an otherworld tourist's view of sinnoh

[fingersandteeth]

Who: Steven Durante + YOU
Where: All over Sinnoh
When: During the Sinnoh Trip
Summary: Steven does the tourist thing and then also interviews other tourists for the radio
Rating: Probably Teen? (Anything too mature goes to the inbox
Warning: I'll probably add new prompts to this when the second Friday's field trip occurs.


I. The Airport

Steven, at least, has plenty of experience with air travel, even if he hasn't been on a plane since... well, since before his life went to fairy hell. So he's not at all bothered by the airport himself, especially since nobody's making him take off his shoes and dispose of any liquids. It reminds him of the couple of times he'd flown when he was still a kid, back in the 20th century. It was... kind of nice, actually.

Still. Just because he's familiar with planes doesn't mean everyone else will be, so if he spots anyone looking freaked out he'll go over to them and say, "Hey. It's going to be fine. People use these all the time in my world. It's weird but it works."

II. The Resort Hotel

Oh. Oh yes. This is exactly where Steven wants to be for the next two weeks, thank fuck for ridiculously wealthy boyfriends. Sure, he's got enough tucked away that he could have easily afforded the traditional inn without Jack--something which appeals to his weeby heart--but the resort hotel is so much better. He laughs and flops down onto the bed, which is almost (but not quite) unbearably soft.

At various times over the next two weeks he can easily be found in the resort hotel: dining at the restaurant, drinking at the bar, swimming in the pool, working out in the weight room--even, at one point, taking a spa day for himself.

Honestly? Given all the bullshit he's had to deal with since the weird weekend, he's needed this taste of luxury.

III. Working Vacation

Of course, Steven isn't going to spend all his time living it up at the resort hotel. Surprisingly enough, this is a working vacation for him: he's recording material for a series of short segments on 'An Otherworld Tourist's View of Sinnoh,' to be aired on the Town Channel, and that means visiting basically every tourist location on offer. The Underground, the Museum, the statues, the Old Chateau... if it's in the guide book, Steven's going.

And if he spots someone he knows is from another world, he's going over to them, smile, hold up his recorder and say, "How would you like to be on the radio?"

IIIa. Floaroma Town

The end of a long, busy day finds Steven kneeling down in the meadows, waiting. Patience... isn't always his strong suit. But even if he's not a good person, Steven Durante's pretty good at doing gentle and kind for people. They're two of the most useful tools he has.

Is that enough for Shaymin? Hard to tell. Steven's going to try anyway.

Comments

IIIa

[zenryokubatankyu]

[So this trip is off to a good start so far. Floaroma Town is a pretty calming place. and Osomatsu likes it pretty well. He's never been the best at being entirely calm and patient, but he likes to consider himself a nice person. The meadows are pretty, anyhow, and near the end of a long busy day, he finds himself back in the meadow.

That's where he sees one of his friends. Or someone he considers a friend, at least. Work friend? ...He likes Steven. He's kneeling in the meadow and it seems like he's waiting for something. Hm. So Osomatsu walks over and speaks up calmly, kneeling down beside him.]

Hey, Steven.

What'cha doin'?

Re: IIIa

[fingersandteeth]

Hey Oso.

[His voice is just as calm and very quiet. He glances up at his coworker and gives him a small smile, before looking back in front of him.]

Waiting to see if Shaymin shows up.

[zenryokubatankyu]

Shaymin...

Oh, that's the...the legendary Pokemon? I..think? I dunno much...

Mind if I watch with ya?

[He's already making himself comfortable anyway. To his credit, he's at least keeping things calm.]

[fingersandteeth]

I think so, yeah, [Steven says quietly, still looking ahead.] Legendary... basically sounds like it's the pokemon version of cryptid to me.

And no. I don't mind. As long as you can keep quiet and still with me.

[zenryokubatankyu]

Right? But everyone keeps saying it exists, so...

[He keeps looking forward as well.]

No one's ever said I'm good at that before, but there's a first time for everything.

[He's at least mature enough to try when it matters most, like right now. He really wants to see the PokeCryptid. And brag that he did to Kara.]

II

[thedifferencebetween]

Thank god for money!

Jack honestly doesn't care about a new region. The way he sees it, the assholes on the rest of this planet want to keep them out? Fine, their loss. Which probably they're realizing, with this little venture. But it's a vacation, there's bound to be local booze, and Steven's all excited about it. Plus...luxury hotel. Of course Jack's gonna spring for that, is he expected to stay in the kind of place unwashed teens on bullshit self-finding trips stayed in? Or the cutesy little anime cliche? Please.

So here he is. He's not big on public swimming, but there's a fancy ass bar with specialty drinks at the pool, and the dogs and his boyfriend like the water. And he can enjoy lounging on a plush poolside lounge in his shorts and partially unbuttoned poolside shirt, sipping some over-sized drink full of liquors he doesn't know how to pronounce while he watches his boyfriend enjoy himself.

Re: II

[fingersandteeth]

Given that said enjoyment involves a shirtless boyfriend who after their little Sevii getaway and their subsequent beach day in Fuschia finally has lost the very last traces of the sallowness he'd come to Johto with and is now a healthy and entirely natural bronze color? It's kind of a win-win situation. But eventually Steven swims up to the edge of the pool to prop himself against it, on crossed arms, smiling up at Jack even as he blinks nearsightedly at his slightly blurry boyfriend.

"How's the cocktail, bebe?" he asks, fondly.

[thedifferencebetween]

"Not hating it!"

Jack makes a toasting motion with his glass and winks before settling back in his pool chair.

"Little creamy for a pool drink, but eh. Not like I'm gonna be exerting myself here or anything. I just got a whole lotta nothing planned. It's nice. Really feel like I can relax, ya know?"

Steven can do all the touristy stuff for his...whatever. Thing on the radio. And he'll probably have a great time, and Jack will hear about it all from his boyfriend. No reason for him to go anywhere.

[fingersandteeth]

"I do," Steven agrees, lazily letting the rest of his body float to the top of the water, extending behind him to show off his broad back. "It's-- nice. Just to get away from everything. To get away from the company and all that internal memo sniping. You've got the right idea, holding yourself aloof from all that."

He chuckles. "I say that and I'm still recording things for the radio, but that's fun work. I get to ramble on about the thing I find interesting and edit into something coherent once we're home. It doesn't count. And I'm almost done with everything in Eterna City itself. Just need to swing by the Gym later and do the fake challenge. After that it's just day trips, to the Old Chateau and Mt Coronet. Plenty of time to mess around with you around that."

[thedifferencebetween]

"Yeah, but you like doing that kinda shit. It's basically still vacation stuff for you." And it's good to love your work. That's the dream, probably, for normal people.

"And I learned my lesson first time around - don't get bogged down or caught up in company politics. Head down, hard work, nobody's throwing you under the bus or pointing a finger at you when it all goes to shit." He'd done it when he was just a cog in the wheel at Hyperion and it had helped him slip right up the ladder to the middle without much issue.

"Don't worry about it, babe, you have fun. I'm fine just bumming around the resort. You know me! I'll take a lot of naps, drink a ton, and probably eat way too much super rich food. It's how I do!"

III

[notyourgoddess]

You can totally locate Maya in the museum at some point. She'll be there a lot looking over the exhibits. Taking notes in front of the legendary pokemon stuff. She'll look over when she hears Steven.

"Hey. Uh, depends on what I'm being asked to speak about I guess."

Re: III

[fingersandteeth]

"Oh, right," Steven says. "I'm doing a thing for work while I'm here: a series of short segments to air on the Town Channel come September called 'An Otherworld Tourist's View of Sinnoh,' sort of a travelogue thing, and I thought it would be nice to add some other points of view--because we're all from such different other worlds. I'd mostly be asking you what you found most interesting about being here, if it's changed the way you view the world of pokemon differently... things like that."

[notyourgoddess]

"That sounds like an interesting project. Sure, I'll give my point of view."

[fingersandteeth]

Steven grins at her. "Thanks," he says, before speaking into his recorder. "Maya the Siren; interviewed 8/1X at the Eterna City museum." He waits a moment to catch her eye, then says to her and the recorder both, "Maya, it's been a few days since we arrived in Eterna. Do you remember your first impression of the city?"

He holds it out toward her.

[notyourgoddess]

She'll take the moment to compose her thoughts as he does this.

"My first impression...probably excitement and just plan curiosity. It's not every day we get to see a new city, let alone a new region. I wanted to start looking around as soon as we got here."

III

[schachmeister]

"Am I really the kind of person people want to listen to on the radio?"

Steven had happened to run into Armin at the museum, where Armin had been doing nerd things (as always). After exchanging some small-talk, those standard 'how do you do's and 'how have you been's of friendship, Steven had invited Armin to be on his show, which is where we are now -- with Armin eyeing Steven's recorder with slight uncertainty. Nothing against Steven, of course! Armin is just not the sort of person who naturally feels at ease talking to a group.

"How does it work? If I speak into this, will people immediately be able to hear me?"

Armin's closest understanding of broadcasting is their own little Outworlder network, and that more or less works like that.

Re: III

[fingersandteeth]

"Oh no, no," Steven assures him. "I mean, if we were at the radio station they would, minus an extremely negligible amount of lag, but this is prerecorded stuff. You speak into here and it'll make a recording of the sound and the later, once we're home, I'll go into the room where I keep my sound editing equipment and then I'll take all the different recordings I made and I'll put them all together, with some narration in between them. And, well, I think you'd be interesting to listen to on the radio. I like listening to you, after all."

He shrugs. "You don't have to, really, but I thought it could be more interesting for the listeners to have more than just me speaking for us."

[schachmeister]

The fact that it wasn't immediately broadcasted helped settle Armin's nerves some. If Steven actually needed to edit everything together, that would mean he could remove Armin's part if it really ended up being a complete disaster, right? Or remove parts from it. They could even redo things if needed. Maybe Armin could practise some lines first?

(which, yes, is exactly how he had hemmed and hawed before making all his network entries at first. Anything text-based got several read overs before he had posted it, and he had always mentally rehearsed all his videos before posting. Thankfully he wasn't that fussy about it anymore these days.)

"No, no. That's all right. I'd like to help you out if I can. What... what should I talk about though?"

[fingersandteeth]

All of those things are things that Steven can and will do if they need to. It'll be fine.

"Well," Steven says, thoughtfully. "You were the person who came up with the Sinnoh penpal project, which I suspect has a lot to do with why we're here. Maybe you could talk about that first, because I don't actually know if the local people back in Kanto and Johto know about the penpal project."

[schachmeister]

"A-alright."

Not that Armin thinks he did anything special there. He just asked Lance if it would be possible to send letters to people outside of Johto and Kanto. Lance was the one who had done a lot of the organising. Armin had just wanted to talk to different people, explain and hopefully convince them that the Otherworlders were really no different than the people of this world.

"Should I-- should I start talking?"

II

[breakyourlife]

Thanks to Jules 'heroically' retrieving his money after the hacker incident, Steve is all set to spend their vacation in the in the fanciest hotel money can buy.

Luckily for the elder Steven it's big enough to avoid running into any undesirables most of the time. Unfortunately, it's not quite big enough to avoid it all together. Steve shoves up next to him at the bar, dressed up in an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses.

"A glass of your finest soda, garçon. And one for my friend here."

Judging from the eyeroll from the bartender this isn't his first time serving Steve.

Re: II

[fingersandteeth]

"Make mine hard," he adds to the bartender, but honestly, he's in a fairly good humor with Steve Palchuck lately. Funny how seeing the kid get his savings fleeced from him for being a little idiot works to help Steven get over his resentment for that whole 'Giving Armin a Concussion' thing.`

"How are you enjoying Sinnoh?" he asks, as he takes his somewhat adulterated soda from the bartender. "Oh, and how did talking with Jules go? Did you get any money back?"

[breakyourlife]

"And mine!" Steve chips in quickly. The bartender's only response to that is a flat stare as he places a regular soda in front of the teen.

"P1500," he tells him. Steve places the money in his hand along with a paltry tip that may very well explain the bartender's apparent distaste for him.

Honestly, Steve's slightly put out at not being served booze himself. He's tried a few times, but no luck yet. It doesn't seem fair he's expected to live like an adult but he doesn't get any of the perks alongside it.

"Yeah, Jules got it back. He's a pretty awesome dude." Apparently he's still clueless about his other identity if he's talking him up right now. "Just as well. Eterna's all right, but this hotel's the best part about it. And the gym. Otherwise it seems kind of average. Why would I want to go to a museum? It's not like I'm in school."

[fingersandteeth]

"Well," Steven says, surreptitiously tipping a slosh of his own soda into Steve P's glass while the bartender's back in turned. "Sometimes when it's been over a decade since you were in school, you find yourself missing learning things."

He takes a sip of the rum and coke. "And Jules is a good guy. He's from mine and Tyler's world, did you know? But I never knew him before coming here, no more than Tyler and I know each other. I do have one note of advice, though."

And here he lowers his voice.

"If you want the bartenders to make exceptions for you and you don't have a fake ID handy, you need to bribe them, mijo. The staff here is pretty damn obliging, but you have to pay them first."

(Oddly enough, it feels right to call him that. Like with Connie and London, Steven feels very much uncle-adjacent in regards to Steve Palchuck and he might as well acknowledge it.)

[breakyourlife]

"Lame..." Steve hits back dismissively, but there's no bite in his tone thanks to the miraculous appearance of alcohol in his glass. This is an exciting new development for this vacation. His drink probably just barely counts as alcoholic with this much soda, but he doesn't care. It doesn't even occur to him.

"Why are there so many people from your world? How does that even come up if you don't know each other?"

The only thing Steve can say with certainty is there's no one here from Arcadia. Not that he minds that for the most part. Aside from his mom there aren't many people worth missing.

Certainly no one that would help him out in a situation like this, though in fairness most people he spends much time with in Arcadia are high schoolers. Steve does look a little baffled at the advice though.

"What do you mean? I tipped the guy. What more does he want?"