victory_road | video || action for Goldenrod

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video || action for Goldenrod

-- Red! Hey!

[Haunter is carrying the 'gear, apparently. Following diligently after its trainer like some shaky-cam show cameraman. Haunter's claws are visible around the edges of the camera frame. While they both chase a Torracat through the tall grass just outside Goldenrod.]

[A Torracat who is engaging in epic battle with a Nidoran♀.]

Seriously!? Get --

[They don't get there in time. The battle ends, with Torracat victorious. And... a flash of light. Which clears to reveal...]

[Incineroar.]

... back... here...

[Silence. Except for, you know, Incineroar bellowing in glee. Shiro just. Slowly looks over at the camera. With the camera turning to look at him in return.]

Okay then. That happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The rare Shiro Laugh appears! Achievement unlocked!]

A houseboat?

[Is that like... a house that's also a boat? Jean ponders it for a second, then laughs and shakes his head.]

That wouldn't work. Bertolt gets seasick.

[Dad Laugh Achieved!]

Yeah -- a floating house. Sometimes they float, sometimes they stay tied onto a dock.

You guys all going to stay together, huh?

That... wow. That's cool and weird at the same time.

[Just imagine, a floating house.]

Yeah, why wouldn't we? We've been together for this long, no real reason to change now.

[Not like any of them are hiding some horrible, monstrous betrayal or anything...]

Is it? Not something you've heard of before?

[Boy just wait until they inevitably talk about space travel.]

I'm glad you guys could be here together, then. It always helps to have people at your backs.

We don't have oceans in our world. None of the water is big enough to float a house in it.

[Don't blow his mind too soon, Shiro.]

It does. I know it made living here a lot easier when we all showed up at the same time.

No ocean? Really? What about lakes?

[What the heck.]

... yeah. I bet it did.

Lakes and rivers, sure, but nobody lived on them! Just merchant ships going by sometimes.

You should have seen us when we saw the ocean for the first time here. It was crazy.

[There may have been tears. And tasting the water. It's just as salty as advertised.]

Are you sure? Maybe someone lived on one of those ships.

[He's sort of teasing, though.]

I'm sorry I missed it. You guys are really into oceanography, huh?

No, they just went up and down the rivers. They'd dock in towns.

Armin more than me. I think the ocean is pretty cool and all, but him... he's crazy about it.

Huh. You'd think someone would figure living on them would be easier.

... yeah, I've noticed. He talks about it like I do space exploration.

What? Space exploration? What's that?

[Oh no, Jean, now you've gone and done it!]

[JUST. GRINS.]

You know those stars you see at night? It means going up there. Seeing what's out there.

What?

[Sorry, Shiro, but that sounds too wild to be believed.]

You've been up in the stars? Are they a lot closer than they look?

[He laughs again, shaking his head. Yeah that was pretty much the reaction Armin had, too.]

I have, and no, they're even further away than they look. Millions of years away, some of them.

[These are kids who were amazed by hot showers and refrigerators; it's not hard to impress them with technology, especially when talking about something as outlandish as space exploration.]

How can something be millions of years away? That's not how you measure distance.

[Gosh, Shiro, next you're going to be telling Jean that you made the Kessel Run in under twelve parsecs.]

They're that far away. It's like... if you turned on a light at that distance, with nothing to obstruct it?

It would take millions of years for us, on this planet, to be able to see that light come on.

[HE THINKS THIS IS REALLY COOL, OKAY JEAN, SORRY.]

If you tried putting it in miles? Or anything else? It's just too far.

But... wouldn't the light eventually just stop? How can it keep going on forever?

[It's not that he doesn't believe Shiro, but that he can't wrap his mind around light that never ends.]

How can any light source be strong enough to keep traveling for millions of years?

Because, man, the stars are suns. That's how they're strong enough.

[They're also planets and other things, but let's start simple.]

They look that size because of the distance. Get close enough, you see how big they really are, and how strong.

Really? The stars are actually suns?

[Okay, this is something Jean can understand. It's mind-blowing, but he also gets it, on some level.]

Why do they all look the same size in the sky? Are they actually all the same size as the sun? How far away is the sun?

[Look out, Shiro, you've awoken something Jean didn't know he had in him.]

Most of them. Some are planets, too.

[This is great. This is the best conversation.]

They don't, though. Some are a little bigger than others -- or a little brighter. You've got suns the size of the one Earth orbits, bigger, smaller... or super novas.

[THERE ARE SO MANY KINDS OF STARS, JEAN.]

Depends on how you measure the distance.

[TELL HIM ALL ABOUT THESE DIFFERENT TYPES OF STARS, SHIRO.]

What's a super nova? Is that some kind of special star?

Uh... how far away is it in meters?

[Meters, Jean can understand. He'll be able to grasp the concept of light years later, but for now, he wants to stick to what he knows.]

It is, yeah. It's when a sun gets to a certain point in its life... they basically expand. And explode. It's about as destructive and awesome as it sounds.

[But then he pauses, in thought.]

[How many meters is the sun...?]

A... few hundred million, probably?

Suns explode?!

[Let him just... process that for a moment. Of course, Shiro then follows it with another insane revelation, and Jean's head is spinning.]

But it looks so big in the sky... that means it's probably enormous, if it's so far away.

Eventually, yeah. Do you know what the word "nuclear" means?

[He's figuring he has to start small, here.]

Yeah... yeah, it is. Millions and millions of times bigger than Earth.

No.

[He's still grappling with the concept of the internal combustion engine and steamships; nuclear energy is way outside of his wheelhouse.]

[Jean is quiet for a moment, being completely awed by this new information.]

Have you gotten close to it?

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