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victory_road2020-08-10 10:07 pm
worthallthis) wrote in victory_road2020-08-10 10:07 pm
Entry tags:
Vacation? What's that? - Sinnoh catch-all log (OTA)
Who: Bucky AKA Winter, and OPEN
Where: Sinnoh!
When: Duration of the August event
Summary: Catch-all for event stuff
Rating: Same as always for (lots of) PTSD troubles
I. The Journey Is The Worst Part
The airport isn't great, with so many people crammed into an enclosed space, but it's bearable. After a couple weeks in Goldenrod, he's a little more comfortable with crowds.
The plane, though. The fucking plane. It's small, it's cramped, it's noisy... and all his pokemon are put away for the trip, because that's the rules and they all assured him they'd be all right with the wait as long as he was. And then the cabin closes up and the pressure changes and the air conditioning starts to blast, and it's like he's back in the cryotank, in the moments before the freezing, only it keeps going and going and going and he never quite freezes.
He spends the whole trip breathing too fast and staring hard out the window, without even music to distract him, because the pokegear don't get radio stations while in the air.
II. Hostels Aren't Great, Either
For the first four days in Eterna, the whole group of them-- Winter, Entrapta, Catra, Thace, and Claudia-- take up a room in the hostel. And Winter barely sleeps. The bed built into the wall is too claustrophobic, too much like the portable cryotank (which, oh, hey, he hadn't actually remembered until trying to spend his first night in that little bed in the wall). When he sleeps there, at all, he winds up flailing out of nightmares after an hour or two. The floor means people accidentally step on him when they get up in the middle of the night. And dozing the chair out in the front room gets him prodded by staff.
It's not a great situation. Eventually between his sleeping problems and Thace's paranoia with the crowded room, they all wind up moving to an actual hotel room that they all pile into to share, but for a while, have fun running into a very sleepy Soldier exploring the city with one hand on Dugan the Mudbray or Grace the Absol, and one of his one of the others either bounding around him or riding sedately on his shoulder, depending on their natures. And sizes.
They all do their best to keep him awake and focused... or to get into trouble while he's distracted and dozy, by harassing passers-by or snitching things from shops that he then has to extract and return, or pay for.
III. Sight-Seeing
The museum is fascinating, and he spends a full day just wandering around in there learning about the local history. The statues and architecture are pretty enough to gawp at for a while. The herbal shop just smells nice, and he does spend some of his funds on teas that are supposed to help with calming, with alertness, with nightmares. Might as well see if it does any good, right?
At least after they move to a proper hotel, it's clear Winter's enjoying the sights more, and he can be found poking his nose into various shops with anywhere from two to all six allowed pokemon hanging on and around him and getting in other people's way. He meets people he knows for lunches on restaurant patios, he listens to the ambient music of the city, and he people-watches, which is oddly soothing.
IV. Underground Isn't Awesome
Winter spends exactly one full day in the Underground, with Dugan chasing the poor cart-Mudsdale around while it tries to work, and both he and Leslie taking turns rescuing Entrapta's hair from the mud. The nightmares that night, of being shoved into small spaces for hours on end, and stalking through dimly lit tunnels with a rifle in hand shooting everyone he comes across, make it impossible to go back, but for that one day, it's not too bad.
Anyway, it is nice to have a day of actual, physical labor. It's kind of comfortable to use all those muscles for something other than hauling a heavy, metal arm around or for killing people. The arm, of course, requires some heavy-duty cleaning afterwards, and maybe even a tune-up. The latter he does sitting in the lobby of the hotel, where the light is best and there's a decent table to spread his small collection of tools out on, and making tiny adjustments between the flared plates-- and fending off Entrapta with sincere apologies for not letting her do it; he's not quite there, yet. She can definitely watch and give advice, though.
V. Familiar Forests
The highlight of the trip, it seems like, is their overnight visit to Eterna Forest. The sight of all that plantlife is soothing and the air is cool, the birds and animals are beautiful, and Winter finds it... familiar. The camping, the trees, the sounds of it all. He keeps turning to try and say something to people who aren't there, and he has flashes of climbing a tree with a rifle-- not a HYDRA rifle, an old one, a... Johnson? Of sharing a campfire with a group of tired but amiable men, their faces blurred by smoke and his hazy memory.
His dreams that night are calm, full of the certainty that he's making a difference, somehow. Keeping the people who matter safe.
On their way back through the maze of the woods, he finally remembers the face of the man he named Dugan after. That's a fun moment. "He needs a bowler hat," he says, staring at the Mudbray in a kind of amused consternation.
VI. Down-Time
Without a job or task, Winter isn't always entirely sure what to do with himself. He makes multiple rounds of the city's shops, even though he's running low on funds for buying anything more. He people-watches until he's restless. He brings out and plays with each pokemon he and Entrapta have, between them, even the pumpkin one he still doesn't trust after her attempt at mind-controlling Entrapta that very first night.
Then Entrapta drags him to the library, and he rediscovers that, at some point, he loved to read. And now he discovers that he still does. For the rest of the trip after that, half the time he has his nose in a sci fi or mystery novel. Anyone who asks will get an almost cheerful run-down of the plot of the latest one: "Time-traveling scientists," he says about one, sounding very nearly amused. "A young lady and her Furret are investigating a rash of thefts that seem to be done by ghost-types," of another, giving the cover a fond look. "Pokemon in space," he says of his favorite so far. He's buying a copy of that one, for sure.
Where: Sinnoh!
When: Duration of the August event
Summary: Catch-all for event stuff
Rating: Same as always for (lots of) PTSD troubles
I. The Journey Is The Worst Part
The airport isn't great, with so many people crammed into an enclosed space, but it's bearable. After a couple weeks in Goldenrod, he's a little more comfortable with crowds.
The plane, though. The fucking plane. It's small, it's cramped, it's noisy... and all his pokemon are put away for the trip, because that's the rules and they all assured him they'd be all right with the wait as long as he was. And then the cabin closes up and the pressure changes and the air conditioning starts to blast, and it's like he's back in the cryotank, in the moments before the freezing, only it keeps going and going and going and he never quite freezes.
He spends the whole trip breathing too fast and staring hard out the window, without even music to distract him, because the pokegear don't get radio stations while in the air.
II. Hostels Aren't Great, Either
For the first four days in Eterna, the whole group of them-- Winter, Entrapta, Catra, Thace, and Claudia-- take up a room in the hostel. And Winter barely sleeps. The bed built into the wall is too claustrophobic, too much like the portable cryotank (which, oh, hey, he hadn't actually remembered until trying to spend his first night in that little bed in the wall). When he sleeps there, at all, he winds up flailing out of nightmares after an hour or two. The floor means people accidentally step on him when they get up in the middle of the night. And dozing the chair out in the front room gets him prodded by staff.
It's not a great situation. Eventually between his sleeping problems and Thace's paranoia with the crowded room, they all wind up moving to an actual hotel room that they all pile into to share, but for a while, have fun running into a very sleepy Soldier exploring the city with one hand on Dugan the Mudbray or Grace the Absol, and one of his one of the others either bounding around him or riding sedately on his shoulder, depending on their natures. And sizes.
They all do their best to keep him awake and focused... or to get into trouble while he's distracted and dozy, by harassing passers-by or snitching things from shops that he then has to extract and return, or pay for.
III. Sight-Seeing
The museum is fascinating, and he spends a full day just wandering around in there learning about the local history. The statues and architecture are pretty enough to gawp at for a while. The herbal shop just smells nice, and he does spend some of his funds on teas that are supposed to help with calming, with alertness, with nightmares. Might as well see if it does any good, right?
At least after they move to a proper hotel, it's clear Winter's enjoying the sights more, and he can be found poking his nose into various shops with anywhere from two to all six allowed pokemon hanging on and around him and getting in other people's way. He meets people he knows for lunches on restaurant patios, he listens to the ambient music of the city, and he people-watches, which is oddly soothing.
IV. Underground Isn't Awesome
Winter spends exactly one full day in the Underground, with Dugan chasing the poor cart-Mudsdale around while it tries to work, and both he and Leslie taking turns rescuing Entrapta's hair from the mud. The nightmares that night, of being shoved into small spaces for hours on end, and stalking through dimly lit tunnels with a rifle in hand shooting everyone he comes across, make it impossible to go back, but for that one day, it's not too bad.
Anyway, it is nice to have a day of actual, physical labor. It's kind of comfortable to use all those muscles for something other than hauling a heavy, metal arm around or for killing people. The arm, of course, requires some heavy-duty cleaning afterwards, and maybe even a tune-up. The latter he does sitting in the lobby of the hotel, where the light is best and there's a decent table to spread his small collection of tools out on, and making tiny adjustments between the flared plates-- and fending off Entrapta with sincere apologies for not letting her do it; he's not quite there, yet. She can definitely watch and give advice, though.
V. Familiar Forests
The highlight of the trip, it seems like, is their overnight visit to Eterna Forest. The sight of all that plantlife is soothing and the air is cool, the birds and animals are beautiful, and Winter finds it... familiar. The camping, the trees, the sounds of it all. He keeps turning to try and say something to people who aren't there, and he has flashes of climbing a tree with a rifle-- not a HYDRA rifle, an old one, a... Johnson? Of sharing a campfire with a group of tired but amiable men, their faces blurred by smoke and his hazy memory.
His dreams that night are calm, full of the certainty that he's making a difference, somehow. Keeping the people who matter safe.
On their way back through the maze of the woods, he finally remembers the face of the man he named Dugan after. That's a fun moment. "He needs a bowler hat," he says, staring at the Mudbray in a kind of amused consternation.
VI. Down-Time
Without a job or task, Winter isn't always entirely sure what to do with himself. He makes multiple rounds of the city's shops, even though he's running low on funds for buying anything more. He people-watches until he's restless. He brings out and plays with each pokemon he and Entrapta have, between them, even the pumpkin one he still doesn't trust after her attempt at mind-controlling Entrapta that very first night.
Then Entrapta drags him to the library, and he rediscovers that, at some point, he loved to read. And now he discovers that he still does. For the rest of the trip after that, half the time he has his nose in a sci fi or mystery novel. Anyone who asks will get an almost cheerful run-down of the plot of the latest one: "Time-traveling scientists," he says about one, sounding very nearly amused. "A young lady and her Furret are investigating a rash of thefts that seem to be done by ghost-types," of another, giving the cover a fond look. "Pokemon in space," he says of his favorite so far. He's buying a copy of that one, for sure.
no subject
[Jeanie comes back from closely reading one of the display panels, chirping,]
Espurr espurr!
[Winter scoops her up into the crook of the metal arm.]
Jeanie's just here for the exhibits.
no subject
[Oh. The...exhibits though?] They are..? How did you know to come?