Lockdown

Lincoln only had to take a few steps into the Mansion before he realized he had made a grave error. The aura in this place twisted and turned, only not in the way that made him think of hot, doughy pretzels or twisty candy made with berries. This was the kind of twisty turny that made him think of bones snapping, limbs getting caught under a plow, goo sliding through a trough. It made his spine shiver, and he could almost feel his stomach turning with the aura.

Nope. This was the end. He was sure he had seen enough to ride himself of his fear of the copse. Time to head back to sanity-

Wham.

......The door shut in front of his face as he went to leave. Now Lincoln was all alone. In the dark. His nerves snapped with panic, and he could feel his fur bristling at the root. He ran up to the door and tried to both push and pull the door, but neither worked. Lincoln knew it wasn't going to work. Why would it work? He had a feeling haunted house logic would be screwing him over for the entirety of this adventure. He turned back to the foyer and looked at the grand double staircase. Did he dare proceed....?

Lincoln the Riolu: 22 - 16 = 6 Energy

She walked into the chateau with confidence, the aura within the mansion was almost sickening, but she could take it. The lucario glanced around, looking for any signs of danger with a sharp eye. This was the mansion that dark one had been discovered in, this was the place where it resided. She had come with a goal in mind; take down the dark one. If she could not find him...well, maybe she could get to that rumored forest that was said to be deep within the mansion's basement. It was meant to be an underground paradise protected by a guardian, one that would expel any who dared to enter. The items that were found within, were much to be desired though.

The lucario's eyes snapped open wide as she heard a sudden sound above her. She moved to a fighting stance, looking up in case she was being attacked...what? There was a riolu on the ceiling...tugging at the door. She blinked, staring up at the riolu in shock. Just...how? Her paws dropped to her sides, not quite sure how to react to this. Was this a trick of the house's?

As soon as she dared to think so, it seemed like suddenly someone pulled a gravity switch on her end. She found herself falling along with everything else that was not attached to the ground, varying from tables to glass to even a sofa as she fell onto the coffee table that was on the riolu's room.

"Oww...." she spoke, immobilized by the impact.

Lincoln was approaching the grand staircase cautiously when a wild dining room table tried to one-hit-KO him with squash. He jumped back in alarm, only to be hit in the head with a teacup, then the teapot, and then all the other cups rained down around him. "Gyaaa!!!" Lincoln yelped as all manner of furnishings and fine china and hand-crafted plushie pets - ooooh, Lincoln loved those - and other house-related paraphernalia rained down on and around him. Then a not-so-house-like thing also rained down right in front of him. He yelped and jumped away, hiding in the legs of an overturned table.

He peaked out at what he recognized to be his evolution, a Lucario, lying motionless on a table and groaning. He crawled out from the table and then back onto the floor, avoiding the pieces of everything that were strewn about everywhere. She didn't really seem like she was going to hurt him... and Lincoln was just the teeniest bit curious about her, as he had never really encountered another Lucario outside of the farm. He knelt down beside her head; it looked like she had taken a pretty bad fall from all the way up there. "A-are you okay?"

The coffee table she had landed on held her, but only for a quick moment. Just as the riolu she had spied earlier asked if she was alright, the table creaked and groaned before collapsing. The wood beneath her buckled and she fell furher onto the floor.

"Ow..." she spoke, still paralyzed from the pain. She exhaled before lifting her paws to push herself up. She raised herself onto her behind, another paw reaching up to rub her head and expel the headache that had built up. Once she was feeling a bit better, she looked to the riolu.

"Fine," she responded before getting on one knee and standing back up onto her two feet, towering over the shorter version of herself that she used to be. What was a riolu doing here? Wasn't this place's aura sickly to them? The lucario stared at the riolu for a moment, "Who are you?" she asked.

Lincoln flinched as the table beneath the Lucario collapsed, and she plopped down onto the floor. Lincoln moved a little closer. He wanted to help, but... he didn't have a lot of items to his name. He couldn't really offer her anything... and she managed to get up on her own. Wow, to get up after a fall like that... She must have been really strong. Lincoln felt intimidated already and she had only just asked his name.

"I'm Lincoln!" Lincoln replied, "I heard this dungeon was really weird, and I came to try and get over something I've been dealing with... I'm kinda stuck in here now, though," Lincoln explained, trying to sound modest and make it clear that he wasn't a feral. He really didn't want the Lucario to be mad at him or to come after him, she was clearly far out of his league. "If you don't mind me asking, who are you? Are you an explorer from the guild or something? You seem really strong."

Lincoln the Riolu: 6 Energy

FoxFireAlchemist carried out 6 launched of one Ruined Chateau :

, , , , ,

The lucario looked down at the little riolu as he responded. Her expression grew a bit troubled as he mentioned the guild, "I am Kira, while I do have an affiliation with the guild, I have long since resigned." She made her point nice and sharp, keeping from straying into meaningless banter. The lucario looked to the direction the door was when she had looked up...to find that it was no longer there. They were now trapped in a doorless room, huzzah! The lucario huffed in annoyance, for she wanted to proceed further into the dungeon. Now they were simply trapped until the house decided to let them go. Wonderful.

"You should turn back," The lucario advised to the riolu, "The aura here is disturbing, I don't know if you're capable of handling it...especially with how poorly you seem to control yours with your emotions."

Kira: 26

Kat carried out 10 launched of one Ruined Chateau :

, , , , , , , , ,

The Lucario's bluntness made Lincoln feel like he had struck a nerve or something, so he didn't say anything further on the matter. Still, he was curious. Wasn't an apprenticeship at the guild supposed to be a bid thing, or something like that? What could have happened that would make her want to leave? The Lucario, who's name was Kira, made a fair point about the mansion's aura and his lack of control. Still, Lincoln couldn't just let himself leave, for a good number of reasons.

"Well... I'm here right now, aren't I?" Lincoln reasoned, "and at this point, I don't think I can leave. That would defeat the purpose of why I'm here in the first place, aaaaand... The front door has vanished." Lincoln gestured over to the blank wall where the door he had entered through once was, feeling entirely unnerved. "I'm...... definitely in over my head though. I might need some help...." Lincoln was far too afraid to ask the Lucario for the help directly.

To their left, a wall torch suddenly lit itself, painting the room in a glowing, eerie light.

Lincoln the Riolu - 2 Energy

FoxFireAlchemist carried out 2 launched of one Ruined Chateau :

,

Oh fun, the riolu wanted to tag along with her. She would have rather gone her separate way and leave the riolu to find a way out himself, but her consciousness and moral code got the better of her. She sighed, "Fine, come with me...as soon as I can even find a way out of this room."

The torch to their left suddenly lit itself, causing her to be on guard. The lucario's eyes narrowed as she focused on the torch, before closing her eyes and sending a pulse of aura to check the nearby surroundings. She found nothing, or at least thought she found nothing. The Lucario opened her eyes to see a shadow bolt up to her face.

"GHA GHA GHAAAAA!" the shadow cried, making a horrifying face that cause Kira to cry out in fear and back up a few steps. She tripped over the remains of the table, falling flat on her back for the second time that day. She could faintly hear the cackling of the ghost as the ghastly seemed to fade out of existence.

Lincoln was so excited in that moment that he had no hope of containing his big, dorky grin. He was overjoyed at being allowed to join up with Kira, and having such a strong, reliable partner on his side made him feel a lot more confident about the challenge that they were faced with! Or at least it did, until stuff actually started going down. The random light that suddenly erupted on the other wall put Kira into alert mode, which in turn put Lincoln on edge. He felt Kira let out a pulse of bright, strong aura, but supposedly nothing came of it... until a shadow assaulted Kira's face.

Both Kira and Lincoln got startled and fell backwards, and by the time Lincoln was back on his feet the shadow was gone. Lincoln was now on full alert, and he was instantly suspicious of the light on the wall. He approached it, and then he did his best to focus the aura on the light. The light glowed a little brighter, and then suddenly the light died down. It was a Litwick, now exposed by Lincoln's Foresight, that had been hiding behind an Ember. "Hey!" Lincoln exclaimed, but then the Litwick's backup, a Drifblum, suddenly appeared and knocked Lincoln away like the tiny ragdoll he was. He went flying to the next floor, the one the grand staircase lead up to. There, he flopped onto some carpet with a dull "thud."

Lincoln the Riolu: 0 + Reviver Seed (to be used in a later post)= 2 Energy

FoxFireAlchemist carried out 2 launched of one Ruined Chateau :

,

The lucario pushed herself up once more with a snarl as Lincoln was sent flying by the drifblim that had decided to make an appearance. Kira stopped her growling quickly before focusing, shifting her movements in a careful yet swift movement as she began to glow a faint blue. Once the Swords Dance was set up, she darted forward swiftly. She propelled herself forward and slammed into the balloon pokemon with a fiery foot, sending it straight into the wall from the force of her attack.

She landed on her knee as the driflblim disappeared, she felt something burning at her feet. It was not quite her leg though from the Blaze Kick attack. She looked down at the floor to see what was mildly burning her foot to see the litwick holding its flame to her foot with a rather pouty face. She stared at it for a moment before giving it a good yet light punt to send it into the wall with the drifblim like a soccer ball.

She turned to Lincoln, still on high alert in case the ghosts decided it was not enough, "You alright?" she asked the riolu that had been defeated so easily by the high leveled pokemon. Kira had only gotten rid of it for now, there was no way in hell that could have knocked the drifblim out for good.

Lincoln, not wanting to continue to look so incredibly pathetic in front of someone he wanted to impress (or at least, someone who he really didn't want abandoning him in this confounding house of horrors), dug around in his handy little totally-not-a-phanny-pack belt bag for a reviver seed and popped it into his mouth. Discretely, or at least he thought it was discrete. While he waited for the seed's affects to kick in, he pulled himself into a sitting position and tried to process what in the world just happened?? He had been uncovering a small candle ghost, when suddenly a much larger ghost had appeared... and then Kira had frightened that bigger ghost away! Lincoln let out a little sigh of relief. There was.... actually some comfort in at least knowing that there were ghost type around to explain at least some of the weird phenomenon here. Ghost pokemon were a little unnerving, no doubt; but at least that made some of this craziness make sense. He could deal with ghost pokemon. The same could not be said for some of the more... Unexplained phenomena that were going on in this weird house. At this point though, Lincoln could feel the seed he had eaten starting to take effect. Just in time for Kira to ask him if he was okay, as well. With the burst of energy bolstering his confidence, he picked himself back up off the ground and patted the dust off of as much of his body as possible. He had at least some pride to keep intact. That was his whole purpose for being here.

"Yeah! huh- uh, I mean, yes. Definitely, sure. Didn't bother me a bit," he replied, sniffing and wiping his nose like it was no big thing. "They're only creepy until you reveal them, then it's not so bad because you can do something about them" He looked around at the aftermath of their little encounter. Things were stirred up pretty good alright; heck, a couch had been knocked over. He dared to stray a little bit from Kira, just to take a look at the edge of the room. Peering at the underside of the overturned couch, he found- Orbs? He pulled them out, and they sure were orbs. He couldn't tell what type they were, but he'd know that weird buzzy energy anywhere. He ran them over to Kira.  "Hey, uh, Kira? Kira, look! There was-"

And then the dust made him sneeze. His sneeze made him slip on the area rug in the room, bunching it up a tad. The orbs fell lamely to the side, and Lincoln scrambled to get back up in hopes that he wouldn't look even more foolish. His struggle further displaced the area rug, and he panicked in an attempt to keep his balance so that he wouldn't look like more of a fool. "-uh... Sorry. I was trying to say that these were hidden in the couch!" He quickly gathered the orbs back up, and then slipped them into his bag after Kira moved to do what she wanted to do.

As she did, Lincoln pouted at the rug when he was sure she wasn't looking. "What was that about?" He asked it in his mind. "Can't you work with me here?" As he was looking at the mess his little stunt had made, he happened to notice something..... off about one corner of the rug. It looked like it was.... hanging into the ground? He approached it cautiously. He looked down, and saw the corner... was hanging into a hole. Oh, wow! It looked like... it was pretty deep? "There's a little hole in the floor over here....? It looks like it goes on for a while," He said aloud, grabbing the corner and pulling it up and back, until the rug was folded more than in half.

It was much more than a little hole. It was a hallway-sized hole, with a hallway going down from it. It was such a....... deep? and dim hallway that the naked eye couldn't catch the end of it. Doors lined either side as far as the eye could see. Lincoln looked over the half of the rug he was holding, feeling proud of himself...... until he looked down and saw what he had found. Then he just felt confused. Confusion mixed with maybe just a little bit of panic.

"Wait- wait!" Lincoln exclaimed as he dropped the corner of the big area rug. "How did I- but how- How did I walk on this?!?!" He exclaimed. He fell silent after that, just peering down into the anomaly he had uncovered while his brain tried to process what exactly was happening.

Kira was relieved that Lincoln was okay. She gave a reassured sigh, though she wondered just how he acted as if he had not even been hit. The lucario did not see the riolu's consumption of the reviver seed. The fighting type scratched the back of her head as the smaller one gave his two cents on ghostly pokemon. The riolu went on to point something out, only to trip up. The first word that came to her mind: "Klutz".

The riolu picked himself up before she could offer to help and stated what he was trying to say earlier. One would expect that she would have been surprised by the discovery the riolu made, but instead, only a groan of annoyance escaped her as she decided that existence was pain in this dungeon. A paw reached up to apply pressure on the bridge of her snout as her eyes closed. She remembered the last time she came to this place.

"This place kind of does that," she sighed, "Don't follow the rules of logic here, this place seems to purposely try to go against them."

Her eyes skimmed the area around her before she caught sight of a useless little trinket. A small shattered photo frame that lacked an actual photo. She picked the object up and held it over the hole that Lincoln uncovered. The frame was released as it fell into the hole. She expected the frame to clatter against the "floor" as if the walls were now the ceiling, but strangely enough, the frame fell into the darkness as if gravity remained the same.

Unease gripped her as she waited for the echo of what she expected to be a destroyed object hitting some sort of floor. Again, to her surprise, the sound never came. She paused for a brief second as she simply stared at the hole they were presented with.

"Well, I know where we're not going," she commented as a foot reached to nudge the carpet back over the pitch dark abyss. The rug fell over the hole as if it did not even exist. She turned to scan her surroundings to see...there were no other exits. She gave an annoyed sigh before she turned back to the rug. She placed a foot tentatively on the rug that was over the hole to find it acting solid. She crouched down and removed the rug once more and the hole was back.

"This place makes no sense..." she huffed.

Lincoln watched the picture frame Kira dropped into the hole. His spine tensed in anticipation, waiting for the unfortunate clattering made by the impact of the object as it made impact with the eventual end of the hallway... but that moment never came, not even after Lincoln let his guard down. He swallowed thickly, once again just a bit unnerved. He was not without curiosity, however. If the place didn't have set rules or logic, would it work differently if, say, someone like him were to jump into the hole? What about heavy things, would the rules work differently for heavy things? Literally anything was possible. It was cool to think about, but Lincoln also didn't enjoy the thought of falling forever in a topsy-turvy spook house hallway, and the house definitely seemed mean enough to do that to a guy.

Kira seemed to be thinking along a similar thought, dismissing the hallway as the place where they weren't going. She kicked the rug back into place, and it fell back over the hole just as it had been before. Lincoln proceeded to take this opportunity to test the magic rug; tapping it tentatively with the heel of his paw, then giving it a stomp, then finally walking over and jumping on it a few times. It held fast and sturdy, as if there were still a floor under it and the hallway didn't exist at all. Lincoln stared down at the crazy rug; he just couldn't make sense of it. It was probably better if they took whatever other way out of this room Kira found-

Oh wait no, Kira was coming back. She definitely did not have the look of someone who had found a second exit, either. She just looked at the rug, then tentatively performed her own test on it. Lincoln watched her with a mix of interest and hesitation at the implication of what this action meant. She pulled the rug back again and they were faced with the eerie hole once more. Lincoln was pensive, but something had to be done. He looked to Kira, hoping that she would have some idea........ but she was just as clueless as him, it seemed. He looked back down the hole. "We're gonna have to go down, huh..." He really did not want to admit it, but he was the lighter of the two of them. If anyone had to descend into the whole in front of them, he was the one who was more maneuverable... he sighed and clenched his fist. It was just a fact that he was the one who had to do it, right? The faster they got it over with, the faster they'd be rid of this confusing hallway. It was better to just accept the fact rather than run from it, he realized. This was it; time for him to practice what he came here to practice. They would be trapped in this room forever otherwise.

With this thought steeling him, he turned around and looked for something in the room to use. They could use the rug itself, but it was dense and heavy and would probably even give Kira a hard time. The cushions wouldn't do anything, there were no drapes..... Aha! Lincoln's eyes lit up. There, on the back of the couch, was a crocheted blanket. He ran over, gathered it up in his arms, and then ran back to Kira.

"I think I've got an idea!" he exclaimed, blood beginning to pound in his ears as the adrenaline started to pick up in his system. "If you use this to lower me down to one of those doors, maybe I can open it? Then I could... Maybe I could attach it to the doorknob,
and you can climb in?" He suggested. It was... a shaky plan at best, he realized, but it was the only way he could see of moving forward. A tiny piece of him inside hoped that Kira had another idea; but he tried to ignore it so that he wouldn't unnerve himself. After a moment of what he felt like was hesitation (which was reassuring, at least), Kira conceded to trying his plan. The was encouaging, but also terrifying in that she had likely accepted due to it being a last resort.

He held tight to the blanket with one paw as he began to lower himself into the hole. He looked up at Kira again for some kind of motivation, but really she looked just as unsure as he was. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, before letting himself drop into the void...

Only to fall straight back up. He hit the underside of the floor directly under Kira's feet with a "thud" and a surprised "uuUff." His eyes clenched shut.

......no, come on, now's not the time....

He forced them open a crack, before they were blown wide open in shock at the abyss with no end below him. He could do nothing but stare for the moment, his heart fluttering in his chest. If he fell, if the gravity suddenly reversed.....

...Vaguely, something somewhere echoed in his mind that he had something he needed to do. .....yeah, yeah that's right, he had to get to that door over there. he couldn't just keep sitting and inviting something worse to happen. "I'm alright," he called up to Kira, not even thinking about the words as much as he was just subconsciously acknowledging that it was a good idea. He fought to turn himself around on the ground and began crawling on all fours towards the first door he could reach with the blanket clenched in between his teeth. It was tough work having to fight against the jacked-up gravity, but eventually he was juuuust within reach of the doorknob.......

click.

wooosh, whump.

Lincoln let out a muffled cry of panic through the blanket as turning the doorknob seemed to reverse (or right, depending on how you look at it) his gravity again. The door swung down suddenly and quickly and hit the wall with a jolt that almost shook Lincoln's grip off the doorknob. His teeth clenched harder on the blanket, but he managed to keep his knuckle-breaking grip on the doorknob regardless. He took a moment of pause to be in shock again, but it was much shorter this time. He was scared and shocked, certainly, but there was not a single molecule of him that was okay with dangling above a pit from a doorknob, which kept rotating a little one way or another if he put too much pressure on one side. It threatened to make his paws slip off, another thought the Riolu wouldn't allow his brain to entertain right now. Every nerve in his body was screaming through the terror to GET OUT OF THIS.

The Riolu looked up at Kira and nodded, eager to be done with this mission impossible. He grabbed the knob on the other side of the door with one paw, and then the other. Good. He felt a little relief through his jumble of fear. Now he just needed to pull himself up... It had been a while since the Riolu had worked, but apparently enough of the laborer's muscle stuck with him that he was able to host himself up by the doorknob, resting one foot very carefully on it....

He reached to grab the door frame, but his paw his what seemed to be an invisible wall making it impossible to enter the room. Inside, he could see a Ghastly cackling at his struggle.

Really?

Lincoln felt a flash of annoyance heat up in him amidst the nerves and the adrenaline making his body shake. He didn't have time for this! He decided he needed to lean against the door so he could try to weed out the ghost's tricks with foresight.... but his body didn't hit sold door. Instead, he fell right through, onto the solid ground of what he could only describe as some sort of parlor. He let himself soak in the moment, the solid ground underneath him. Had he.... had he really made it out of that okay? The shock he was feeling was delaying the joy, however. And Kira, what about Kira?? He looked back from where he was laying on the ground. The door was in fact sideways, with the height of it running parallel to the ground. It looked absolutely ridiculous and it was completely warping Lincoln's mind, but he was more worried about finishing his job and being done with the endeavor.

Spoiler:

He spat the end of the blanket into his hand and leaned out of the doorway carefully, poking the doorknob through enough of the crocheted blanket that it would hold fast despite Kira's additional weight. He looked up at her and gave a soundless wave, signalling that it was her turn to come down.

Kira was sure about one thing, she did not want to go down that hole. It looked far too dangerous and was a bit too much of a risk for her liking. She paused as she and Lincoln simply stared at the hole for a short moment. The riolu spoke up with his own plan, which she was immediately ready to shoot down upon hearing of the danger it entailed. She stopped herself before she said a word, however, for what better choice did they have?

She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly, "I suppose we have no choice...unless you want to stand around for a few hours and hope this place gives us mercy." If there was any sign of danger, she would pull him out immediately. She assisted the riolu down, only to be surprised by the sudden shift in gravity the rioly seemed to experience. She watched the riolu work his way to the door, opening it. Confusion boggled her mind as to what was even going on as her mind struggled to make sense of this mess.

It seemed as if the more she tried to think of how this was possible, the more her mind seemed further from the truth. She knew she should have just stopped questioning it, but curiosity and need for understanding burned far more painfully than any fire move. With enough work, Lincoln had made his way into the strange room.

It was her turn.

However, she was not so sure about this. It was too far for her to just drop down and far too risky with the awkward angle to make a jump for it. The lucario looked down into the abyss, then to the riolu, appearing confident was not exactly her strong suit at that moment. The lucario swallowed her fear and sat herself down so that her legs dangled over the abyss, she was about to take it as slow and steady as possible.

"Gha~ Gha~" a voice echoed behind her. Shocked, her eyes widened as she snapped her head to look behind her. A fiery punch smacked into her back and pushed her into the hole. A scream escaped her throat as she let go of the rug in surprise and began to fall. Gravity did not seem to shift for her, as her form disappeared into the darkness below. A plethora of doors raced past her as she fell into darkness, the door she needed to be in grew further and further away.

This was it, she was about to die. She sealed her eyes shut in fear of what was to come. She was about to die all because she let her guard down over a stupid door. Regrets flashed past her mind as she cried out, just as she began to wonder how deep this pit was, she felt her back strike something...soft. The soft surface ripped apart from the force but effectively broke her fall as she slammed into a harder surface that gave way to a trap door. The darkness was illuminated slightly as she crashed onto yet another soft surface that caused dust to erupt along with the distinct sound of wood snapping. The surface she landed on seemed unable to keep her weight as the landing broke the object below. Her head banged harshly against what felt like a hard but dull surface. She opened her eyes. just in time to see the trap door she fell through seal up as if it were never there.

She was paralyzed for a moment of sheer shock, but she set herself up to find that she was on a broken...sofa? She felt her body up to make sure she was not dead before she looked around the room some more.

Lincoln was there.

She somehow fell down the hole to end up being spat out on the couch in the room Lincoln had gotten into. "What...the fuck..." she whimpered. The house wasn't this bad when she was here last time. Had the events of Giratina somehow...disturbed it?

Lincoln shrieked as Kira fell, nearly falling out of the room himself in a vain attempt to try and stop her from falling. It only took a few fleeting seconds for her to be swallowed up by the inky blackness at the end of the hallway. Lincoln stared into it without breathing, but with his jaw hanging wide open. He was unable to do anything; completely helpless as he could only watch Kira's fall happen from the sidelines. He may have been permanently stricken there with trauma if not for the distinct sound of slamming behind him. It happened in such rapid succession that Lincoln was left no time to even remotely process the things that were happening to him; his reflexes puppeted his body unconsciously while mentally he was still peering over that edge at the empty end of the quilt. If this was some kind of threat, the lone Riolu was about as good as a walking fur coat. Not that ghosts really had need for coats.

He turned around just barely fast enough to catch the familiar dark-colored mass come crashing in lamely from the ceiling, applying her full falling force to a couch that all but crumbled underneath her. He just watched in motionless shock for a moment as she sat up and checked herself out. Kira was not dead, or eaten by ghosts, or falling endlessly into a pit with no bottom, or any other number of horror terrors that this house could inflict upon him. Instead she just kind of... fell out of the ceiling. Lincoln gave a shout of her name and then scrambled over and awkwardly gave her leg a hug, less out of rational sensible thoughts and more out of the sheer relief and joy he felt as his fears were banished as quickly as they had arisen. Unconsciously, it was an effort to prove she was actually real and not just another ghost house illusion. As one might imagine, though, hugging a leg is awkward for all parties and he didn't spend very long doing it before he was painfully aware of how many levels of dumb this leg-hugging was. He practically threw himself off of he the second he was aware of himself, looking up at her and stammering as he failed to produce any logical explanation for his prior stupid act.

"I- Sorry, I didn't mean to hug your- hrrk, I just wanted to make sure that you were, okay- like, real, and not- uuuuuuuhhh....." He went from word vomit to pure silence in the blink of an eye as he realized he had no reasonable way to explain himself. He finally just went for broke and bluntly reasoned, "......err, sorry... that was- that was weird. I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing." He couldn't really look her in the eye, so he just observed all the places where the couch had broken in his head while he talked. Now thoroughly self-concious, he decided it might be best to give Kira a second to recover from bodying the couch. They seemed to be in a pretty normal room after all (famous last words), and the whole ordeal had kind of crushed his spirit to the point where he was feeling like he needed a rest, too. He took a deep breath and slid a Reviver Seed out of his rations, deciding he was really going to need it if he was going to make it through a place this intense. The house was mercifully silent as he ate, giving a quite window of respite in which things almost seemed normal, well as normal as they could be. For a brief moment, Lincoln was struck by just how much a mere half an hour in this brain teaser of a house had him appreciating even just enough quiet to do the little menial things that wouldn't even make him blink an eye any other time, like peeling his seed before he ate it. He was thoroughly unnerved by how much peace that stupid little habit was bringing him right now; a crystal clear indicator of just how in over his head he was.

Lincoln turned back to Kira after he finished his snack. Clearly he was going to have to stay as serious as she was if he was going to get through this place. She had probably come in here with a plan and he didn't want to get left behind because he was slowing them down with poorly thought-out plans and rookie blunders. This was now the second time he was getting overwhelmed by something he didn't understand, and the message that it needed to be the last was coming in loud and clear. It was time to start trying to understand.

That of course required that he first put the humiliating act of hugging her leg as far out of his mind as possible so that he could actually face her.

"Hey Kira..." he started nervously, fidgeting with his feet a bit just to try and relieve some of the nervous tension. "...sorry, first, uh, are you feeling better?" He didn't want to suddenly spring 20 questions on her if she was still hurting, but at the same time if she was doing that bad they probably wouldn't be doing much else, anyways. "If it's okay with you, I wanted to ask a few questions... about the house, and you, and stuff. You said earlier that the house goes against logic and stuff earlier, and that just kinda made me think about things I probably should have asked sooner." He was trying to sound as serious as possible, but in reality it was coming out stilted and broken as he tried to formulate exactly how he wanted to say the things.

Lincoln the Riolu - 9 Energy