Episode #1: The Beginning

Lewis nodded, although clearly uncomfortable with divulging the deerling's life story.

"As some of you may know, Spoink, Mawile, Cubone, and my self ventured into Sandfield Plains to rescue the Joltik who had wandered in, and ran into several groups of hostile ferals. Deerling here was one of those ferals. As for the rest of what I was whispering, I was simply explaining that she clearly is not still one, and noting that  she would not be the first feral to become civilized in recorded history. In fact,we should send someone to the Celeste City Archives to see what specific data in this field we can collect"

Melanie gives a quiet, approving nod at Eevee's speech... well, most of it. She's doubtful about telling the whole room Deerling used to be a feral - even if she's clearly normal now, she doesn't think singling Deerling out as different is likely to lead anywhere good (a tendency of large groups in general that Melanie's more familiar with when she'd like). But at least Eevee's placing emphasis on her being safe now, and the idea of finding out more.

The reaction from the assembled Pokemon is...varied, to say the least. Everyone starts talking at once, which makes it a little difficult to figure out what anyone is trying to say. You can tell at least a little from their body language, though. Zoroark, Granbull and Chimchar are all eyeing the Grass-type suspiciously. Fennekin is as well, though in her case she seems more scared than aggressive. Farfetch'd, Xander and Marowak all seem more defensive of the Deerling, while Numel and Snorlax take in the entire thing in with the same lack of concern as they seem to take everything. Professor Scrafty doesn't even seem to have noticed the revelation, still tinkering in the background with the device that had previously belched out a vast quantity of smoke.

It's this same device that interrupts the inordinate number of arguments, suddenly springing into life to project a map of the world. This map is immediately covered in all manner of squares of various sizes, and as each square appears it makes a faint chiming noise - or, at least, a chiming noise that would be faint if there were not about a dozen of them going off every second.

In this new cacophony, Kyria and Virgil return almost unnoticed.

Everyone wasn't paying attention to them as they walked into the room, which was good. The cacophonous dinging however, was not music to Virgil's ears. He deflates a little; Kyria had been right about everywhere being in trouble. "Err...what do we do? Do you think the same thing really happened everywhere?" He anxiously scans the map, hoping that Sainok isn't one of the dots.

Perception H7zSvH3C3d63d6

Melanie winces visibly when the arguments start erupting. Yes, that's just about exactly what she was afraid of. She steps up to stand with Eevee and the other Cubone, though she doesn't start actually taking part in the arguments just yet. Everyone else is almost certainly doing a better job than she possibly could anyway.

Under all the ruckus, she murmurs to Deerling, "Try not to let it bother you too much. I know what it's like to have people be suspicious of you." She's rather hoping Deerling doesn't remember what she did in the fight, if this really is one of the ones they fought in the dungeon.

Charm Roll:


And... then Scrafty's invention puts an abrupt stop to the debate. The chorus of frantic chimes isn't really a remarkable improvement on the argument for noise level, but it's a little less hostile, at least in any sort of directed fashion. Melanie's eyes widen as she realizes what the chimes and lights must mean. "Those are all requests, aren't they?"2d6

Kyria steps forward, "Two, actually. What do we do about the deerling, and what are the two remaining requests? We could watch over the deerling if we have to, or rather, I would, as i can't speak for the others. Anything we can do we will." Kyria holds a more formal stance than her normal slouched and rough stance. She has quite the eloquence when facing authority it would seem. If someone ought to watch over the former feral, it should be someone in the exact same situation.

Snorlax yelling is way worse than Granbull Virgil definitely listens attentively to the guildmaster speak. Another adventure so soon? Well...they could handle that. Even if Kyria was pretty beat up from the fall. "Y-yea, we could watch after her..." Virgil adds nervously. He'd almost forgotten the Deerling in all the excitement but she would probably do best here since they were bound to dive into danger. At least, the others had asked about the missions for him. Snorlax almost seemed even bigger after his outburst.

"Do about me?" Having already been startled by Snorlax's shout, the Deerling seems more nervous than ever. "Oh, okay," she sighs in relief after a moment, as Virgil (albeit slightly unintentionally) clarifies Kyria's statement. And then after a moment's pause, she suddenly looks over to Virgil and says "Hey, I remember you! Or...your voice, anyway."

"Well, time is not exactly of the essence, Mystery Dungeons being what they are, but certainly I expect anyone on the outside would appreciate their friends or belongings being retrieved as soon as possible, and we don't want them cluttering everything up. As to the requests themselves..."

Snorlax gestures to Scrafty, who carries over a selection of odd-looking gizmos, only dropping about half of them on the way, and distributes them to all the Explorers in the room. "I have been, ah, working on some improvements to the conventional Exploration Gadget. While they have not been, er, tested, they should perform adequately and in the, um, circumstances the Guildmaster decided to have them distributed now. Primarily, they should improve upon the, ah, default synchronisation method, which might be a comfort to some of, um, you after your misadventures yesterday. In addition, they will be able to pick up missions from the communications, er, console without you having to come all the way back here, which should help to, um, avoid incidents in which you return to receieve a request only to, ah, learn that the mission is precisely where you just came from."

Remarkably for the Professor's gadgets, these seem to be actually user-friendly; slotting your existing Exploration Gadgets into the upgrades immediately causes them to bring up a list of five requests. It looks like they're being automatically filtered to discount far-away missions, though there's probably a way of changing that.

Melanie makes a quiet noise in her throat as she looks over the list, padding back over to Eevee. Yeah, she's glad the Guildmaster called that outlaw mission. An A-rank job, against an evolved outlaw, is enough to make her nervous just seeing it on the list.

"Seconded. Looks interesting, but not urgent. Especially since Castform looks like a talker." If somebody can't keep their help message down to a hundred and forty characters, they're probably pretty verbose in person, too. Especially if they say "good morning" to the submission form.