victory_road | 2. Video

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[Guess who woke up with a pamphlet as well? It's this really freaken excited teenager who is grinning so much.]

Oh my gosh.... It's a scavenger hunt! Scavenger hunt, scavenger hunt, scavenger hunt!

I love them! The last one I did was one to find these notes that a lady left behind and you had to tune into this radio station that gave you clues to the location using the NATO phonetic alphabet.

This one's probably going to be ...harder? Maybe? I mean people move around but at least we don't have to decipher clues to find the name or anything. But then again, like I said people move around.

Anyway, I know what I'm doing this summer. Thanks ... Nephelis, I'm sorry if I totally mispronounced that!

Anyone else done scavenger hunts in the past? If you have, you should totally tell me about them!

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I've...never done one before. I'm not sure--what's the scavenger part? Are we looking for scavengers? The list says people, but I don't know if I'd call any of them "scavengers."

They're so much fun!

And scavenger just means you're looking for something. It's less to do with what you're looking for and more like you're ....scavenging for stuff yourself.

Anyway, I was looking for letter pages the last time. This time we're looking for people. I'd be a bit more worried if it had us trying to take the people away, but spotting them and marking it with a sticker makes a lot more sense.

Just finding people...well, Nephelis is kind of new at this whole being a legendary thing. I suppose they wouldn't know about much else.

[That was worryingly vague, Xion tries to put it into clearer phrasing.]

Um, Nephelis was...born? Created? A couple of years ago. I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but since then they've been watching over us "foreigners" specifically. They're really nice, they took us to the moon once for a party.

Really??

That's...nice of them. The notes were a bit....strange. So it's a pokemon?

Yep, it looks like a cat. A space cat.

[That's the most important thing to establish.]

I guess it made the SNACKs for us in that case, too. Whatever kind of power it has, it sure seems like a lot.

A space cat? That's ....pretty cool, I have to admit.

Yeah? Well it was nice of them to give....make snacks for us.

I kinda wish we could talk to them directly sometimes, or ask them to join us on a scavenger hunt we made up. You said usually they have certain objects on stuff like that, right?

[...]

I hope the people we're supposed to be hunting don't think we're stalking them.

It would be nice. Though I'm sure it would get hounded by people who don't want to be here and want to be sent home. Or to bring other people here.

....Do you think they're going to be watching us do the scavenger hunt?

And yeah, usually it's objects or things to take pictures of that you're looking for. Or you get a clue about what it is, or where it is. There's lots of different versions.

[She thinks for a moment.]

I wonder if Nephelis warned them? Or asked.

Ohhh. Right, I didn't even think of that. People might bully them. It's not their fault we're here, sheesh.

[Bullies suck. >8|]

As far as I know, Nephelis is watching us all the time. They're...what's that word, omnipresent? They seemed pretty shy whenever I've seen them, though, so I don't know if they would have thought to ask.

Bullies tend to ignore things like that. I mean I don't have any interest in going home so I wouldn't harass them about that. Even if they did cause it.

Speaking of, does anyone know who or what is responsible for us being here?

[Still has no interest in going back to time loop hell/home but still she'd like to know.]

Oh so they're like a god. Heh....well maybe if they're good at watching us they picked people that won't mind the extra attention.

Maybe Arceus. It's, like...a way more godly Pokemon than the others. Legends say it created the universe. It's also come around before, but generally it seems less inclined to really care what we're doing.

[Pfft. Of course Xion would have no interest in going back to not existing.]

People around here usually seem oblivious to what's going on, don't they? Especially "Mom." When I came back she acted like she hadn't seen me before.

That could be either good or bad. .....its lack of interest in us I mean.

[Go team, kicked out of the timeline. Name pending.]

Yeah....that doesn't surprise me. There's something off about that woman. I guess I'll have to go back and see her again since she's on the list.

It likes to eat sandwiches, so it cares what the natives are doing at least.

[God. Loves sandwiches. Yeah.]

I feel like she lost her actual kid somewhere and now thinks we're all her kid. It's kinda sad. It's not like she's a bad person, just weird.

It likes sandwiches. Huh. I'll file that away as probably good to know.

[This world is insane.]

Yeah...it was weird at first. But looking back I feel kind of bad for her. You'd think this place could get her better help then having new people land in her house constantly.

Especially if she did lose a kid.

[Losing her brother broke up her family. She knows it's hard for parents....and everyone.]

I could also be reading too much into it? Some people say this is like a...um, video game. Or something. So--

[Oh no.]

Oh gosh, what if her actual kid got deleted from the programming and now anyone who shows up in the room is effectively her kid?

[This world is messed up.]

Yeah it's like a video game back ho-.....

Oh my god, I never even thought of it like that. That's......terrifyingly not impossible sounding here.

Do we stop being her kid after we leave the house. What if we go back in, are we suddenly her kid again.

[SO MESSED UP. And from the two of them that's saying something.]

I went back in once, she just was...sitting at the table like I wasn't there. She didn't even look at me or anything, like a robot or something.

[It was creepy, and Xion was only in there for a second to change her clothes.]

I guess she just resets? If it's one big old video game. Nobody acts like her around here, but there are some people who just say the same thing over and over again.

It's either a video game logic situation or like extreme mental health issues. Or maybe both?

Hopefully the rest of the people we have to find are a bit more....I looked at the list so I'm not going to say normal, but .....less creepy.

Well. "Normal" according to who, anyway? That whole "being caught in a time loop" and "actually not existing anymore" thing we've both got going on wouldn't fall under the definition I think. Like throwing sticks in a glass ball.

[She means throwing stones in a glass house.]

You raise a fair point.

I mean, I thought getting to the end of a week without losing my memories and ending up back on a ferry was weird. So I guess anything can be normal if you're used to something.

[Their normal is weird.]

Now creepy, I'm still hoping for less creepy.

Watch out for Halloween around here, then. One time a lot of us got attacked by these weird spliced together Pokemon and...started turning into them ourselves? Like werepokemon?

[It's real creepy.]

There's talks sometimes about Shedinja stealing peoples' souls, and Ghost Pokemon in general. Lots of them are kinda creepy.

.....wow. That's....extreme. And slightly terrifying.

[She chuckles a bit.]

Oh yeah they're creepy alright, I have two of them now. Ghost pokemon I mean. Though apparently the Sunken, my starter? When I told them about their namesake and what happened to me. They came to the conclusion that I'm pretty much a spirit myself so they see me as one of them.

So on the plus side, I'm not going to get possessed. On the neutral side, I think all my pokemon believe I'm some sort of trapped spirit back home. ....And I don't know if they're even wrong.

I will take these ghosts over the ones back home any day though.

This is the first time I've gone on one.

[You know, world without fun, child soldiers, all that.]

So what are they all about?

They're so much fun!

Usually you get a list of things to find or take pictures of. Or sometimes just clues to a location where you can find the stuff you're looking for.

I've never gone on one where you were looking for only people before though.

Yeah, that's the part that I thought was kind of weird. Do these people know everyone is going to be trying to find them this summer?

Normally I'd say yes.

But you know, considering how we all got the pamphlet.....I'm not so sure.

[She thinks this over for a moment.]

If they don't know, they'll probably find out pretty quickly and whatever made this apparently knows a lot about the people here. So I'm going to hope that they at least picked people that won't mind people spending a summer looking for them.

... if they don't know, do you think there's any way to just find their names on the communicators and call them?

[That seems a lot easier.]

Maybe? But then again we randomly woke up with these things. So who knows that if they even had contacts, the contacts didn't just mysteriously vanish to make it an actual challenge.

They seemed to want to us to go and find them.

Mmm, good point. Especially if it was a legendary that wants us to do this.

[The tone makes Jean's opinion on legendaries very apparent.]

Is that what that thing is? I'm still pretty new here.

What's the deal with them?

[Very apparent. ....tell her more.]

Yeah, it's a legendary. A moon cat or something.

[Grouch grouch grump.]

They're these super rare, powerful Pokemon. You can't catch them, they don't usually want to battle with you, and every time one of them shows up, weird stuff starts happening and everyone gets really inconvenienced.

Great, and here I thought I'd left inconvenient weird stuff behind me.

[She will never be free of annoying supernatural things.]

Do they show up a lot, randomly?

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