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Post by DataNinja on Feb 17, 2020 1:46:13 GMT
"Ah, okay," Rainbow says, nodding, looking over the giant. "I... don't think we'd have been able to have avoided as much notice if we went in on one of these, though," she giggles. "At the very least, it's big enough that I know I would want to take a look. And we're not exactly hard to spot up here." She waves down towards the empty water, to nothing in particular. "I do get why you'd want to be here, though. Being up high is exhilera-aaaaah!" The girl gets too close to the end and begins to slip, only able to catch herself partway down by flying.
"...ooookay, I think I'm good, now," she says, backing up, much more of a nervous look on her face. "I'll stay... just right here, in the middle, not near any curved, slick surfaces."
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Post by Robot on Feb 17, 2020 1:51:51 GMT
"Good thing you can fly, I'd have been swimming." Bee smiled. "Could always sit down, you know? Less likely to take a tumble off a whale that way. I do think they're both silly, and handsome looking animals all the same. Such big smiles, and I could never imagine one being angry."
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 17, 2020 2:50:53 GMT
"I... guess," Rainbow says. "It's just... harder to fly away or run from a sitting position. So, unless it's, like, a waist-high thing or something else I can just swing off of, I try to avoid sitting out in the wilderness when I can. Hard habit to break."
She does take a breath and sit down for the rest of the ride, but quickly hops off the whale as soon as she can on the other side. "I, uh, I hope that we don't have to do that again, frankly. I'd much rather just zoom over if it's that short, and wait for you on the other side," she admits, embarrassed. "Water... is not really my thing, as I'm sure you've noticed."
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Post by Robot on Feb 17, 2020 2:54:58 GMT
"That's okay, Solenoid doesn't seem to care for it much either, and there is something to be said for being warm and dry. At any rate, I don't think there's another river crossing, just the ocean to Mossdeep. There is a gym along the way here, one in Sootopolis which we'd have to fly to in the south, and one in Mossdeep. That'll be the entire circuit." She comments thoughtfully, rubbing the back of her head.
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 17, 2020 8:35:25 GMT
"It all seems to have gone by so fast," Rainbow says. "Less than half of your big journey left... and then there's the end. Where we can hopefully find what we need to fix everything..."
The path to the north begins clear, but is soon overgrown with grass and other plant life obscuring things. It's incredibly difficult to see even the path, let alone anything else around, at least until Rainbow has enough and just decides to hover above it all and guide Bea to the path that looks right. Some Taillow fly around to cause nuisances - they seem to be a mix of wary, annoyed, and curious about a new thing in their airspace - but it mostly just amounts to a persistent squawking noise that persists until the trio gets to a set of manmade-looking steps in a hill, and begin to climb.
After several hours of crossing (admittedly scenic) bridges over gorges, and climbing more hills, a building presents itself ahead. "What is that thing?" Rainbow asks, gazing up at all of the radio dishes and instruments and towers climbing up from the sprawling structure. She seems a little in awe. "That's the closest thing I've seen to the castle, what with things jutting into the air and all. Except, well... it's whole And not cobbled together."
Bea recognizes it as the Hoenn Weather Institute - and also spots a few now-familiar shapes of Castform flying around the weather instruments on the roof, bright orange in the summer heat.
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Post by Robot on Feb 18, 2020 0:36:12 GMT
"This is the Weather Institute of Hoenn, the major scientific institute of our region." Bee declares proudly. "The satellites on the roof draw in and analyze meteorological information, and Castform are studied here for their ties to weather pattern." Bee folds her arms behind her back and rocks on her heels, admiring the building. "Do you want to go inside? I could ask them for tips on raising Cumulus, and we could see how their studies work. Some of it is likely public access."
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 18, 2020 1:44:48 GMT
"Oh, uh, sure!" Rainbow says, enthusiastically. "I love learning about things here... uh, even if I'm not always smart enough to understand them." She chuckles. "I'll leave the technical what-nots to you."
Inside is a nice, clean, bright-white lobby, with a woman sitting behind a desk reading a book. She doesn't look up for a few moments, until she seems to realize someone's there, and scrambles to put a bookmark in and sit up properly facing the trio that's in front of her. "Oh, uh, hi, welcome to the Weather Institute, where we keep track of the weather, rain or shine!" She seems a little flustered by her inattentiveness, but puts on a smiling face anyways. "So, how can we help you today?"
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Post by Robot on Feb 18, 2020 12:40:30 GMT
"Not being knowledgeable and not being intelligent are two vastly different things Rainbow, please don't belittle yourself. The former is just a lack of experience or education, and coming from an era beyond a dark age it would be expected for you to be behind a modern era curve." The teen nudged her friend gently and grinned. "As long as you are curious and attentive, you will pickup plenty."
The inside of the institute was the sort of conditions she found focusing, homey almost. "Well, we were interested in a tour if that is the kind of thing you do here. I also recently caught a Castform, and wondered if there was anything the institute could teach me about their care?"
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 18, 2020 18:58:05 GMT
"Uh," the woman says, "well, normally we only do scheduled tours for, like, schoolchildren and stuff like that, but I can see if anyone's willing to take you around and yak your ear off. What's your interest in this, just so I can see if I can get someone's attention with that? Is it just the Castform thing?"
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Post by Robot on Feb 19, 2020 11:19:25 GMT
"Well," Beatrice considered a moment. "I am really curious how the satellite array plays into weather tracking, and what sort of data storage you use? How precise are the instruments? Can it read global patterns, or just those that are local to Hoenn?"
Giving an excited shimmy it was very clear she was in her element. "The Weather Institute is more than a locale for the prediction and forecast of meteorological systems isn't it?"
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 19, 2020 18:53:45 GMT
"Uhhhh…" The woman laughs, "Okay, I'll go get someone. Wait right here." She heads upstairs in the stairwell next to the desk, and is a few minutes before she returns with a taller, blond man in casual clothes. Not the image one would usually get from a weather scientist.
"Hey," the man says, casually, waving. "I'm Vincent Magnusson, one of the Senior Researchers here. But you can just call me Vince. We don't really stand on ceremony here. So, I hear you have some enthusiastic questions about this place, and were hoping for a tour? Always glad to meat fellow meteoheads." He winks. "Anyways, come on up to the break room, and I'll see what I can start with. Oh, uh, guess a good place to start would be your names." He laughs.
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Post by Robot on Feb 19, 2020 23:40:22 GMT
"I'm Beatrice LaBrasta, currently a freelance researcher on my Pokemon Journey, this is Rainbow, a dear friend of mine." There was a pause as Bee considered a bit of humor. "She is not an illusion created by diffracting light through water droplets, she's just naturally cute." Bee smiled brightly as they followed along after their host. "My fields of specialty are chemistry and pharmacology, but I learn what I can as it's available."
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 20, 2020 0:37:48 GMT
"Ah, well, I'm glad you clarified that," Vince winks, "I wasn't sure. Spontaneous localized weather phenomena is a real problem indoors here, after all. You're lucky to have such a cute friend," he says the last word with a knowing tone, "and not have her be an illusion."
"Well, don't know how much what we do here involves drugs," he says chuckling, "unless you're talking about the people trying to figure out how to influence the weather. But at least everything's chemistry, eh?"
"Wait... you're trying to control the weather here?"
"Ha, no," Vince replies. "At least, not primarily. There're some people seeing if Castform could be harnessed to help influence particular weather patterns, but the little things are too changeable to really even do anything in controlled environments. They're better for their original purpose of telling the weather. That's what we mostly do here. Take in data from all over Hoenn, and process it all here. Give forecasts, reports, punch off analysis of trends or worries we have... all that fun stuff. It's really mostly number-crunching, even if the public face of it is getting the weather wrong." He laughs again. "Ah, always fun to be blamed for getting the forecast wrong. Even with the help of Castform, it's a tricky business predicting even more than a day in advance at times."
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Post by Robot on Feb 20, 2020 1:24:29 GMT
"Meteorology is what's known as an non-exact science, where other sciences test hypothesis to find cause and effect, Meteorology has narrowed it down to a range of causes and effects due to a range of variables. Humidity, air pressure, wind direction, sun exposure, even topography of a given area play into the final result." Bee explains to Rainbow excitedly. "Chemistry plays into it with states of matter, suspensions, and then effects of materials on water tables and soil permutations. There's cloud seeding too I guess." Blinking a few times, her ears reddened.
"I uh... you see..." Clearing her throat she steadied herself to explain it more simply. "When water vapor, the product of heat evaporating a liquid, reaches the upper atmosphere it enters a state that is constantly shifting between a solid and a liquid. This is how clouds are formed, and when that balance becomes heavily saturated you get rain, or temperature permitting, snow. Thunderstorms come from mixing weather systems, specifically temperature and pressure zones. The systems themselves migrate, from areas of high pressure to low pressure."
Rubbing the back of her neck, she gave Vince a sideways glance. "I know the basics I guess, what can you tell me about Castform though? I just made one myself the other day, and he's wonderful and curious, but is there any special care for them?"
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 20, 2020 1:32:23 GMT
"I, uh, got about half of that, I think," Rainbow says, laughing. "But, I see. I'll just take the sun and the rain when it comes."
"Well, Castform are... pretty self sufficient," Vince says. "They just need sun to keep their energy up, so they can theoretically live basically anywhere, but their bodies are heavily freshwater-based, so you won't really find them near the ocean or arid regions. The former causes them to get sick with all the saltwater, and the latter dries them out. They can survive just fine in the desert until they run out of water, though."
"Impressive that you managed to make one, though," he says. "The conditions that produce them are decently challenging to reproduce, even if it does occasionally happen in nature."
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Post by Robot on Feb 20, 2020 2:44:37 GMT
"Hydration is really important for most creatures, but I'll make doubly sure in Cumulus' case, thank you Vince. So, the satellites you use here? They relay data back and forth with other labs in Hoenn?" Bee asked curiously, thinking on what Rainbow had said earlier about the 'castle' having something that looked like the dishes on it.
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 20, 2020 3:15:44 GMT
"They communicate mostly with telemetry satellites, honestly," Vince says, "giving us a greater eye on the sky. That and various measurement stations that the different cities have. But, yeah, we have access to other number-crunching places like Devon and MSC if need be. Or somewhere else, but those are the two other big computers in the land - most everywhere else'd be pointless to outsource to. What we have here is usually sufficient, though, so it's mostly just uploading stuff so anyone can make use of our predictions. We aren't doing anything useful if we don't share our data. The stuff most people cares about goes out of date pretty quickly, after all." He chuckles. "So, do you want to see the data reporting center? Where we actually crunch stuff isn't exciting, but the visualization of what we get are pretty neat."
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Post by Robot on Feb 20, 2020 3:26:47 GMT
"Sure, that could be really neat. You wouldn't happen to have a relay in Mossdeep would you? Rainbow recognized the dishes from home and it had me curious." Following along after the scientist, she was the vision of high energy and attentiveness.
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Post by DataNinja on Feb 20, 2020 8:13:06 GMT
"Oh, yeah, that'd be the MSC station I mentioned - Mossdeep Space Center," Vince says. "Sorry, forgot that you wouldn't necessarily know that abbreviation, especially if you aren't from Mossdeep yourself."
Entering the room that he leads them to, there are a lot of screens around, though the pair of people - a blonde man who's basically just a ponytail from this angle and a woman with long red hair - within are mostly just doing periodic glances at the interesting-looking ones, instead typing stuff up on standard monitors. They pause to look up at the arrivals.
"Oh, hey Vince," the woman says, green eyes looking over the Trainers with him with an analytical gaze that Bea recognizes from her own studious stare. "Don'tcha think they're a little bit young to pass by labour laws?" she asks, wryly.
"Could always put them to work running on the hamster wheels downstairs," the ponytailed man looks over, face clearly joking.
"Tempting, but, no," Vince says, laughing. "They're just curious Trainers. Bea, Rainbow, this is Val and Brad. You picked a good shift to decide to come in, because the people who wouldn't really bother to talk to outsiders aren't in. Anyways, Brad's one of the ones who takes care of the Castform, so if you want to ask him specifics, he'd be your guy."
"I mean," Brad says, "it's not really that hard. Sun lamp, mist sprayer... that and just attention. But try for sun. That's when they're least moody."
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Post by Robot on Feb 20, 2020 11:37:33 GMT
At the explanation of the space center, she cast a sideways glance at Rainbow, eyes twinkling. They had found the castle of the distant future. "A sun lamp I would not have considered, does remaining in their alternate forms for long periods of time cause any sort of health issues or unrest? Cumulus is still just a baby, but he enjoys watching the sky, and messing around with his Pokeball."
Eyes wandering the panels, she drank in all the logistics of a place like this. "Pleased to meet the both of you. So, has this place noticed any shift in major weather patterns over the last eight years?"
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