Much Ado About Soaring

First topic message reminder :

(Energy: 22 - 16 (dungeon entry cost) = 6)

Leander took a deep breath, gazing up at the eerie monstrosity before him. The Black Mist Mountain had looked tall in the books, but it was straight up intimidating in real life. Steep ledges, large rock faces and a peak so far up it got swallowed by today's thick blanket of fog... Awful. Absolutely awful.

Granted, any mountain would likely seem that way to the seedot, whom up till this point had been quite content with spending his life down in the safer towns and forests. So he figured he might be exaggerating how bad it was. The foreboding mist hugging it was still not neccessary in his opinion, though. Scaling this thing would however be worth both the effort and the scare, for two reasons: one, he would get to spend some time with Alki, a new friend of his he was still quite excited about having made. And two, this freaky place, believe it or not, was home to a most exquisite birthday gift option for his mother. And with her special day right around the corner, obtaining a gift was starting to become somewhat urgent. What he was looking for was a mushroom species that worked awesome as a base ingredient in most kinds of mushroom sauces, and made this dungeon and a few other remote places its home. This dungeon was surprisingly, when compared to the other locations, his best option. Eleanore loved this stuff, though, so fetching some just this one time would be OK. Especially with the assistance he had managed to get.

"Again, thank you so much for coming out this far. This place gives me the heebie-jeebies, but it's less scary with someone else," he told his fellow thief, while looking for a path or something they could follow up the mountain.

Alki gathered up as many mushroom lookalikes as she could find in the small bushy gathering she'd entered. She didn't really pay much attention to what was going on outside. Not really because she wanted to ignore them, although... Well, so what if she did! It'd just be for a couple moments! She wasn't sure if any of these were the mushrooms that Leander was looking for, but if they were, then that was all she'd wanted! And if they weren't... Well, it was just a couple of minutes wasted, and that was no big deal!

And it was quiet there too! The fact there were so many leaves and... stuff made it quite difficult to hear what was going on outside. Something about friends...? Strong friends? Well... She also heard something about a lot of them, and... Well... She'd have to face up to them at some point, right? Alki sighed, picking up one last potential mushroom before exiting the clearing once more, back in the company of Leander, Valen and... A lot of other people.

Was that Russell...?

"H-Hey...! I-I don't k-know what an 'enquire' is... B-But I wanna know too! W-Why're t-there s-so many people...?" She said, looking up at the Furfrou's friends with barely concealed fear.

She got feral friends by just helping them? Can you do that?

Well, now that he gave it some thought, he had safely cooperated with ferals a while back. An Onix named Rex had tried to demolish Pecha Forest, and he'd joined a Mareep and some local ferals in driving the menace away. Maybe ferals just got nicer once you did stuff for them?
If that were the case, it seemed to only apply to the one who did the stuff. One of the ferals, a Duskull, soon flew right at Valen, prompting Leander to take a quick step closer to the ground beneath the bird, about to call out to her, before he noticed that she was somehow unharmed. The attack must have been ineffective against her, but the acorn was unsure whether the ghost had chosen a move that would not work on purpose, or if it really had wanted to hurt her but did not know type matchups.

"You say they won't hurt anyone, but have you ever seen how they behave people other than you?" He kept masking his fear, hoping it'd be enough to fool the natives. His voice was only uncertain at most, but a hint of his uneasiness showed itself in his shrinking pupils as Valen suddenly began descending. "What? What happened? What did it do?" he blurted out, not giving the pooch time to reply to his previous question.

"He's just asleep, I think! He'll be fine," she quickly barked back, as if to dispel any further doubts about her friends before they could even take root.

He...? Oh. It wasn't like that mattered a lot, though. They had more pressing matters at hand. One was solved by a friendly Mothim (which he'd surely be more questioning about, had his nonexistent hands not already been full with their current predicament) flying into the scene to catch the slowly falling Valen. The other required more work than just that.

"The Furfrou's got "friends". Ferals. I don't think they're gonna let us take her home," he hurriedly explained to Alki and the Mothim, not taking his eyes off of the numerous ferals who were now staring at him. As he assumed this random Mothim would not be able to tell that some of them were explorers on a mission simply by looking, he added a "It's uh, guild stuff" after a small pause. One of the Cubone had slowly begun approaching Leander after he spoke of bringing the Furfrou home, pointing its shaky club at him. The other one extended an arm after the first before giving in and following its friend, looking about half as determined and twice as nervous. Which did little to reassure the Seedot, who was also quite nervous. "I think we might be in trouble..." he said, taking a step back from the Cubone and their wordless threats whilst subtly activating Bide. He didn't buy that these ferals would be benevolent just because the Furfrou said so. They were not safe to trust in his eyes, and he'd seen for himself how displeased some of them had looked when he had brought up Valen's goal again. He had teamed up with that explorer to make his own harvesting trip safer, but with the bird down and the horde of ferals seemingly getting warier, it seemed it would only have the opposite effect...

Scypho carried out 10 launched of one Black Mist Mountain :

, , , , , , , , ,

Valen was still fast asleep, completely unaware of the things going on around him. He was, in fact, dreaming. In his dreams, he was at the Aileron Guild and Team Current had just achieved Master Rank. Valen did not know for sure what actually happened when a team reached Master Rank, but he was just dreaming of something he thought might happen. Aeliana was congratulating him and presenting him with a bag full of rewards. "Thank you, Guildmaster Aeliana," Valen mumbled in his sleep. "I am immensely honored at this moment..."

Meanwhile, Kino the Wurmple approached Valen. "What's going on? Are you okay?" she cried. She hadn't been able to fully keep track of everything that was going on - just that there were now a lot of Pokemon and a lot of talking. And now Valen was being held by some Mothim... Kino heard Valen continuing to talk, "This great guild of Aileron has been invaluable in letting this team achieve these heights..." He's okay! she thought. He seemed to be sleeping, but he could still talk... weird, but Kino hoped that maybe it meant he would wake up soon or something?

The Furfrou was also talking, as she turned to her friends, "I don't want any of you doing this kind of thing ever again! These Pokemon might be strangers, but they aren't dangerous, so don't attack them!" she told them sternly. But even now, despite herself, she was admitting doubt... Her friends definitely did not seem to be about to attack her, but as she had said, these visitors were strangers - and they hadn't done the same helpful things she had, not for the Pokemon here at least. Could she convince her friends that there was no threat and prevent a fight? And could she still avoid being forced to go back to the family that, in her thoughts at least, had tried to control her life and prevent her from doing what she so loved?

(OOC: Valen's still asleep, so I had to mostly focus on the NPCs in my post. I'm probably going to have Valen wake up in my next post).

[Valen's energy: 0 + 1 (new page) = 1]

Russell chuckled lightly to himself as Valen sleep talked to himself. It seemed he was having a pleasant dream despite the odd situation.

The Mothim then looked over to the Seedot who conveniently explained the situation.
"Valen is indeed just asleep. He'll be fine," Russell confirmed, hoping to keep the situation civil. The Seedot mentioned ferals, a word that Russell turned his nose up at - or would if he had one. Calling anyone who protected their territory or acted differently to what you were used to 'ferals' wasn't his favourite thing in the world. Sure, some pokemon were more aggressive, especially within dungeons, but in his experience they could all still be reasoned with just like anyone else. Sometimes it just turned out that the anger or territorialism overrode any desire to talk. Or in the case of when he was a small burmy: pokemon just wanted to eat him and didn't care what he had to say.

That said he could see the tensions rising in this situation, and lowered himself, setting Valen gently on the ground and then hovering at eye level. From what he could tell, the Furfrou didn't seem to be a captive since she had enough confidence in her relationship with these pokemon to scold them, which meant that she was likely here by her own choice. So why was the guild asked to bring her home? Was she just a runaway child and the guild was helping some overprotective parents?

"Now, now. If this Furfrou is friends with these pokemon and they can all trust one another, then why would she be inclined to up and leave?" he asked, curious. He clearly didn't have all the information of the situation, but this was the best he could do with what he had. "Perhaps we can all sit down and have a discussion rather than standing at odds with one another like this? I think both sides might be more comfortable with each other that way."

In his dream, Valen was about to leave the Aileron Guild ceremony to explore yet another newly-discovered dungeon - and then he woke up, and realized that he had been asleep and dreaming. He was on the ground, and there was a Mothim near him now. In fact, wasn't this Mothim... Russell, the leader of the Windrose Scouts? The group Valen had joined?

"Hi," Valen told Russell after getting up. Should I say I'm on a guild mission? Valen thought. He knew that now, being in other groups wasn't a barrier to being in the Windrose Scouts, but even if it was irrational, it just felt... weird to talk about it with Russell somehow? But, he thought, shouldn't I explain the situation with all of these Pokemon to him?

Just then, however, Kino said, "Hey! I just saw some Orbs!" and pointed her head at somewhere to the left of Valen. Valen looked in that direction, and inside a crack in a rock that was jutting out from the ground, he could indeed see three Wonder Orbs. Two appeared to be Switcher Orbs, and Valen wasn't sure how useful they would be - but one was a Spurn Orb, which could teleport all enemies away.

Right now, Valen thought, that Spurn Orb might be really important. I need to get it! He flew straight to the Orbs, but in his haste, ended up flying right into the Aerodactyl that the Furfrou had called earlier. The restless Aerodactyl had apparently decided recently to move and perch on the rock with the Orbs inside.

Upon Valen colliding with it, the Aerodacyl shrieked, and then made some of the rocks on the mountain rise up into the air and rain down. Luckily for Valen, the hastily-used move missed him. Almost automatically, Valen reacted, using Mirror Move. He copied the Rock Slide, sending the rocks back at the pterodactyl Pokemon. These rocks hit their target and managed to cause the Aerodactyl to stop for a moment. Valen used this opportunity to grab the Orbs.

And then, he saw that many of the Pokemon on the scene were staring at him: Kino, the Furfrou's friends, and the Furfrou herself, who said "No..."

[Energy: 0 +1 (new page) = 1]

Pickup roll:

Shield carried out 1 launched of one Black Mist Mountain :

Regular roll:

Shield carried out 1 launched of one Black Mist Mountain :