes, he knows logically that makes him an alien to them, but it's just not-- he can't think of himself as an alien! "I'm a-- I don't have a weird forehead! Call me a Visitor, then!" It's stupid. He knows he's being stupid about it. But he can't help it, it's like someone's rubbing his fur the wrong way... "And what do you mean, 'died eating your food'?" Now he's on high alert, thinking of the energy bars in his bag with dread and, oh, wait, she said no one had died.
Yet.
"..."
Loren's silence, in the moment, speaks volumes.
He looks over at Nina, as if begging her reassurance on this matter. Please say he hasn't come to another world to live on energy bars that taste like cardboard or to possibly risk dying due to biological incompatibility with the food! Please! Why is this job always so bad to him?
At least her remarks make him feel a little bit better. ...A little bit.
But at least they know what a library is. They have libraries. Praise the Emperor, Loren silently thinks, resisting stoicly the urge to sigh in relief. "Honestly, everything," he confesses, because, hell with trying to pretend to be local. The best he'll get is trying to pretend to be another clueless 'Visitor'.
Her name's Sable, she says at last. And this Nina. They're trying to be welcoming. Does he feel welcomed?
Loren pauses.
"No?" he tells her, quite honestly.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
"It's not a skill everyone has," Sable explains. She nods to Nina. "I've never trained a bear Pokemon either," she admits.
"That's true," she says to Nina. "I haven't met any like that either." She pauses. She could go on that, but instead they both get on her about her comments on the food.
"I mean, as far as I know the food is all right for all of you. I wasn't trying to be mean." She looks at Nina. "Right. I would be confused too, I think."
he does not feel welcomed...
Sable doesn't emote a whole lot, compared to your average teenage girl. Her affect is pretty muted. Nontheless, she is visibly disappointed when Loren says he doesn't feel welcomed. Her face falls. Her eyes turn down to the ground. Her shoulders slump. "Oh," she says. "I'm sorry. Maybe they should start writing pamphlets. That would probably work better."
Pause. "Anyway we'll take you to the nearest library." She straightens again. "It's this way. But the basics..."
"This world is called Energy Nede. You're in Celadon City. And we haven't had visitors in..." She tilts her head. "A very long time. We'll try to be more welcoming."
<Pose Tracker> Nina Chiyome has posed.
Nina looks to Loren's pleading that they might have food, edible food. "Pretty sure you can. Like you said, none of you have gone and fallen over or something yet." She twirls her finger, "Might not be what you're used to on uh." She frowns. "I heard the name." She taps her foot and groans, "Agh! I knew it. Fillion."
"What's wrong with alien? There's nothing wrong with being from elsewhere usually." She pauses, finger to her chin, "You're not here to eat our pokeball factories or something right?" She gets another poke from her noibat, "Fine fine. Visitor's fine."
She doesn't look as put out and adds wryly, "I think he's about to burst a brain vessel. We might be-" she gets poked, "I might be putting it on too thick." She pokes Sable's side as an aside, "So library. Let him sample the food maybe?"
As for bears? "I haven't either, but they clearly can be trained or there wouldn't be trainers with them!" She sticks her tongue out, muttering something distinctly 'smart arse'-y. Though she IS smiling!
"Really though, what kinda questions? We can help out. It's the nice thing to do." Even if that means extended contact with an excitable trainer and her far more serious friend!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Nina says she's pretty sure it'll be fine, that most of the visitors have eaten the local food without any issues. Loren stares at Sable, as if he can't quite believe what he's just heard. His shoulders slouch. "Then... don't say things like that?" he says, looking put upon. "And it's 'Filgaia'!"
Loren Voss: upsetting teenagers!
Which he has. Just realized that he's done. "Now-- wait a moment!" he starts, shaking his head vehemently. "You're the one talking about the food killing me and calling me an alien, and," he gestures, vaguely. "Stop acting like-- like..."
And then she straightens and says they'll take him to the nearest library. Loren makes a face, something more or less like :|
"Okay," he says, as if making his peace with this latest reality he's ended up in. Nina is probably right. He does look like he's about to have a very funny migraine.
Like what kind of questions? "Like what's a Pokemon do," he finally admits, defeated.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
"Filgaia," Sable repeats, looking to Nina. "Right." Then, back to Loren. Nina seems to think they're--Sable pokes Nina. That she's putting it on too thick. "Right. I'm trying to be welcoming. Let's be nice."
Pause. "Yes, a library. And food. But not both at the same time..."
Questions!!
Sable doesn't seem stressed about how down she was a few moments ago. She is now focused on a New Task. Loren's face is... Well.
It's not that diffferent from Sable's. Only hers is more like o_o now.
"Pokemon do lots of things," she explains as they walk. "It's what we call our wildlife. They all have potent Symbological abilities and..."
She can explain a few more things. But she seems less anxious about whatever is going on when she can keep Nina in sight, for the moment.
The library is not that far. Loren will be able to escape eventually.
<Pose Tracker> Nina Chiyome has posed.
Nina is poked from two sides and she says, "Hey hey, I didn't-" she huffs, sticks her tongue out and crosses her arms maybe pouting a bit. Then she slowly reaches out and pokes back in return. Because of course she does.
Nina's face is.. unchanged. She thinks most of this is pretty funny and she's clearly having a good time. Probably due to current company if all else, but what can you do?
She doesn't tease him any further when he says 'Stop acting like-' for what it's worth, though she does very briefly consider it based on her face and reaction!
"We have headache pills if you need them. Tea'd probably do you good too."