bottlecaplogs | [Catchall] Metropolis of Eden

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[Catchall] Metropolis of Eden

Who: Umemiya and You
What: Things that happen in October
When: All month, possibly into next
Where: Skull Town, The Spire, Out in the Forest
Warnings: None yet

1. A city in bloom [Open, Skull Town]
With permission of the guild leaders, Umemiya's beginning his winter garden project out in Skull Town. While he isn't spending all his time at the garden, he does make regular trips out to see progress in tilling and planting and offer advice to those working in the garden. While he wishes Noelle were here to use Grassy Terrain and boost the growth of the plants, the old fashioned way will work fine, since the weather seems clement enough.

Perhaps you were planning on volunteering and come to meet the Lucario for marching orders. Or perhaps you're just wondering what's going on in this corner of the outpost. Either way, Umemiya greets any who approach him with a broad grin.

"Good weather for this work, don't you think?"

2. A city with that adapts to survive [Open, The Spire]
Umemiya makes himself busy around the guild's space when he isn't out at Skull Town or off on a quest. He's glad to help with cooking meals for the dining hall, and when he partakes of food he's likely to approach someone and ask to sit by them. After all, he's always been a warm extroverted soul, interested in building community.

And of course, he can also be found in the training rooms, working to try to learn some new moves, because he's realized there's types he doesn't have a particularly good answer to. Up for sparring?

3. A little morе room [Closed to Need, Woodn't You Like]
The idea of going out for a walk in the forest and gathering wood is almost a break from everything else Umemiya has on his plate. He meets Need out at the edge of the woods, ears perked and tail already doing a slow wag.

"So, we just get a bunch of deadwood and dry branches and bring them back to town? Seems about as simple as it gets."

4. For underdogs and misfits to thrive [Wildcard]
Find me wherever Solstices are sold at darkersolstice to plot, or just come at me with something random. I have faith in you! You're amazing and your hair looks really nice today!!

Flip me to brackets if you please, I'm easy.

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"Easily lost knowledge. Fortunately it's also easily relearned. Coppicing is cutting trees to stumps and letting them grow new stems to cut again. Of course, that's not something with an immediate return, and wood burns best if it's had time to dry out anyway." If that applies. The Firestarting Gift makes it possible to burn green wood as if it's seasoned. Is that the case with Fire-types too?

He doesn't seem all that tense, if she can gauge at all, but not totally laid back either. "You've been out here before?"

"Yeah, a few times. I'm not the expert that, say, Fireheart is. He comes out this way to hunt for himself." With everything that may imply for itself. "But you can't get to Skull Town without crossing the forest."

"Hm." Need is very carefully neutral about hunting. In the normal course of things, yes, it's well and good. When there isn't any distinction between 'animals' and 'people', now that's a different story.

She probably should get herself on the side of prey. Need has spend millennia bashing herself against the idea that those who are stronger and have more power, in one form or another, have every right to harm and exploit those who don't. It's not like she's incapable of setting 'men' and 'women' aside to focus on the underlying issues that truly bother her. And she's certainly accustomed to things that are important to her being trivial or ridiculous to others.

Still, she should probably learn more before committing to the knee-jerk judgement she feels, and her player doesn't really feel like making this as big a thing as would probably be appropriate.

"There must at least be a path worn through to the other town by now. Even if hovering or flying is rather common." Her voice is dry, but she doesn't gesture at herself. Out of the habit.

"There is a path. No one's actively patrolling it to keep it safe, yet, though. I mean, I've gone back and forth for my gardening project--I'm getting a winter garden going--but I'm confident in being able to defend myself."

He shrugs, not lingering on the hunting thing, either. Plenty other points to hit in this talk.

"It's not nearly anything anyone would call a road. Someday, it might be."

"That's right, now that you have a guild you're allowed to do that kind of thing!" There's definitely a sardonic note to her voice. "Congratulations."

Not a lot of fallen wood to be found this close to the edge of the forest, just scattered twigs. There's been some autumn winds that have knocked the foliage around. No strong storms, but Need is hoping to find something broken off a standing dead tree, or that kind of thing.

"If Mightyena puts out a call for bodies to do patrol, I'll not only volunteer, but offer to help her write a sensible watch schedule for folks. It's something I've done before, back home, just not in a forest."

He gives Need a wry little smile there.

"It'll be her who makes it happen, if anyone. Polteageist prefers calling for escorts for scholars going into risky territory, and Ribombee's focus seems to be closer to home."

"That's right. You've got an interesting set of skills, don't you?" Need remains expressionless.

"What are your impressions of those three?" Mightyena had been quite excited to recruit her and given the impression that the other two would be as well. Need's heard nothing from them and isn't sure what to make of that. It does suggest something about priorities and how well Mightyena does or doesn't know her colleagues.

He is totally taking that comment about his skill set as a compliment.

"I haven't interacted directly with Rimbombee or Poltergeist, but there's some interesting stuff to consider with the guild set-up as it exists as a whole. Like...your housing is determined by what guild you join and then how much respect you earn them through participation in quests, right? So you have Cheri Berries who don't have a roof, or us dealing with flooding. But all the Lum berries are in the city in relative comfort to start with. And newcomers aren't allowed to volunteer at all for quests until they join a guild, regardless of how useful their experience might be for one that's urgent. Why? Because no guild would get credit for it. It's...a system that feels like it was designed to foster a spirit of competition that I'm not wholly sure is needed to incentivize participation in it in the first place."

He's been thinking about this a lot, holding it up against his own system back home and trying to compare the outcomes.

That's more or less how it was intended, if also with a bit of an edge. Who is this boy, exactly? How trustworthy is he?

"We spoke of this a bit before. Many of the unaligned appear to live comfortably, but they've been established for a while. New people don't get taken care of except through charity or charm, whether they end up taken in by a guild leader or are let to sleep on the floor of the tavern." Still no expression, but the disapproval is clear in her voice.

"Competition's no bad thing but it's running wild here. I suppose we should hold ourselves fortunate that members of one guild aren't punished for interacting with members of another."

"The whole town would be in major trouble if animosity turned to actual division and conflict." Umemiya let's out a frustrated huff.

"Meanwhile, the outpost isn't really looked out for by any of the guilds consistently. It's a messy situation, but for the moment my only response is to cooperate and get to know as many people as I can. The guild leaders can foster division all they like, but I'm not playing that game."

Need makes a small noise of disgruntled assent.

"Sounds like you're considering taking charge yourself." Stars know she won't. She's gone this long without being a leader and isn't about to start now. Besides, the living should make choices for themselves, even when those choices are bad.

Young people can be good leaders but the lack of experience and self-knowledge weighs on them. Need doesn't really know Umemiya and how he'd handle that particular set of stressors.

Umemiya grimaces faintly, his ears dropping slightly when she says that. It's almost like he was caught at some bad habit, like sneaking cookies before dinner or something.

"I'm hoping that isn't something that becomes necessary, for those of us from other worlds to take action to overturn the leadership of the locals. I don't want things to get to that point." The 'but' is loudly implied.

Edited (icon) 2025-10-10 19:48 (UTC)

Interesting reaction. Need tilts slightly towards him. "We've got a tendency to spontaneously fall into comas for months, so it wouldn't be responsible for any of us to take over unilaterally anyway."

It would be better to elevate a local. At minimum find one with the right qualities to make a lieutenant. Ideally multiple locals, driven to cooperate.

They've been moving through the woods for a while. Need pauses seeing a tall tree. She can only drift so high up, so she can't survey things from above. "Either of us any good at climbing, you think?"

"I think I could be. Got claws and a tail for balance. Why?"

He'll let the other conversation lapse for the moment. Time to go to work and prove to her that he's not just boasting about his own usefulness.

She tilts to look up. "For seeing if either that big branch is dead enough to come down easily, or there's something more visible from above than down here." There is a fork of the tree that's leafless and has some shelf fungi going on.

"I probably could climb tolerably. Not like I weigh much and these are decent at pulling. It's just that I'm not really used to this," she adds in a self-deprecating tone, and finally flexes the fingers of her tassle-arms.

Less 'being swords', she can handle that. More "being". Need really doesn't feel embodied so much as like there's only one body (two? three?) she can properly sense and get at, and for some reason the true resident(s?) are just not there.

"I'll go up and try to break it off. No reason Rock Smash can't be used against trees, despite the name."

And so he begins to clamber up the tree, putting his claws to use. His reach is shorter than it used to be, but he works slowly and strategically.

Need watches, idly trying to figure out the skeletal structure of a Lucario. They're a lot more humanoid than many other Pokemon, to the point where she doesn't think dropping to all fours and walking that way would feel natural. Shoulder articulation... the most off-putting part is that that's not a proper muzzle, it's a nose and the mouth is fully underneath it.

She'd have smiled at herself if she was able and had that reflex. That's pretty minor when it comes to bizarre anatomy. Look at her, trying to apply underlying logic. Absurd. For all she knows he doesn't actually have any bones.

"Do you start out knowing what a 'move' is called or does someone have to teach you?" she calls up.

"It's instinctual, but not completely intuitive. I basically had a couple guys spar with me until I was able to respond to their attacks in kind. Which was something I asked them to do, don't worry about them just beating anyone up. I do good with that sort of teaching."

He's a fighty boy, through and through. He'd tried to be a little more delicate when teaching Noelle, but...well, that had gone wrong in its own way.

Ah, yeah, sparring... probably a good idea. It might get her more centered and able to think of this body as something she really is responsible for. Need is not actually sure how much she has to eat and sleep but she does know she's not been doing enough of either. It's too easy for her to ignore the pangs and fatigue as happening to someone else.

"You should spar with me. I'm good with a blade-" understatement "-but that's with one sword and there's footwork and not seeing out of them and so on." The Fighting and Ghost type moves won't have any effect but to her thinking that's not too much of a detriment. She can cut and might be breakable herself.

"Absolutely down for it. Find me in the training rooms at the Spire anytime. And if you want other partners, Bigby and Anasui worked with me when I first got here."

He's almost at the dead branch now, examining where it meets the tree.

"I think I can get this off without hurting the tree too much."

And without falling yourself, she doesn't say. If he's got anything like the competence he claims Umemiya won't break off what he's standing on, or forget that striking, especially from odd positions, can throw off his balance.

"Looks like you wouldn't be crushing anything underneath," she says after a quick look. She has a sense of this world as being curiously barren, just because of the lack of tiny insects and animals. Even the smallest Pokemon is gargantuan compared to most of the life that should be thriving in a forest like this. "All right, show me how you 'Rock Smash'."

She sounds like an older woman pronouncing the name of a weird new trend here.

It might look like a normal kick to her, if a little flamboyant, but there's a lot of force in how his heel meets the dead branch that can't quite be accounted for by the physics. With a loud crack, the branch releases, falling to the ground.

As for Umemiya, he's grown adept in using his tail to help balance. There might be a moment of flailing, but he keeps his footing.

Smaller branches on the big one rattle and snap as it crashes to earth.

Yep, Need thinks with a not-sigh, she's definitely going to have to pay more attention to these 'moves'. The effect of one theatrical kick is entirely outsized. There's so much new information to take in in this world and Need just can't get through it as quickly as she'd like. It'll keep her humble, she supposes.

"Not bad," she says, grudgingly impressed, and moves to look the dead wood over, drawing one sword to keep an eye on him. He's not going to jump down, is he?

He's not, at least until he's lower down. It's when he's maybe a couple feet from the ground that he hops to land beside her.

"We oughta break it down some to bring back. Hard to carry just like that."

"It'd be a pain. I'd say 'we should have brought horses' but, well." Need moves to a prominent fork in the fallen branch. She has to picture this body doing the maneuver, and only tries it then - keep the wall crest steady, draw both swords, brace here with one hand, bring the other sword down... It takes a few brisk strikes, seeking to break rather than slice through the wood. She hasn't learned Cut yet.

"If you get another 'pole' of around this length, I can rig something up. It's easier to pull a heavy weight than to carry it, and it's a whole lot easier to drop in a hurry." The possibility of being attacked is never far from her mind.

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