Please Tell Me We're There

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Her? A teacher? She visibly hesitated about this. She...didn't actually know a lot about Aura...or teaching. She was moderately decent at it, but she was no master. There was also no way to tell if she was perhaps doing something dangerously "wrong" of sorts. Kira thought about it for a moment, "Well...I guess, but...i'm not exactly a 'master' myself...and I don't really know how good of a teacher I am-wait where are we?"

Her eyes snapped wide open as she realized that the entire environment around them seemed to changed in the blink of an eye. A grand hall of sorts with a fine dining table in the center. A throne stood at the end of the room, regal and daring just as last time.

"Oh...we're here." she finished, completely sidetracked.

Lincoln began searching the corners of the room, interpreting a note in a different way than Kira had. He looked at the other stone pillars holding the room up, but he couldn't find a single loose stone this time... where else could it be hidden? There were floor panels that looked like they could be pulled up... When Lincoln tried to close his eyes, he couldn't reveal anything more than blobs that were brighter and dimmer based on how... alive things were. He huffed, so much for these amazing powers helping....

...Oh!! When he looked up, he noticed that one of the torch holders on the wall held not a torch, but a cream saucer!! He reached up and pulled it down- marveling at how easy it was with his added height. Inside, floating on the cream... was another slip of paper!! YES! HE turned around and held it up, eager to show Kira- only to see that she had acquired a slip of her own.

....What? Who's clue was the right one? Had they broken out of sequence or something....? Oh, no.

Hilta frowned, clearly incredibly upset by the Sableye's cries of protest. "I literally cannot, I'll have you know. And that's very ableist of you to say. Some of us might like to try such things, but we don't have the arms for it!!"

"Yes, that's true. Some of us, who actually literally d o n o t have arms, might like to do something that doesn't involve hanging from a ceiling some time. You know, like those of us that actually have scarves that could serve as arms can do," the chandelure chided back with a click of it's... tongue? Something definitely clicked in disdain. Another duoblade, presumably the one that had been first to speak out, retorted quickly.

"STILL NOT OUR FAULT!!! And DON'T take your problems out on us, especially not Hilta!!!"

"Oh, please get a room," the other chandelure sighed.

"....What happened to discussing strategy...?" a fourth duoblade chimed in meekly from the sidelines.

"Screw the strategy!" the sableye decreed, "We're dealing with this here and now! We've got the people here for it, I want a second opinion!" The ghost type looked about for a second, his eyes scanned the table for the shiny ladles he was ever so familiar with. Once they were spotted, he picked up one in each hand.

"THIS IS FOR FUCK-YOU!" the gremlin screeched. Immediately after, the ghost type began to bang the metal utensils against the pans, pots, silverware, plates, and bowls scattered around the table. All the while, he began to screech incoherently. Every now and then a word would pop out of his mouth, but other than that, it was just...screaming.

It was so loud, in fact, that Kira had to abandon her quest to search her note so cover her ears. She looked over to lincoln to find that he too had a note. Her heart sunk. Oh...oh no. This was just going to make things ten times more confusing wasn't it? The lucario's paws pressed against her ears as hard as she could, the sableye's screeching practically splitting her into two at the sheer volume that seemed to only echo off the halls.

"WOULD YOU SHUT UP!?" Kira yelled, though her voice seemed to be either ignored or drowned out by the annoying little pest. She took that as a no...

Eatin a Munchy Mix, +10 Energy.

Kat carried out 10 launched of one Ruined Throne :

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MOD NOTE- replace first roll result with chandelure.

Lincoln also had to cover his ears, as the Sableye's shrill performance was too much for even him to handle. He hadn't been paying much attention to the squabbles of the bigger pokemon, so he had no idea what was going on- was this an attack of some kind?!? It certainly hurt like an attack. Lincoln felt his energy draining every time he removed a paw from his ear and exposed himself to the horrible noise, but he really wanted to read the note he got...

"Someone is a bad host- they reserve the hard seat for the unwanted guests. But what makes the hard seat hard? The secret is in the cushion..." it read. What? Lincoln waved the paper in the air and ran over to Kira to try and get her attention for consultation. "What did yours say...? Mine says to check the chairs!!! I didn't know the clues could have two solutions!!!" He was trying to keep ignoring the situation, to keep making progress...

Meanwhile, the group of pokemon all seemed to be equally suffering- all except for a duoblade on the wall, who was had broken his silence and stillness to star shaking along to the beat and laughing. "Right on, man," he encouraged. Meanwhile, one of the living statues apparently became so disturbed that it got up and left the room.

"Oh, for pities sake- STOP!!!" One of the chandelure screamed down as several more appeared to investigate the racket.

Lincoln the Lucario - 32 energy

FoxFireAlchemist carried out 10 launched of one Ruined Throne :

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The unown around the room seemed to increase in size, each one of them following the last as they seemed to form a long chain of moving "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" almost as if they too screamed in agony over the Sableye's wretched singing.

Kira dared to bring a paw away from her ear as well, instant regret hit her like a truck. She powered her way through it, however, as she opened the little note to read the contents inside. She stared at the note for a moment before she became increasingly infuriated.

"IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF ARROWS???" she cried out to Lincoln, showing him the paper that had a series of arrows crudely drawn onto the paper. It seemed much less refined than the other hints, but Kira was too busy being in absolute agony over the Sableye's noise to really notice much.

The sableye, meanwhile, continued to crash, batter, and clang, but quickly shifted gears to pick up a spoon as big as its body. The sableye strummed the metal of the spoon as if it were a guitar for a few brief stokes, before he began to scratch against the metal with his claws. It was truly the greatest ASMR to every exist.

Lincoln had trouble making anything out of Kira's hint, let alone create a solid plan of how to act on it. It took him a few minutes just to force himself to think over the Sableye's din, but the more he worked it through in his mind, the more coherent thoughts began to surface. Arrows... arrows meant direction. Direction could mean walking... Maybe it was a hint like that?? "I think- MAYBE YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THE ARROWS!!!" he screamed his absolute loudest, his voice just barely breaching the furious plate-smacking and the ringing in his ears. "MAYBE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO START WHERE YOU FOUND THE HINT, AND TAKE STEPS IN THE DIRECTIONS OF THE ARROWS?? I SAW THAT IN A STORY BOOK ONCE!!!" Lincoln then looked at his own new hint, to see if it had anything to add...


"...OH THANK GOD I THINK MINE'S POINTING UNDER THE TABLE," Lincoln observed. He was very quick to test this theory, if only to escape the noise. Underneath, there was more stone floor... and table had like a million legs for some reason, why?!?! Lincoln sighed heavily. Kira wasn't going to like this convoluted goose chase... especially not with the "background music."

Few sounds managed to breach the Sableye's music, aside from several iterations of "STOP!!!" "PLEASE STOP!!!" "POINT TAKEN!!!" and "OH, GOD, MY EARS!!! DO I EVEN HAVE EARS?!?" One of the unnamed duoblade from before even proclaimed "OH MY GOD FORGET IT, I'M LEAVING!! IT ISN'T WORTH IT!!!" and promptly exited the room the same way the giant statue had before. A few more followed suite.

That one duoblade on the wall from before, however, jumped down and joined the scene on the table. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" he exclaimed with a toothy grin before joining the Sableye's serenade, tapping silverware to the cups and wine glasses to make a ringing sound while singing admittedly better but still horridly off-key.

"STOP! NO HAL, DON'T ENCOURAGE IT!!!" Hilta begged.

"STOP OR I'M GOING TO MAKE IT STOP!!" one of the chandalure cried while several young lampent looked on in amaze ment- clearly taking notes from the bad influence.

This was absurd. Absolutely absurd. Was this really worth a trip to the forest, where she'd likely just be kicked out once more?

The answer was yes.

She listened to Lincoln's advice and looked back to her note. She lifted it up to look at it only to realize...she didn't know which way was the proper way to hold the paper. She turned the paper around, looking for some sort of sign to make it easier. Unfortunately, she found that she'd have to try all four-wait there was more on the back??? Which side was first??

Her heart dropped as she decided to frantically try each step she could think of. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. She move as quickly as she could, but the note kept leading to nonsensical places. Each one tried to bring her into a wall of some sort. What the hell kind of hint was this??

The unown in the room only seemed to increase in number as the duoblade joined in the Sableye on their merciless marathon. The screams of agony from their victims went unnoticed as their serenade went on. One of the Chandelures upon the ceiling ceased their screaming long enough to cry above the racket, "YOU'RE GOING TO WAKE UP THE WHOLE MANSION LIKE THIS PLEASE S T O P!"

Lincoln was still semi-safe from the awful din swirling about the room underneath the table, but trying to navigate this needlessly dense forest of table legs was pointless- and hard thanks to the vibrations of the pokemon above dancing all over it. He got hit in the head, his legs got scraped, and at one point he even got a few splinters in his arms as a particularly rough movement brought the table much too close to his arm. How was this even possible? How could just two pokemon possibly rock hard enough to move a table this heavy so violently???

Finally, finally Lincoln arrived at a floor tile that struck him as the one he was supposed to be looking for. It had no grout anchoring it, it had a weird little symbol on it- and unfortunately, one of the legs of the raucous table was resting right on top of it. He feared drawing attention of the pokemon in the room... but he feared being trapped in this room for eternity much more. He decided to go ahead and take the risk of attempting to move the table in order to free the tile. He felt like Kira would have agreed that the risk was worth the price if she were in his shoes.

All of a sudden, the table scooted out an inch underneath the two pokemon currently having a party on top of it. It wasn't much- it wasn't even enough to knock anything on the table over, really. But it was enough to be felt by and likely trip up whoever was on top of it. Hal the duoblade, at least, had to take a moment to stabilize himself again- though why this was was a mystery, seeing as he was simply floating above the table rather than making actual contact with it. He seemed frustrated at the throwing off of the titular "groove."

"Hey, man, c'mon. There's no need to be like that. I was just getting into it!!" Hal complained, facing up towards the chandelure.

"I don't know why you're looking at me. I didn't do it," the chandelure answered. One of the lampent on the ceiling started swinging frustratedly at this, having already been fuming.

"Yeah right!! I bet you did!!" the lampent screeched, "You boomers don't know how to appreciate anything that not sad old church tunes!!! You guys don't know real music!!!" There was plenty of room to question whether the words were truly the lampents, or if they were repeating something subliminally inherited from an unidentified source...

While Lincoln made excellent progress on his hint, Kira found herself struggling with her's. No matter which way she tried, the paper seemed to lead to nowhere. Was...was it not a way to move? Was Lincoln wrong? The lucario struggled to think over the awful screeches and ruckus of the two pokemon on the table.

Her frustration came to a boil as her paws began to shake. The headache pounded in her head. It became very apparent to her that there was no possible way she'd be of any use with the racket and ruckus of the two boneheads on the table. The "map" in her hands quivered as she tried to contain her anger, but the outburst was inevitable. As soon as the sableye opened his big fat mouth for another awful high key screech, Kira abandoned the map and hoisted herself onto the table.

Her footsteps pounded on the table, knocking over even more silverware and glass. She focused her energy as she did, a long staff-like object forming in one paw. She seemed to appear behind the sableye almost instantaneously to it. The imp barely had enough time to look behind him to investigate the sudden shift in air behind him. Kira lifted the aura-bone over her shoulders in a backswing before the bone swished down in an arc and struck the ghost type as if he were a golf ball.

Spoiler:

The little ghost type's screech was cut off as he was sent flying across the room into the wooden wall. The boards cracked and snapped under the force, giving the sabeleye a nice little place to "sit in" and think about his life choices. Kira looked to the Duoblade with an expression that very clearly asked if she was going to have fight it too in order to quell the absolute ruckus that infuriated her.