Little Scriven Scrivener's Library

[Phoenixsong]

"Don't see what the big deal is, anyway," Leaf huffed. "I'm fourteen, but my friends and I have done tons of traveling and training and knocking a bunch of thugs on their asses. The way I figure it, if someone was confident enough that they could help, and the Voice even bothered asking in the first place, then they've got every reason to be here. Not like anyone's a literal baby, right?" Her tail swished jauntily, managing to mostly disguise an irritated twitch.

Espurr turned to the robot thing, who had just offered to... arm wrestle? Eh, why not.

"I can go next," she said. "If you were offering, that is..."

Leaf smiled at Espurr when she stepped up; she would've been game for a little arm wrestling, but even with the weird bendy-grippy stuff it probably made more sense to let someone with, y'know, actual arms give it a shot. And anyway arm wrestling was cute and all, but she could do that back home whenever. If she was gonna be a pokémon now then she wanted to know how to battle, and it sounded like that meant figuring out how to get in to that dojo.

"Pardon me, you also asked about helping out at the Ranger Union? That is most altruistic of you! I should caution you that the rangers only recruit strong pokémon with good reputations, however! ...Please forgive my presumptuousness, but if Miss Anubel has offered to sponsor you, that may not be sufficient! I am more than happy to stop at the HQ on our way, but – my apologies – please do not anticipate that you will walk out with ranger badges, sirs and misses."

"Why wouldn't a mayor be a good enough sponsor? Amelia said everyone here trusts her. Who would we even ask, if not Mayor Enubel?"

 

[canisaries]

"You guys can all go before me," Andre said. "I'll go stretch my vines for a while."

He looked around and found a desk with writing supplies - exactly what he needed. He extended his two vines out of his withers and cautiously grabbed a pencil and a blank sheet of paper. Against the wooden desk, he began to draw... what would he draw? Something elementary - cubes.

They were very, very, shaky.

Andre slumped in disappointment. He knew to fear it ahead of time, but this confirmed it - all of his dexterity was gone. He couldn't draw. The one thing he was good at, and he couldn't do it anymore.

And it was of course at that moment that inspiration reared itself like a lapras emerging from the sea. Everything around him and inside him was inspiring, and he wanted to replicate it, to express it. But he couldn't.

No, no, don't lose hope. Maybe you can do it with your hooves.

Andre transferred the pencil to his right forehoof. He willed the grasp it like a pencil ought to be grasped rather than grabbing it into a fist. He began to draw more cubes.

They were worse than the ones he'd drawn with his vines.

Andre balled his fists, only he didn't have any, so he did the next best thing and coiled his vines. He clenched his teeth and breathed deeply.

He then took the paper into his vines, and crunched it up into a ball and dropped it in the trash bin. Defeated, he simply began to play around with his vines. Any exercise with them was probably good. Not that he'd ever draw with them as well as he used to draw with his hands.

He'd have to find something else to do for a living here.

 

[Jackie Cat]

Gil, despite their certainty that they would not trounce the newcomers, easily trounced the newcomers.

"Oh my," they said, after another victory. "I dearly hope you do not take offence, I did not mean to be unsporting! Perhaps you are still enfeebled by whatever phenomenon waylaid you? Or perhaps I have grown stronger than I had realised..."

If Gil was a benchmark for 'very modest' strength, the party had a great deal of training yet to go before they'd become ranger material, it seemed.

"Not to worry! I shall protect you on the journey south. I have made it many times."

"Why wouldn't a mayor be a good enough sponsor? Amelia said everyone here trusts her. Who would we even ask, if not Mayor Enubel?"

Gil waved their palms in polite distress. "Miss Enubel would be a most lovely sponsor! However... It's just that... Chief Ayda of the Ranger Union might not... That is to say—"

They fidgeted anxiously with their cap.

"Miss Ayda may believe, in her opinion, that Miss Enubel has 'her head in the clouds'...? And also, in simple matter of fact, you have no kind of history of conduct or record of achievement for Miss Enubel to refer to, nor do you have knowledge of these parts. I am merely warning you that Miss Ayda may not accept your applications until you've proven yourself by other means!"

They shouldered their satchel.

"With that said, are you all ready to depart?"

 

[canisaries]

Andre hadn't expected much - he was a twink as a human and a twink as a pokémon - but losing so easily was still a hit to his self-esteem. HE would've hoped he could've put up at least a little bit of resistance. Maybe vines were the wrong choice...? No, if the others were beaten easily, there was no reason to assume his hooves would have been better. He wondered how long it would take to get used to using either appendages as his new limbs.

"With that said, are you all ready to depart?"

"I am! And I would hope the others are, too," he said, glancing around. "There may be more of us already waiting for us in Frontier Town, if they've all received the same suggestions."

 

[Hap]

"With that said, are you all ready to depart?"

Ridley cast a considering eye over his pile of books. He almost wanted to complain that he wasn't done reading yet, but honestly he'd made his way through most of them and didn't expect that the others would reveal anything new and startling. He knew more about this world and the dungeons than he'd started with, at least.

"Yeah, I'm fine to set off," he said. "Just let me hand these back to the librarian first."

"There may be more of us already waiting for us in Frontier Town, if they've all received the same suggestions."

"Luckily we're fairly easy to track down," Ridley said cheerfully. "Just ask people if they've seen any weird nudists or people claiming to be from another world wandering around."

 

[canisaries]

"Yeah, I'm fine to set off," he said. "Just let me hand these back to the librarian first."

"Oh yeah - did you learn anything useful from them?" Andre asked quickly.

 

[MintyMimix]

Ghaspius let out a chuckle. "Hadn't gone into this expectin' to win, but did ya have to be surgical 'bout it?" He said with a bit of a defeated sigh and rubbed his sore tassel. "Guess we're gonna a heck of a lot more training then. And no Roya here this time."

The Misdreavus's permenant smile fell. He turned his head towards the window and gazed outside as a realized longing began to weigh on his face. After a long, silent blink, he put on a smaller smile again and looked towards the others. "Might need to pick up a bit more bread and water before we head out, but I'm ready to go."

 

[Hap]

"Oh yeah - did you learn anything useful from them?" Andre asked quickly.

"There's evidence of humans coming to this world before, even if a lot of the people here think of us more as legend than fact," Ridley answered. "It seems rare, though, and I definitely haven't found anything to suggest we've ever arrived in such great numbers before."

He offered his notebook to Andre and added, "You can read my notes, if you want. They're mostly about the mystery dungeons, but I don't think any of it's too technical for a layperson to understand." He had some thoughts about spacial warping and how the dungeons might function, but he'd need to take a look at them himself before he could start to form any proper hypotheses.

 

[canisaries]

"There's evidence of humans coming to this world before, even if a lot of the people here think of us more as legend than fact," Ridley answered. "It seems rare, though, and I definitely haven't found anything to suggest we've ever arrived in such great numbers before."

He offered his notebook to Andre and added, "You can read my notes, if you want. They're mostly about the mystery dungeons, but I don't think any of it's too technical for a layperson to understand." He had some thoughts about spacial warping and how the dungeons might function, but he'd need to take a look at them himself before he could start to form any proper hypotheses.

"I see," said Andre, accepting the notes with his vines. "Thank you." He began to read, intending to continue while walking once they left.

 

[Phoenixsong]

"Miss Ayda may believe, in her opinion, that Miss Enubel has 'her head in the clouds'...? And also, in simple matter of fact, you have no kind of history of conduct or record of achievement for Miss Enubel to refer to, nor do you have knowledge of these parts. I am merely warning you that Miss Ayda may not accept your applications until you've proven yourself by other means!"

They shouldered their satchel.

"With that said, are you all ready to depart?"

They'd have to prove themselves first, huh? Made sense, Leaf supposed, and hardly a problem anyway. Surely there'd be other things that needed doing around here, and if fixing all that could pull double duty and build up both their strength and their résumés, even better. (And it shouldn't be that hard to find someone around this Frontier Town place who'd be willing to teach her to fight, right? Someone else from the Nexus, at least, if they really had wound up there—this crew didn't seem all that interested, but there was no way somebody wasn't gonna be up to throw down.)

"Yeah, I'm ready to go!" she said, giving her hoof a quick shake to work out the knot Gil had put there. "We've got a lot to see and a lot to do, and it'd be a huge help if you could steer us along. You seem plenty capable enough to me!"

 

[Jackie Cat]

"Why, thank you for your trust and confidence!" exclaimed Gil, putting their clay palms together. "I will strive not to let you down."

Gil hefted the strap of their satchel bag, and exited through the door, clearly expecting the group to follow. They would have to follow with haste. When the golett was on-task, they were unexpectedly fast – perhaps this was why they could compete in the mail carrier profession in a world with sapient birds, horses, and the like. That, and their apparent lack of need for breath or rest.

While Gil's pace was exceedingly hard to match, their bulging satchel held not just letters and packages for Frontier Town, but 'dungeon items' – magic artifacts obtained from the bowels of so-called mystery dungeons. 'Quick orbs' to enhance a party's travel speed, leppa berries to restore one's energy levels, and uncanny food and drink that filled the belly and healed sprains and scrapes in no time. With these supplies to hand, the journey was cut from a multi-day ordeal to a single morning and afternoon's outing. There was even the opportunity to appreciate some of the natural beauty of the route, ruddy sandstone giving way to scrubland and sparse forest, the Silver River cutting through the landscape like a trickle of mercury, and the western mountains holding up the sky like a wall at the end of the world.

They would arrive in Frontier Town, unharried by danger, by the evening of their second day in Forlas.

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