[X] Plan: I Wanna see Some Cool Phione
-[X] You want a chance at seeing a Phione up close, and you've certainly never done anything like a submarine tour in your entire life—and even if you aren't lucky enough to chance against them, watching the marine life that lives around Chocovine Town up close and personal might give you a lot of water Pokemon-related ideas. (Go on a submarine tour! Will cost some amount of money. Will likely give you training inspiration.)
--[X] This is not the place to try and get a grip on telepathy or telekinesis, which you should save for the wilderness according to Lucian's advice. This is, however, the perfect time to practice this empathy sorting stuff—while visiting a crowded place, you can try to do this in advance before going about whatever you're going to do. It's unfortunately too mentally tiring and time-consuming to do this for everything at your skill level, so choose wisely! (Reduce the amount of pain and stress that you would otherwise suffer while doing a particular activity. The quality of any success is likely to be dependent on the number of minds that you'll be in contact with and the likelihood that they will be sharing the same sorts of emotions at once.)
-[X] Coolness: The whole reason why you sought out the Contest Hall is because you're really excited to watch one with your friends for the first time ever. Attend one of the Super Rank Contests being held over the next few days. (Attend a Pokemon Contest! Will cost 500 Pokedollars, which includes a kiddie discount. The type of contest that you attend will depend on the placement of this action in your overall turn order. Will likely give you a lot of training inspiration. May spend more than 1 AP to attend more than one contest.)
-[X] Cleverness: The whole reason why you sought out the Contest Hall is because you're really excited to watch one with your friends for the first time ever. Attend one of the Super Rank Contests being held over the next few days. (Attend a Pokemon Contest! Will cost 500 Pokedollars, which includes a kiddie discount. The type of contest that you attend will depend on the placement of this action in your overall turn order. Will likely give you a lot of training inspiration. May spend more than 1 AP to attend more than one contest.)
"So you're only planning on hanging around Chocovine for three days?" asks Wilmer with a confused tilt to his head.
"Yeah," you answer as you stare at all of your kid friends, laid out as they are across the terminal screen. The first thing you'd immediately done after returning from the Contest Hall and checking the time was to return to the Pokemon Center to use one of the private booths—it'd been too early when you'd first gotten here for everyone to be awake, so now you could finally catch up with your friends. It was summer, after all—a lot of the boys had been sleeping in to recover from their exams. They look pretty much back to normal by now, full of energy like usual...except for Rodney, as the lazy kid never really seems to have a lot of it. "Our team stayed in Canalave for waaay too long, guys. Three days sounds fine for checking stuff out. Who knows how long we'll stay in Floaroma when we get there—I really wanna see what the Eterna Forest is like!"
"And the gym challenge."
You snort at Will's words. "Yeah, but that goes without saying. Think that's getting ahead of ourselves too with how people can get lost for weeks in there." You might be good at navigating a city, but a maze of dense forest was going to be a whole 'nother matter...
"I can't believe you went for Gardenia first instead of Roark," Rodney states, amused. "...actually, that kinda reminds me. A bunch of kids from other towns and stuff have started passing by the school on the way to Oreburgh for the gym. Most of them have been pretty meh, but there was this really loud kid followed up by this weird girl a couple of days ago while you were still on that boat...poor Harry and Chrissy got demolished, heh. But still, I thought you would've went for the easier path like all the other Jubilife area kids are doing since it's just a day or two to Oreburgh from Jubilife instead of the slog to Eterna. Y'know, straight for scaring the crap out of the son after the dad..."
"I'm not like that," you insist. The sharp-eyed boy simply squints at his terminal camera without saying anything. "I'm not!"
He raises an eyebrow. "And what're you planning to do to Gardenia for a free Underground Kit from Byron?"
"Um..." You look away. "...stuff."
You slap Maynot on the head as he begins to chortle. Not now.
"I have so many mixed feelings about this," Steve remarks with a strange expression on his face. "On one hand, I'm gonna see Mal go crazy to destroy my favorite gym leader. On the other hand, I'm gonna see Mal go crazy and destroy my favorite gym leader. The horror and hype is real, guys."
"I'm not crazy!" you snap. "I don't even do it on purpose, I just—ugh, whatever. I'm just so glad to be back on land after that stupid ship."
"Was it really that awful?" Nathan asks, the spiky-haired boy oddly fidgety. "I mean, you got to battle and show off, right? That doesn't sound too bad..."
Your first human friend was so incorrigible sometimes—you sigh in exasperation, rubbing the side of your face. "You tell me if you'd friggin' stomach getting called cute every five seconds for no reason!" you begin to rant. "Even when I was showing off and beating their as—butts into the ground they wouldn't shut up about how 'adorable' I was all the time, it was HORRIBLE—"
"But you are kinda cute, though."
WHAT.
You stare in absolute betrayal at the screen as Wilmer thoughtlessly looks around, seemingly bewildered with the sudden silence that has set over the call in the wake of his very absentminded remark. "What? Huh? What'd I say? Aren't I right, isn't Mal kind of—"
"Dude, Wilmer..." Steve laughs to interrupt the silence. "Didn't think you saw Mal in that way...say Wilmer, you gotta crush?"
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
"—BWAHAHAHAHAHA—"
"Holy crap, dude."
"Wow, bro. WOW." Steve shakes his head in judgement.
"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!" Wilmer waves his hands up in the air in a panic as the call explodes into a furor of hilarity and extreme teasing. "GUYS! GUYS, SHUT UP! IT WASN'T LIKE—"
"Hahaha—Mal's face is like a friggin' tomato." Rodney's grin is pure evil. "Aaaaand saved. Gonna put this riiiight next to her scaring the pants off of Byron for the history books—"
"DUDEEEEE—"
Steve tumbles over in hysterics."—AHAHAHAHAHA—WILMER, YOU FREAKING MORON!" Will's glasses have fallen off from laughing too hard. "YOU sh*tTY IDIOT, YOU BROKE HER!"
"SWEAR WORD
—AND I DIDN'T MEAN IT LIKE THAT, PLEASE—""Oh skies, she still isn't saying anything. Hey, earth to Mal. Mal? Mal, hello?" The lazy boy waves his hand a few times in front of his camera for effect even as Wilmer desperately tries to defend himself, to no avail. "Yo, any of Mal's Pokemon still there? Is somebody gonna break her out of it? Hey?"
There was a distinct problem with that, as not only had Coro rolled over onto to lay on the top of her head from giggling so hard, and not only was Maynot banging his paws against the ground with tears streaming out of his eyes as the pink Pokemon laughs his ass off, but Sparkplug's calm nature has finally met its match. For the first time since you first came across them, their levitation has completely failed—the steel-type Pokemon had landed with a thunk onto the floor as a metallic stuttering wheeze bursts out of them in sheer amusem*nt.
Not that you have noticed—you have completely stopped engaging with reality since Steve opened his dumb f*cking mouth to destroy you in a single sentence.
It takes you quite a while to get over this. Terribly embarrassed, you immediately book it from the call and decide to find LITERALLY ANYTHING f*ckING ELSE TO DO to get your mind off of that sh*t.
Wilmer and Steve are on your f*cking sh*tlist. You are going to have your revenge one day...
And because everyone had been so distracted, not one person noticed that Nathan had been oddly silent the entire time.
---
WOW, YOU KNOW WHAT SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA?! SUBMARINES! SUBMARINES AND HOPEFULLY RUNNING ACROSS STUPIDLY RARE MIGRATING WATER POKEMON, THAT SURE SOUNDS LIKE A WONDERFUL IDEA!
...is what your brain decides on as an immediate distraction and curiosity to focus on after that particular horror-inducing event. You steadfastly ignore all and any snickering from your friends as you force march yourself to the most crowded booth that has been set up by the Chocovine's port, and you are so thrown off by trying desperately not to think about your call with the boys that you don't even hesitate to shell out the 800 pokedollar fee that a single ticket requires. You find yourself surprisingly lucky to nab the last seat on a particular submarine despite how long the line was, though you're mildly annoyed that you're told to keep your Pokemon in their pokeballs at all times. You understand—that sort of compressed space would be cramped as hell if everybody was allowed to keep their friends sitting about. Still, at least you would still always be able to sense them being at your side, their presences always standing out to you like beacons shining out from your waist...
And also, you'd stop hearing how much they were still f*cking laughing at you, despite their amusem*nt still very strongly coming through. You resist the urge to bang against all three of the filled pokeballs slotted into your trainer's belt with a frustrated fist, even as you and around thirty-ish other people—kids and adults alike—are directly led to a specific drop-off point by the water and into a middling-sized submarine. After climbing down the ladder last, you find that the interior kind of reminds you of a tight and heavily reinforced bus with visibly large rivets in the walls (heh) and giant oval-shaped windows—probably so that even the Pokemon attached to people's belts can see. You don't feel nervous in spite of the obvious dangers involved with heading underwater in an admittedly well-made vehicular tin can—you had been tuning out most of everything to get ahold of yourself, but you keep one ear open as the tour guy explains all of the various safety precautions that had been set up. Perhaps the one that catches your interest the most is what the middle-aged tanned man explains as the biggest and most final panic button that each and every Chocovine submarine is equipped with—a pokeball carrying a very attentive Tentacruel that has been taught Dive and the understanding of how to use that specialized move to draw the largest possible bubble of air around itself that it can.
Chocovine's trained crew of Tentacools and Tentacruels are apparently very proud of their work as submarine safety specialists—the tour guide even claims that a number of them are patrolling underwater as he speaks. Go figure.
You settle down as the guy continues to blabber on, talking more about the Phione in general and their connection to some mythical Pokemon named Manaphy. Normally you'd be all for learning about that sort of thing, but you're still...you just breathe for a little bit.
Wilmer was still on your sh*tlist, but you were pretty sure the chubby and well-meaning boy was genuine when he insisted that he didn't have a crush on you—you've always known him as your friend that was most willing to squee over adorable things like his Glameow after grooming her himself, so he was just probably being...himself or some sh*t. (You REFUSE to believe that you are cute by default.)
Steve was just a sh*tlord for giving you a heart attack like that, and so was everyone else for going along with him. Rodney was going on your sh*tlist too for that picture that he supposedly took, now that you think about it. You will end all of them.
You sigh, rubbing your head. All these people close up to you were stabbing a number of blades into your skull again, and you weren't even close to taking off from the sounds of it. That tour guide had started getting into the Phione's usual drifting patterns through the ocean and how the warm tides coincidentally lined up just right with Chocovine Town every single year...if the other adults and kids that you could see—some of whom were visibly grinning or even vibrating in excitement—were hurting you this much right now, what more when you all actually head into the water? Pure numbers might be painful in their own way, but even a little distance counts for a lot in keeping your headaches down...which you don't have any of right now.
...
Hmm.
Despite being the last to enter the submarine, you've been able to take the farthest back seat—and the lady that you'd been forced to sit beside was clearly enamored with what the tour guide was talking about. No one would be looking at you even if you kept your eyes open, so you lift your hands to your temple on instinct and
<![if !ie]> focus. <![endif]> You think...you guess that excitement and wonder were similar enough feelings, right? You could handle both of those at the same time, maybe, though you might end up lumping them together.
You <![if !ie]> stare <![endif]> outside the window, ignoring the appearance of yellow-gold light in the reflection of the glass to look down and visualize that you're able to pick out the specific waves that gently slap against the hull of the submarine.
<![if !ie]> ...oh. <![endif]>
Oh jeez. That's a LOT better, actually! You're surprised by the sheer wave of anticipation that washes out most of the pain that you've been feeling—you start vibrating yourself. You just can't help it, you're grinning—you're going to see deep underwater for the first time in your ENTIRE LIFE! Who gives a sh*t about cuteness and crushes?! This was going to be f*ckING AMAZING—
—okay, wait. Hold the f*ck up.
You try to get ahold of the additional unnatural emotions—you are excited, but not...you shouldn't possess the excitement of thirty other people at the same time. You have to remind yourself that a lot of this is not yours. You don't have a lot of experience with how your own feelings can get swept in with the emotions of a bunch of others at once beyond a vague suspicion about how easily you'd shifted during particular high-adrenaline points of your period with the gang, but you try to keep the wave from mixing too much with your own previously buried excitement.
You're okay with your excitement being ignited, but you don't exactly want to turn into a hyperactive bonfire either. The pain being nearly entirely banished for a moment while the rest was being suppressed by this...this endless current of enthusiasm was a humongous relief, and you kind of feel like that might be why you almost started bouncing out of your seat there. You had an extra chink in your already weak and untrained armor, and it all just came rushing in at once...
You frown, not really looking at the water anymore, as you try to...build a barrier? Erect some walls? Draw a line in your head between what you think is yours and what you believe belongs to the other guys that you're with? Or something like those things. You're not...you're successful at being figuring out where your excitement was and where the echoing eagerness of the other people happened to be intersecting with that, at being able to stop them from feeling like a lump but individual people...oh, there were thirty three people on board right now, not counting yourself or the hazier signatures of their balled-up Pokemon. But you're not very successful at actually stopping the extra feelings from mixing together with your own. You're still vibrating in your seat, for one thing—you still feel the urge to get up and yell, and it's only your completely natural feeling of sheer embarrassment at the thought of doing that that helps you keep yourself in check.
You're not really paying attention as you go about doing this, so you don't notice when the top of the submarine seals up with a pressurized noise. You do notice when the submarine begins to submerge itself, your still-glowing eyes widening as the waves slowly begin to reach up to the window you'd been staring blankly at. You quickly relinquish your active senses before the lady in a floppy hat that you're sitting next to starts to stare out the window herself in the nick of time. The excitement stops being so overwhelming even as these distinct points drift back into being a general haze in your brain...and then it transforms with your own feelings. Your mouth slowly opens at what you see.
It's...majestic. You are swept away in a (since your active senses aren't tuned up, thankfully much less overwhelming) wave of fascination and amazement, and this time you let go to join it. How could you have missed out on this sight over the course of your entire life? A school of glowing Finneon drifts on by as the submarine proceeds. The tour guide seems content with his silence as people hold up individual pokeballs to the windows. A ripple of similar wonder joins that of the other submarine passengers in your mind, this time from a completely familiar source—your friends.
You are completely taken. You are the passive channel for so much curiosity and awe at once, so nothing escapes your sight.
You...almost even feel as though you catch a glimpse of other views, differing perception points other than your own eyes. But that can't be right...maybe you're hallucinating.
...or maybe you should drop Lucian a message about that. Oops?
On the outwardly yellow submarine's journey to hopefully find a group of Phione drifting by, you end up coming across and studying a lot of Pokemon in their natural habitats as they go about their everyday lives.
Which Pokemon do you end up seeing the most of and drawing a lot of inspiration from?
Vote for as many options as you which. The top three winners will be chosen.
[ ] The Tentacool line.
[ ] The Shellos line.
[ ] The Finneon line.
[ ] The Qwilfish line.
[ ] The Corsola line.
[ ] The Wailmer line.
[ ] The Staryu line.
---
There are additional consequences to messing around with your psychic abilities, sometimes.
