cultfavorite | PALACE GAME: Round 3

You open your eyes—

You're standing in the vast lobby of a corporate building, facing the reception desk, where a Team Galactic Grunt is stationed—she's currently on the phone, though, and occupied. A few other grunts move through the lobby, looking as if they're on their way to their next assignment. All of them look identical. And if you watch their paths for a while, none of them actually end up leaving the room.

The walls are a bright, metallic, sterile blue with white, and the floor is made up of gleaming silver metal tiles emblazoned here and there with a gold logo. The reception desk is slightly to your right, and to the left of that there are three doors in the far wall in front of you.

To the right of the reception desk, there's a little area with a vending machine, a large ottoman to sit on, a potted plant, and . . . a dotaku? With a face? It's sitting resting on the floor next to the vending machine, and it's staring right at you with those red eyes.

Directly to your right, closer to the front door, there is a glowing green circle on the floor with a sign on the wall next to it.

What will you d—

Wait. Your phone is buzzing. Whether or not you had it with you back in the prison, you do now, whether in your pocket, in your hand, whatever. It's on your person, and it's vibrating demandingly for attention. If you choose to ignore it, a mechanical voice emanating from it begins literally saying the word buzz! buzzzzzz! buuuzzzzzz! in an increasingly irritated tone.

Check your phone?

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"Right, right. You left it right next to the fridge! Might want to wipe it off. You know how it is in there. Ta!"

She gives a flippant wave of her hand and turns to leave again. Key Item get?!

Good day...

[he looks the keycard over. how mysterious.

time to head back to the warp pad and see if there's anything it looks like it could be used for]

It does look like that card could be tapped on that sensor to activate the warp pad!

[tries holding it in front of the sensor? is that how this works?]

Beep! The light turns green! Step onto the warp pad?

[steps on it! away we go?]

You step onto the warp pad. There's a strange sensation in your body, almost like the feeling of standing in a quickly descending elevator, but different in a subtle and uncanny way—but it doesn't last long. In a blink, you're now standing in an entirely different hallway than the one you were just in, on a different yellow warp pad. The sensor on the wall mounted near this one holds a steady green light.

. . . Maybe "entirely different" isn't the right phrase, because this wing looks almost exactly like the last one did otherwise. There is again a door on the left, a door on the right, and a yellow warp pad across the hall in front of you. Like the other one, it comes with a sensor on the wall displaying a red light and a sign on the wall nearby.

"Two-way transportation"... so, if I'm lost, I shall have to remember the way I came.

[time to explore more rooms. LEFT door this time]

The door slides open onto a large open-floor office. There are three rows of desks with short partitions between each one, each with its own corporate laptop and monitor. Most are quietly powered down, but there is the hum in the room of machines that are on and working. This place is otherwise quiet. No loud voices while people are working! Or even while people aren't here working, apparently.

[aymeric will finish his coffee and quietly explore to see if there is anything of note besides technology that he is woefully under-educated to utilize properly--and if not, head out to the door on the RIGHT]

Rotoron probably should have taught him how to use a laptop after all, huh. There are three of them that are on, and the screens are tabbed to documents that can be read without knowing how to use the laptop, at least as much as can be read without scrolling. There is that! But Aymeric is also free to say fuck that and leave.

[reading he can do. aymeric will pick one of the laptops and squint at the screen to see what's on display]

It looks like an academic document being accessed (possibly illegally) from a database. The scanned page reads:

Once every 1,000 years, the singing of a pure voice will rouse Jirachi from its near-perpetual slumber. It wakes for only seven days. A legend states that Jirachi will make true any wish that is written on notes attached to its head when it awakens. If this Pokémon senses danger, it will fight without awakening.

Curious...

[glances at another laptop, to see if there's something similar]

There sure is! The second one reads:

A young man, callow and foolish in innocence, came to own a sword.
With it, he smote Pokémon, which gave sustenance, with carefree abandon.
Those not taken as food, he discarded, with no afterthought.
The following year, no Pokémon appeared. Larders grew bare.
The young man, seeking the missing Pokémon, journeyed afar.
Long did he search. And far and wide, too, until one he did find.
Asked he, "Why do you hide?" To which the Pokémon replied...
"If you bear your sword to bring harm upon us, with claws and fangs, we will exact a toll."
"From your kind we will take our toll, for it must be done."
"Done it must be to guard ourselves and for it, I apologize."
To the skies, the young man shouted his dismay.
"In having found the sword, I have lost so much."
"Gorged with power, I grew blind to Pokémon being alive."
"I will never fall savage again. This sword I denounce and forsake."
"I plead for forgiveness, for I was but a fool."
So saying, the young man hurled the sword to the ground, snapping it.
Seeing this, the Pokémon disappeared to a place beyond seeing...

These writings read like the sort of mythology one finds on dragons... I suppose there are some similarities.

[looking at the last computer]

An apt observation, considering which Pokemon it's theorized that legend is about. It's the same as this last one, in fact:

There is one Hisuian verse that tells of a powerful light creating a deep shadow. I imagine that this deep shadow is Giratina. This Pokémon is said to live in a world on the reverse side of ours, where common knowledge is distorted and strange. It was banished for its violence. It silently gazed upon the old world from the Distortion World.

Hmm...

[aymeric silently ponders on what saturn has said of his former leader, and wonders if these sorts of legends influenced him--and how the cost it must have taken still weigh on saturn's conscience.

he heads out to the other room in the hallway]

The door slides open onto . . . a bedroom? Kind of. Not exactly. This isn't anything like a bedroom in a house, but rather a corporate rest room (not restroom) of sorts: there is nothing in here but two cozy beds, pink-and-white sheeted. It looks downright homey and inviting compared to the rest of this place, even if the floor and walls are still gleaming futuristic silver. It's clean and relaxing in here, miraculously.

The only other thing in this room is a sign posted on the wall between the two beds.

[what does the sign say...]

The sign reads:
Team Galactic Nap Room
Ensure the bed is occupied before getting into it!

[wait, ensure that the bed IS occupied? what kind of nap system do you use here???

anyway, aymeric is checking under the bed to see if there's anything noteworthy]

There are two beds, and this first one is just a bed, with nothing under it on the floor. Though, is that a lump in the covers?

[... checks the lump?]

PALACE GAME: Round 3

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