victory_road | Sinnoh Catch-all log | both open / closed prompts

While the short trip through the airport and the prospect of riding a plane might be fairly ordinary to some, perhaps even boring, to Armin it is incredible. Technology like this absolutely does not exist where he is from, and even in the four years he has been here, he's never been able to experience something like this. Fly on the back of a pokemon? Yes. Fly in some sort of giant metal tube at speeds that dazzle the imagination? No.

Armin has managed to obtain one of the window seats. Maybe he was just quick about this. Maybe nobody wanted to say no to those big baby-blues. In any case, he has settled in quite nicely (leg-room is no issue when you are short) and excited enough about the prospect of the upcoming Sinnoh journey that he has no intention of sleeping through this flight.

At various points, Armin can be found with his face all but flattened against the tiny window, peering at the scenery below. He's had some experience with soaring over things, but never at this height. It's utterly incredible, both how small everything looks down below, and how the clouds look from this height. Especially once dawn starts coming on and the light starts illuminating the world below, you might find yourself tapped on the arm or hear him mutter softly to himself: "It's all so beautiful."

And when he isn't staring out of the tiny window, Armin is curiously examining everything within reach. The small display on the back of the chair in front of him is particularly of interest. He has no interest in the offered entertainment, but the screens with information about Sinnoh and other flight details are far more of a hit with him. And if you are sitting close to him, don't be surprised if you are bombarded with a question or two like: "What are your plans when we land?" and "Are you going to challenge the gym leader?" and even "How does this machine fly? It must be incredibly heavy, right?"

So. Enjoy.

Between the lack of sleep the night before from excitement, and the sheer terror of take-off, Angel finds herself tapped out relatively quickly energy wise. She doesn't really intend to fall asleep, and even as she realizes she's slipping under, promises that she won't stay asleep for long.

She absolutely doesn't plan for her head to come to rest against Armin's shoulder, either.

As night gives way to dawn, some mix of Armin's mutterings and her own restlessness gives way to consciousness. She blinks awake, rubbing at her eyes before shooting an apologetic glance at her companion. She starts to form a much more wholehearted apology, but... Whatever words she's forming leave her just as soon as she sees what Armin's looking at.

"You're right. It's amazing."

Unlike Armin, Willow isn't as on board with the excitement. In fact she's feeling a bit anxious about the flight and it's visible, even having gotten herself a murkrow stuffy since she was not able to have Lythie out of her pokeball on the flight, practically clinging to the fake bird. Being tapped on the arm is met with quiet nods and soft confirmations that it is beautiful. "Y-yes it is, quite beautiful."

Unfortunately for Willow, the anxiousness is clear in her voice, even if she wholeheartedly agrees that the view below is breathtakingly beautiful. Ironic that a bird is nervous of flying.

When Angel first starts dozing off on his shoulder, Armin goes quiet and still. It's like having a kitten nap on your lap. You'd have to be an utter bastard of a person to even think of waking them up.

But when the sun slowly starts coming up, the first rays of light starting to filter through the massive towering clouds, illuminating ocean and islands below, glinting off far-away mountain peaks, he cannot help but have a few awed words slip from his lips. He has seen sights like this in pictures, but never with his very own eyes. It's incredible. The world is so incredible and beautiful.

He's so enraptured with the sight, he doesn't even notice Angel stirring. Or her lifting her head off his shoulder. In fact, he doesn't realise she is awake until he speaks and then he instantly feels a stab of guilt. He hadn't meant to wake her! "I'm sorry for waking you up."

There really is no hiding Willow's anxiety. It bleeds into her voice, her posture, the way she is gripping her little stuffed animal. It makes Armin feels for her --he certainly knows what it is like to be afraid-- though it also makes him wonder why he isn't feeling afraid. It's not like he has ever flown in a plane before. Or even 100% understands how it works --that is something to look up when they land-- and yet, he feels no worries.

Perhaps it is because he's used to using the gear. Once you get used to propelling yourself through the air at breakneck speed, maybe a comfortable steady flight like this is nothing.

He gives Willow a sympathetic smile. "Not used to this sort of thing?"

Staying at the inn is interesting, to say the least. It is certainly not anything like home (the islands) or his own world, but there is something about the calm simplicity of it all that does strongly appeal to Armin.

That and there are the baths.

It turns out that trying to do all the things, digging up fossils, seeing the sights, making trips to every which way, leads to some pretty sore muscles. Pleasantly sore, but sore nonetheless.

During various evenings on this trip, Armin can be found in the Inn hot baths, practically sank into the hot water to the tip of his nose, allowing the heat to leech any aches out of his arms and legs. It's hot, yes, and it makes his cheeks flush tomato red, but it's so good.

But he certainly isn't opposed to some company either. In fact, if any other guest joins him, he sits up a bit to give them a nod, a smile if he actually knows them. And any friends will definitely get a greeting.

So, come join him! The water is great

(And let's not pay any attention to the sounds of girls on the other side of the divider. Or try and peek. This isn't some anime hot springs episode!!)

((or is it))

Newt has also managed to snag a window seat and is enjoying the leg room that comes from being tiny. She does however listen to all the safety advice given to her before she starts to look out the window with wonder though.

Yes she's from a place with spaceships but still.... Hearing Armin in the seat in front of her she'll peak ahead to see him staring at the windows too.

"We're so high up!"

She's so excited.

Armin cranes himself around in his seat so he can catch Newt's eyes over the headrest.

"Isn't it incredible? I never thought I'd ever be up this high. Not even birds fly at these heights."

Some people might be embarrassed about being as excited as a ten year old when faced with new experiences. Not Armin though. Many things embarrass him, but not the joy of new discovery.

As much as she'd wish to deny it, she can't deny this. It's too obvious and even she can see that about herself, after all, she knows better than anyone how her own voice sounds at the moment.

"Not like this." She's used to flying in her own true form or on another creature's back at home, or now being powerless: on the back of her Staraptor or Corviknight. "It's not something we have back at home, not like this at least." Her speech has become different in her time here as well, more casual than her arrival.

Angel is quick to shake her head. She flashes a soft, reassuring smile as she leans in close to him, then past him as she tries to get a good look at the scenery below and beyond them. She places a hand against his arm even as she does, keeping herself balanced as her position becomes more and more awkward.

"I should be thanking you." She puts her hand up against the window, just for a moment. As if she might be able to reach out and touch the scenery. "Imagine missing something like this!"

She leans back after a moment, careful not to hog the view entirely. The hand on his arm drops, fingers seeking to interlace themselves with Armin's own.

Instinctively, he squeezes her hand when she interlaces their fingers, though his attention is still fully on the window. "It's really beautiful, isn't it? The world is..."

The ocean might hold a special place in Armin's heart, but as a child, it wasn't just the ocean he had dreamt of seeing: lands of sand and ice, burning mountains, he had wanted to experience it all. And this world is allowing him to do so. Allowing him to experience things he had never even thought possible before.

It's enough to make you feel very grateful and more than a little emotionally touched.

"Just look at it. It's hard to imagine that the world is this huge."

He doesn't know if his own world is as big as this one is, but the thought that there could potentially be this much out there beyond the walls (though from talking to Jean he knows that it is certainly not a welcoming, peaceful world) and that they had all grown up confined to such a tiny part of it... how caged they had been.

"It's the same for the world I come from. Technology like this... it's probably centuries before we'd be able to make something like this. If we ever could." If they could ever stop fighting the titans and each other for long enough to focus on building amazing things like this.

"We do have our 3DMG though. I wonder if this sight doesn't bother me because I am used to that." He gives her a wry smile. "I was absolutely terrified when I first started learning how to use it. Actually, I don't think I ever fully got comfortable with it. Not like some of my friends were."

"We have airships, though they do not go this high. Not that I know, I do not need to use them when I can fly." And oh how she missed it, it's apparent in her voice until Armin completely loses her with the 3DMG, that's something she has never heard of even among adventurers. Confusion is plastered on her face, as well as the curiosity to know more, anything as a distraction.

"3DMG? I'm afraid I do not know what that is, would you care to share more about it?"

Ah yes, describing the gear. It's something Armin has had to do plenty over the years as apparently no other world had something similar --then again, as far as he knows, no other world had titans either-- and he sometimes wonders how well he has managed to make people understand what it is.

Then again, maybe it is good people don't understand it. It means they never had to deal with titans.

"Where I come from, we have to deal with entities we call Titans. Most are anywhere between three and fifteen meters tall, and unfortunately, the only vulnerability they have lies in the nape of their necks. So our scientists developed what we call the Three Dimensional Gear. It is essentially a device that helps our soldiers be able to get off the ground by scaling buildings and titans, and attack them where they are most vulnerable. That and dodge their attacks. The device functions by using two anchor hooks which are shot at high speed into any tall object, after which the engine quickly retracts the wires pulling someone off the ground."

He's being a bit more in-depth right now than normal because he figures the talking might keep her mind off the flying.

"Wait, maybe this will help." Armin digs a notebook out of his bag and makes a quick, very basic sketch of a human. To that, he adds a crisscrossing of straps across the body and a rough box shape for the actual device. "See, the motor is carried low on the soldier's back, and the anchor hooks shoot out from holders on either side of the person's hips. The straps keep the device against your body, and allow you to steer yourself and maintain balance while you move."

"I've been in space but I've never got to fly in the normal air this high. You can still see things!"

And none of it's on fire either. This world is the best.

Things not being on fire is always a major plus.

"Couldn't you see anything while you were in space? Things like stars, I mean."

"A bit? I could see the moon since we were nearby still. And the far away stars. But mostly it was empty ....and cold."

There may be a reason Newt is going nowhere near the emergency door on the plane.

"Anyway, when you travel in space you have to get frozen and sleep through the trip. So you don't really get to see anything until you get to the place and I got brought here before we got to when we'd wake up again."

"It's amazing."

In some ways, it's nothing Angel hasn't seen before. Years in isolation, hardwired into a network, had allowed her to see everything the world had to offer, if only through a screen. With six galaxies to understand, there was hardly a piece of landscape she hadn't seen before.

But that's all different than seeing it in person. Even behind a pane of glass and thousands of feet up in the air, it's still far more breathtaking than even the most advanced ECHOsims could have given her.

The same could be said for the sheer size of the world. Johto and Kanto were infinitesimally smaller than her home universe had been. Even this, the world she's caught glimpses of through the window, can't compare. But it still feels unfathomably vast when it's her watching it pass by.

"Do you think one day they will let us see it all?"

She can only hope. Now that she's had a taste, she wants to imagine being able to explore everything

"How does i- EH!?"

It takes a moment to realize what Armin is asking. "Y- You're asking me how the plane flies..!? I- I mean I'm no engineer you know..!"

When Jean heard that the Underground was full of valuable evolution stones, he made a point of scheduling out a whole day during the trip to go spelunking. While he would have been happy with anything, since they could still be sold for a good price if he didn't currently need them, he really wanted a Dusk Stone to evolve his Doublade.

He worked his butt off from dawn to dusk (pun not intended) both digging and asking around the with other miners where the best spots were for digging up the stone he wanted. He found a lot of stuff he wasn't interested in that he tossed aside or gave to people around him, until finally, finally, he found what he was looking for.

Absolutely satisfied with how he spent his day, he returned to the Inn pleased as punch. He washed up, had a good dinner (although some of the stuff served here was totally foreign to him-- what was with all the raw fish?) and was recommended a hot bath afterwards. Eh, why not? If everyone was making such a big deal about it...

He gave himself another rinse off and headed for the hot springs. He didn't really care about being naked around other guys, so he wasn't shy about walking right in with nothing but a towel around his waist.

He especially didn't care when he saw that the only other person in the bath was Armin. They've seen each other naked out of practicality more times than he could count.

"Hey," Jean greeted him casually as he got in. Everyone who had told him about it was right, the springs were pleasantly hot. "You look beat. Long day?"

It's true. They had all seen a lot of each other's bare asses (and other assorted body parts) during their training. Privacy was one of those things recruits didn't get to have, along with sufficient food, and long term life plans.

When he heard someone come in, Armin sat up for a moment, just to see who it was, but upon seeing Jean, he sank back into the very welcoming water again, murmuring a greeting as Jean joined him in the bath.

"Yes. But the good kind of long." Armin had headed towards Mt Coronet that day. He hadn't explored the inside --that seemed like it was a recipe for getting lost and spending who knows how long in there-- but he had walked one of the paths that ran alongside the mountain's slope. It hadn't been a particularly difficult hike, but it had been long. Of course, the pictures he had been able to take, and the sights he had seen had made it well worth it.

"My feet feel like I've been one of Shadis' infamous death marches."

"It's all right if you don't know. I was just-- your world has technology like this, right?" He had gotten the impression that Carly came from a world that was fairly similar to this in terms of technology. "I was hoping that maybe it was something that people from those kinds of worlds would just know."

"I hope so. I really do. But this is a good sign, right? Even if it is slower than we might want, it's still progress. Even just a year ago, they didn't want us visiting for a holiday or exchange letters. But they've changed their minds on both of those things now. Maybe they will need some more time, but I think that once they actually meet us, they'll see that we are just like any other people."

And Armin, for one, can be patient. The Walls weren't built in a day (actually they were; that particular saying had aged like milk) and he's willing to take it step by step if it means being able to explore all of it one day.

Armin's brows draw together a bit as his mind turns to thoughts of how similar parts of this situation are to the things they are dealing with (according to what Jean had told him) back in his own word. Things are a lot more complicated back in his world, granted, but there is still a similar element of people using fear to keep others at a distance, a fear that could be dealt with if only they were willing to engage in conversation but unfortunately, it turns out most humans are very stubborn about that sort of thing. He can't understand it, he really can't. Isn't it better to try and come to some mutual understanding rather than hold onto old grudges?

"Yeah! It's common stuff. The tech here is...mmm. It's not really exact, but there's a lot that's pretty similar I guess. Planes...there's a lot about lift and how the air moves over it, and turbines...."

She's muttering.

"Yeah, I'm glad those days are far behind me," Jean replied with a smirk. "Though, building orphanages and laying down railroad isn't that much easier. You'd be surprised how much manual labor you get roped into in the Corps later on."

There was plenty of room in the springs to stretch out, so he rested his arms back behind him on the ledge of tub, and leaned his head back a bit.

"It's too bad there's nothing like the Underground back in Kanto or Johto. I don't know how I would have been able to get my hands on a Dusk Stone otherwise. You finding a Dawn Stone at that castle and me finding something you wanted to trade for it was a real stroke of luck."

Sinnoh Catch-all log | both open / closed prompts

Airplane prompts - August 9th/10th

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Inn hot baths - various evenings

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