SEPTEMBER INTRO LOG

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SEPTEMBER INTRO LOG

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→ 09/01 The Arrival

「 Welcome to the world of POKEMON 」

"It will come to be. And in exchange..."
You wake up with a start. Thunder rolls across the sky, steamrolling the voices and the fog out of your head and replacing them with mottled grey on white— greyer in some spots than others, and if you're one of the unlucky ones, the greyest leaks cold water right down on your face. Drip... drip... drip... the intervals in between getting shorter and shorter until

SPLOOSH!!

The entire ceiling caves in and water and soggy drywall collapses onto your head, and those of several dozen others sharing this very open, very wet room. Rain pours down from overhead through the large hole in the middle of the ceiling, but the perimeter of the room is a little drier: about a dozen cots line the walls, not enough for the number of people here and so most must pick themselves off the ground. Other than a few curtained dividers now scattered across the flooding floor, the room is otherwise bare. White, grey, and very wet.

"Uh..." The only dry people in the room stand in the doorway: a girl who pulls her hood further over her head to keep the water off her face as she steps in to help the person nearest her up, and a boy who hangs back behind her, hesitant, staring at his feet a little guiltily until he looks up and catches somebody's eye, and he too steps forward to help people onto their feet. They introduce themselves as Chiaki Nanami and Minato Arisato, explain that they've arrived here a while ago in the exact same way as everybody here, and show off the purple and grey bands around their right and left ankles respectively, as if that is proof enough. Your unconscious bodies may or may not have been investigated while you were unconscious, but every person here will find some sort of band tattooed around a part of their body, some with a single pattern and some with two, some matching somebody else's and some unique to their own.

For those who want to hang back and ask questions, Nanami and Minato stick around and do their best to answer them, otherwise, you're free to go out in the rain and get soaked and wonder why this is your life.

→ 09/01 The Surroundings

"Ichi help me think of headings. I am so bad at writing headings" - Card

It's actually not that bad, all things considering. Sure, it's raining all day nonstop, but the rain varies between pouring and sprinkling and is weirdly lukewarm, like a shower that doesn't have enough water pressure and can't get hot enough. Strange creatures called Pokemon roam about the town of Toran, many hiding from the rain and liable to attack when people unexpectedly stumble upon them trying to find shelter themselves, especially the arm-hungry bears who just want to nap under trees, but others are friendly and eager to help people sweep water out of buildings and patch up roofs.

Whether you woke up with one or stumbled across them later, you have your own strange creature too. Be friends. If you don't know anything about Pokemon, there are plenty of elementary schoolers eager to laugh at your ignorance and teach you everything you need to know about catching and training Pokemon, little four-year-old escorts around Toran to show you where to find them in the lake at the center of the island, the surrounding ocean, the patches of grass throughout the town. The ground is perpetually marshy, thick mud and tall grass slowing foot traffic and the spiderwebs of pavement connecting the other structures around town are covered with half squashed, wiggling worms(egments) that are almost unavoidable to step on unless it's during a lighter drizzle when the bird Pokemon are free to swoop down to pick the roads clean. Want to get some experience in Pokemon battling? These literal children will gladly pulverize you to the point of blacking out and take your money or whatever fun little trinkets you have in your pockets.

The building everybody arrived in turns out to be a hospital, with an adjacent building being a hospital for Pokemon- a Pokemon Center- which offers free shelter for travellers but is currently overflowing with people who are stranded on this island, even with so many visitors forced to resort to long term lodging in the town's small inn. Both the hospital and Pokemon Center stand right along the lakeside, water overflowing and nearly lapping against the front steps, which is home to an abnormally large 30-foot long Gyarados. It thrashes about in the middle of the lake and has been scaring all the other wild water Pokemon to the outskirts of the lake, blasting the nearby buildings and berry trees with torrents of water, and lashing out at anybody who tries to approach. Several fishing boats that have gotten too close have been smashed, but a few are left tied to the docks around the lake for braver trainers to use.

Large canopies have been set up over the berry gardens dotting the rest of the lakeside to keep the rain (and the occasional Gyarados hydro pump) from washing off the berries. The trees are tended to by gardeners with their grass Pokemon, and at times Minato with his Yamask covering his face, one black arm wrapped around his neck and the other lazily waving an arm to part the cloud of several hundred Combee buzzing protectively around the boy, trying to keep unfamiliar people away from the beehives as Minato makes his rounds checking up on each of the hives and picking up the fruit that has fallen or has ripened enough on the branches, offering berries to any person or Pokemon who's hungry.

Most of the buildings around town are doing well enough, despite the unending gloomy weather and too many people. The Daycare Center is particularly packed with Pokemon whose trainers are stuck outside of the island and unable to pick them up, and volunteers to help feed and care for the Pokemon are needed more than ever, especially the younger Pokemon who are fussy and upset at being away from their trainers for so long. Even the older Pokemon are a bit worried, and some of the daycare workers whisper about rumors of a pack of wild Drifloon seen around town whenever the rain calms down to a drizzle and luring little kids into the thick fog and getting them lost. There are also whispers about the hospital, hushed words about how it's haunted by the spirits of the deceased and that when a group of Murkrows gather around a patient's window, it's to mark that person with misfortune and death. Several posters of missing children are hung up around the Daycare Center, with the promise of a reward for any information or return of the children, and flyers begging for help to calm the residents at the hospital of their worries about the Murkrows or ghostly sightings.

The Game Corner arcade never knows silence with the constant flashing and chiming of the slot machines and roulette wheels, but don't be fooled with the frequent payouts seen at the machines Nanami and her Mimikyu sit at, because the odds are actually pretty low and the tokens can only be traded in for berries, common items, and Pokemon accessories. There are no windows in the Game Corner, and it is very easy to lose track of time inside— one elderly gentleman in a tophat can be seen at the same slot machine in the corner at all hours of the day, never eating or sleeping or doing anything else but mechanically pulling the lever, unresponsive to the rest of the world around him. He's going to hit the jackpot, he knows it. Just one more pull. One more pull...

The newest building in Toran is the boba shop, freshly painted in bright yellows and blues just before the storm hit and the colors remain bold against the grey sky. The "Grand Opening" sign still hangs above the front door despite opening over a month before, inviting customers inside to try their specialty: milk tea with Combee honey boba balls. Boba is half off for first-time customers, and you also get your stamp card stamped with a lavender Bulbasaur face, unique to Toran's shop. There are eight stamps total to be collected- fill up your stamp card for a special prize! But strangely enough, scattered throughout the town, people of various different ages slump against walls and on the ground, barely responsive and with empty cups of boba around them. They're ignored by the townspeople and despite the unnerving sight of these semi-vegetative citizens, lines to the shop are just as long as ever.

The shop is also currently hiring, for those who would like to fill up their days while there's nowhere to go and make a little $$$. How about it? Join Team Boba today! (:

→ 09/02 The First Meeting

"Hahahahaha" - Ichi

After giving people some time to get settled, later in the evening of the second day, Nanami, Minato, and their Pokemon go around finding people with those mysterious bands marking them as isekai'd strangers to the island, and herd them towards the boba shop to Talk. About why they're all here, about that dream, about where to go from here...

As the group waits for the last of them to arrive, with a round of boba provided courtesy of Nanami and her small Game Corner fortune, chatter around the boba shop paints the same story: a storm has been raging for over a month now, with thunder and lightning, hurricane winds, and whirlpools making travel to and from the island too hazardous, trapping visitors on the island way past their expected length of stay. There are talks of strong Pokemon trainers having headed out into the storm to try and get help from other towns, most of them quickly forced to turn back, and others— whether they were lost at sea or managed to break through— never heard from since. Storms are never this bad here, the people say, they never last this long and they don't ever seem to be... sentient... getting a lot worse earlier yesterday when so many new people were found collapsed around the island and were brought to the hospital, intermittently throughout the past month whenever a trainer tries to leave the island, and the largest reaction from the storm over a month ago when a girl with pink hair and a boy with blue hair were found in the lake and dragged half-dead to the hospital.

The island has been isolated for well over a month now with nobody having any idea what's going on outside, but the arrival of so many people at once can't be a coincidence- it must signify the time for change. When something to this scale happens, people tend to look to the gods, the Legendary Pokemon, but if they're really the cause... it'll take effort from everybody in order to break through the storm to catch the attention of the Legendaries and reach the rest of the world.

→ MOD NOTES

⬥ Welcome to Pokespe! All characters wake up at the hospital by the lakeside and can explore the rest of the island. Players are free to play out Pokemon battles or wild Pokemon encounters, but please let a mod know when catching a new Pokemon so we can approve or decline the capture.
⬥ On the second day, Nanami and Minato will be available to answer questions about what they've found out in the month before everybody else arrived. They will each have an NPC toplevel for those who wish to speak with them, and characters present at the meeting are free to learn about the information shared without needing to thread with an NPC.
⬥To proceed to the next area for next month's log, characters must find a way to travel across the stormy ocean filled with whirlpools and choppy waves. Make sure to mention your efforts on the permanent AC page at the end of the month!
⬥ There are several other oddities and problems around town that characters may choose to help with or investigate, which may or may not help with escaping the island or have ties to the plot as a whole. To investigate one of these areas, please comment to the questions toplevel with a link to your thread so the mods can direct you appropriately.

Comments

ii.

[pelf]

[ mammon, too, is a pretty intense regular at the game corner, but unlike nanami, he fucking sucks at playing games. every coin he scrounges up from the middle of two slot machines immediately goes to waste, with his luck as crushingly abysmal here as it was back home, so when nanami asks him to play - well, his one brain cell manages to ping in the corner of his skull like the logo of an idle dvd machine, and he gets enough self-awareness to know that if he takes her tokens, he'll just lose them all. and why risk that when he can just leech off of someone else's success? ]

Uh - wow, no. But.

[ despite having spent pretty much all his time here, mammon takes the tokens nanami offers him because he's, like, blanking out and thinking that these are the coins she's won, for some reason, despite having a very clear physical difference to currency. he carelessly tilts the tray into the open bag he's holding in his other arm, stealing them all nonetheless. he spills a few of them, swears, drops to his knees, hits his head on the side of the machine, swears again, then keeps talking to nanami while he picks these loose tokens up and starts shovelling them into his pockets. ]

I mean, how about we play a game where you keep doin' this, and I try to see how many of your winnings I can fit in my bag? That could be fun.

[joysticks]

[ ... Nanami gives the biggest pout that she can make. She's not the sharpest tool in the shed but she knows when someone's stealing from her!! minato fuck him up ]

... that's not a game.

[pelf]

[ Ah, shit. Called out. Mammon's still kneeling on the ground when Nanami answers, and he, like, slowly puts the last token in his bag without breaking eye contact. ]

... You're right. Sorry.

[ His eyes drift slowly to the Dodrio machine and then back up to Nanami's face. They go back to the game, then back to Nanami, then back to the game, then back to Nanami. He - kind of has a plan, still? He leans in, lowering his voice, and genuinely tries to ask this with as much tact and kindness as he can. ]

But, uh - hey - I don't mean this in a bad way, or nothin', but - are you one of those geeky shut-in types with no friends?

[joysticks]

[ Huff huff!!! Nanami's pout somehow grows even bigger and her Mimikyu is started to get insulted on her behalf, puffing himself up as much as he can. Considering that his costume is just fabric, he is succeeding in blowing it up to as far as the cloth will allow him. >:(!!!!! ]

How rude. I have friends. And I go outside sometimes.

[ ... ]

When they want me to.

[pelf]

[ Man, why is Nanami calling him rude? Why is she pouting? Mammon frowns, genuinely kind of at a loss here, but he just keeps pushing forward. She can't still be mad about him taking her tokens away, can she? He did that, like, three full minutes ago. Get over it? ]

I wasn't tryin' to be rude, or nothin'. I was just askin', 'cause, see - I got a brother, and he's a total loser, too, and you look just like him. All he does is play video games and talk to me about the anime girl he wants to marry. It's gross, but, like - it's who he is? And I totally get it. So, if you're a loser, too, I totally get that.

[ Mammon holds his hands up in surrender to make it clear that he's very sincerely trying to tell Nanami that he thinks she's a loser, but in a way that he's okay with. Olive branch, olive branch. ]

And - I was just gonna say - sometimes, I'll go to arcades with my brother, and he'll let me take all of his winnings, 'cause he doesn't care about the coins, or anything. He just cares about the experience! The games! The lights! The atmosphere! So.

[ So. He lowers his hands a little. ]

So... he'd give me all of his money, if he were here. 'Cause he wouldn't care. And you remind me of him... so... I mean, do you get what I'm sayin', or...?

[joysticks]

[ Nanami continues to stare at him, but her pout starts to deflate as Mammon talks about his brother. Hmmm, she thinks she understands what he means, but it's not enough to completely erase the >:T off her face. ]

... it's still mean, though. You should ask before you do that to others.

[ However, she does ease up and she pats her Mimikyu to calm down. He was starting to look like a balloon with how much he blew himself up. ]

I'll give you my coins... but only if you play with me.

[pelf]

[ He doesn't think he's being mean? Nanami just needs a thicker skin, he thinks? Mammon's not going to say as much, now that he has the upper hand, but he gives her a great, big thumbs up to show that he's totally on board with whatever it is she's saying right now, letting loose a big, long yaaaaaaaaay under his breath. He wasn't really listening. ]

I'd love to play with you, but - like - you gotta tell your mean ol' pillowcase thing to stop looking at me. It's kinda hideous. No offense.

[ Little bit of offense meant that time, actually. Mammon frowns at Mimikyu, then looks back at Nanami, just absolutely barrelling forward with a bold-faced lie that he assumes she won't call him out on, because, like. Sometimes people don't call him out on his bullshit when it's outrageous enough, so. ]

Also - I don't have any game tokens? Or coins? Or anything? So. You're gonna have to pay for everything.

[joysticks]

...

[ Nanami wants to be nice but Mammon keeps on being mean! This is like Komeada but worse because at least Komaeda thinks that he's doing the right thing and has good intentions. This guy just seems tactless and like a bully. Kyu-chan already has tears in the corner of his little eye holes. He's not hideous... he made this costume so people would think that he's cute like Pikachu... ]

... I won't pay for anything until you apologize to Kyu-chan.