PALACE GAME: Round 3

[cultfavorite]

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?

Comments

[cultfavorite]

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.

[peacetalks]

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]

[cultfavorite]

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.

[peacetalks]

[what does the sign say...]

[cultfavorite]

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

[peacetalks]

[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]

[cultfavorite]

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?

[peacetalks]

[... checks the lump?]