[Game thread] Skull Ruins Pokerole

[Iron]

The beach is surprisingly relaxing, given the potentially unexploded ordnance, the giga sized Pokemon in the sea and underground, and the fact that you're on a top secret military base. Perhaps Terra takes some perverse joy in being able to relax in such a situation.

He notices that the sandy island gently rises and falls in rhythm with the waves. It's almost imperceptible, but the rocking motion helps make the place feel a little sleepier despite the danger.

[PhantomUnderYourDesk]

The guards spread out around the perimeter of the lab complex, hemming you in with their promise not to interfere... and not to let anything dangerous get out.
The military has made it clear to Shiva that your party is on their own here.

Oh, Shiva's aware of that, and thanks the military for the reminder AND of course for letting them venture down these labs in the first place. She's lowkey confident that things will go well - having the ancient Shield with her helps easing her mind a lot.

Ventus, on the other hand.....remind me of what he's exactly been doing with Shiva, @Phantom? I'd imagine that whatever it was, he'd be right with her in the thick of things, all smiles and politeness, but about as on edge as Heart's Aegislash when its biting into an opponent. The laboratory is the natural environment of the researcher, but this place doesn't exactly set him at any sort of ease, after the rumors he's heard about it and all the armed military guards mucking about the place.

Being there and being an adorable and protective boyfriend for her
Ven being around has the potential to help a lot here due to his lab experience! Especially his involvement in Project Silverfish... "Alright, Ven..." Shiva gently asks him "If you were to hide something away from the League in a lab, where would you put it?"

One room has a greenish glow coming from underneath it. Guarding this door is a sort of transparent airlock, hung with hazmat suits.
Another possibility for a Nucleon room is an airtight door with a big wheel for a doorknob. Lots of warmth is emanating from this door.

These hazmat suits - how many are there exactly, and more importantly - do they look functional? Shiva checks for this carefully.

Furthermore, is there any way to enter a password at either door? Like, a hidden keyboard or such.

Let's listen/eavesdrop at BOTH doors for starters, just to see whether it triggers anything or whether unusual sounds are coming from the room behind the doors. Does Shiva's sixth sense, Primal Espeon's precognitive power, Calam's danger sense and/or Gallade's honed sense pick something up that is of interest?

[Dragonstrike]

Does Shiva's sixth sense, Primal Espeon's precognitive power, Calam's danger sense and/or Gallade's honed sense pick something up that is of interest?

Nathan would definitely have Calam and Gallade both on hand and out of their pokeballs for this mission, so no issues assuming Calam is present this time. (Please be careful of making such assumptions, though)

Nathan himself is giving those possibly radioactive rooms a wiiiiiide berth if he can for now.  He knows what the Nuclear type is capable of.

[Lord Windos]

Spoiler

Oh, Shiva's aware of that, and thanks the military for the reminder AND of course for letting them venture down these labs in the first place. She's lowkey confident that things will go well - having the ancient Shield with her helps easing her mind a lot.

Ventus, on the other hand.....remind me of what he's exactly been doing with Shiva, @Phantom? I'd imagine that whatever it was, he'd be right with her in the thick of things, all smiles and politeness, but about as on edge as Heart's Aegislash when its biting into an opponent. The laboratory is the natural environment of the researcher, but this place doesn't exactly set him at any sort of ease, after the rumors he's heard about it and all the armed military guards mucking about the place.

Being there and being an adorable and protective boyfriend for her
Ven being around has the potential to help a lot here due to his lab experience! Especially his involvement in Project Silverfish... "Alright, Ven..." Shiva gently asks him "If you were to hide something away from the League in a lab, where would you put it?"

One room has a greenish glow coming from underneath it. Guarding this door is a sort of transparent airlock, hung with hazmat suits.
Another possibility for a Nucleon room is an airtight door with a big wheel for a doorknob. Lots of warmth is emanating from this door.

These hazmat suits - how many are there exactly, and more importantly - do they look functional? Shiva checks for this carefully.

Furthermore, is there any way to enter a password at either door? Like, a hidden keyboard or such.

Let's listen/eavesdrop at BOTH doors for starters, just to see whether it triggers anything or whether unusual sounds are coming from the room behind the doors. Does Shiva's sixth sense, Primal Espeon's precognitive power, Calam's danger sense and/or Gallade's honed sense pick something up that is of interest?

Ven's equally as polite with the military personal as his beloved girlfriend, but far more reserved, just giving them short nods and simple, concise responses that amounted to 'We understand, now let us do our part.' Given his own tumultchous involvement with his own government, its various affairs, and all sorts of stuff he got up to as a Disobedient Pokemon Researcher, the eccentric scientist is well versed in handling people with or without his own brand of empathy. Well, if they're not as stubborn and/or Willful as Nathan, or unpredictable and unconventional as most A Grade and above Trainers are, anyway.

(...)

Well, if he's just been a supportive presence and arm candy for his fae lady up until now (save for her future/past visit to Primal Kingdra; he wouldn't want to join her on that visit, for his own personal reasons), I guess I don't have much to add or sum up about his experience with her other than he was taking careful note of everything she did and did his best to ensure nothing terribly bad came from her rampant curiosity!

As for her question, the draconic researcher thought it over for a couple of moments while Shiva and the rest were examing what he'd 'quaintly' describe as 'The Nuclear Surprise Room'  , before he slowly walked her and everyone else listening through what he'd hypothesized so far.

"....From what I've heard and been told, a common way for a researcher or someone else to Pachirisu away their work or other illicit Items would be to disguise them as something else, or use something innocuous to conceal it instead. I'd check the lab equipment and see if they have any 'undocumented' modifications, or if said equipment isn't covering up hidden compartments or even entrances to other rooms. If nothing else, it would fit the general pattern of secrecy Almanac and the Scimitars used to hide their bases and other stuff. 

"I'd also check the Pokemon Almanac researcher had worked with and see if they're not holding onto something - or holding in , rather. It's a rather simple matter to surgically insert objects into a body, after all - it's keeping them from adversely affect a subject's health that's the tricky part. Furthermore, I'd get a fleet of Porygon and Porygon 2 to sweep over the codebase for any hidden file caches, backdoors, or suspicious coding in this base's , just to be on the safe side. That, and of course do a thorough review of the hard storage of the data here, both paper and the base's disconnected hardrives and servers. Never can be too sure if someone has hidden anything away in them, physically or not.

"Finally, I'd get some codebreakers to go over any and all documents that have been made, sent, and recieved to this base ever since Almanac and Scimitar researchers first become involved here. I wouldn't put it past either to have a cipher of sorts to disceretly recieve and transfer information from here and keep certain findings from being clearly on the record."

If the doors require codes, they may not be a insubstatial chance that Ven just knows the codes for this place, given that he now works to Dagney and has some form of access to her intellegence gathering resources on top of his own. After all, if Almanac and the Scimitars managed to set up shop here without the League knowing the full details of their activities, their private security must not be very good past a certain point to those that have the know how.....

Not sure if Ven would be fully aware of Nuclear Pokemon, though, but I'll assume he is by now and he'll be keeping well away from any place that could hold them. He nor his family need not any radiation therapy, thank you very much.

[Spiritmon]

As for, along with teaching his Pokemons a few new moves, stay a while to meditate his Earthpower with Primal Kingdra. Since his gonna face Nimue very soon, he needs to learn more about Earthpower. 

"Primal Kingdra. Is there anything you can teach me about Earthpower?"

@Iron.

[Iron]

The guards spread out around the perimeter of the lab complex, hemming you in with their promise not to interfere... and not to let anything dangerous get out.
The military has made it clear to Shiva that your party is on their own here.

Oh, Shiva's aware of that, and thanks the military for the reminder AND of course for letting them venture down these labs in the first place. She's lowkey confident that things will go well - having the ancient Shield with her helps easing her mind a lot.

Ventus, on the other hand.....remind me of what he's exactly been doing with Shiva, @Phantom? I'd imagine that whatever it was, he'd be right with her in the thick of things, all smiles and politeness, but about as on edge as Heart's Aegislash when its biting into an opponent. The laboratory is the natural environment of the researcher, but this place doesn't exactly set him at any sort of ease, after the rumors he's heard about it and all the armed military guards mucking about the place.

Being there and being an adorable and protective boyfriend for her
Ven being around has the potential to help a lot here due to his lab experience! Especially his involvement in Project Silverfish... "Alright, Ven..." Shiva gently asks him "If you were to hide something away from the League in a lab, where would you put it?"

One room has a greenish glow coming from underneath it. Guarding this door is a sort of transparent airlock, hung with hazmat suits.
Another possibility for a Nucleon room is an airtight door with a big wheel for a doorknob. Lots of warmth is emanating from this door.

These hazmat suits - how many are there exactly, and more importantly - do they look functional? Shiva checks for this carefully.

Furthermore, is there any way to enter a password at either door? Like, a hidden keyboard or such.

Let's listen/eavesdrop at BOTH doors for starters, just to see whether it triggers anything or whether unusual sounds are coming from the room behind the doors. Does Shiva's sixth sense, Primal Espeon's precognitive power, Calam's danger sense and/or Gallade's honed sense pick something up that is of interest?

There are about 30 suits, maybe half of which are functional. The rest look like they were hit with some shrapnel and are just piled in a heap.

No passwords on either of the two potential Nucleon doors, though the green glow door has a retinal scanner that looks like it caught on fire in the recent past.
There is one quadrant of the lab that's covered in a thick layer of dust, and it is protected by a keypad you could ask Dagny about. It's within the disaster area so you aren't likely to get much support or hindrance from the military there.

Calam's danger sense would be overwhelmed on this island. Shiva's sixth sense picks up lifeforms in almost all these rooms I've mentioned, and Gallade senses considerable distress from many of the elemental rooms. And a weirdly calm, lordly emotion from the glowing green room.

[Iron]

As for, along with teaching his Pokemons a few new moves, stay a while to meditate his Earthpower with Primal Kingdra. Since his gonna face Nimue very soon, he needs to learn more about Earthpower. 

"Primal Kingdra. Is there anything you can teach me about Earthpower?"

@Iron.

"Pokemon ARE Earthpower. That is the difference between our world and other worlds - both the worlds which overlap this one like membranes, and the other worlds reachable through the ocean of space. Aaalready, I have heard things about the state of Deoxys' body, how it possessed LIFE but not Earthpower. This is a very rare thing indeed, from my perspective of thousands and thousands of years."

"Though life may dwindle as a being ages, Earthpower tends to grow. And immortality and Earthpower tend to go hand and hand."

A little time with Kingdra helps you hone your Earthpower skills to draw on the power of smaller, more distant Pokemon. You can even sense the microscopic plankton in the ocean around you now.

[Spiritmon]

"So...Earthpower is like...a piece of raw clay? Who can be made in the hands of a user, like Pokemon, and take different shapes? And that "shapes" is the moves and abilities each Pokemon species have?"

"If that's true...what this makes me? If Pokemon supposed to use Earthpower, how can humans also use Earthpower too? Like me, Master Chorizo and even the Scimitars to a certain extent?"

"If Pokemon can easily use Earthpower and humans can use, then why there is so few of us who can use it? And it is possible to...pass this knowledge to other people? Change the ways of the Scimitars not gonna be a easy path. They use their knowledge to slave Pokemon in power up their spells. How can I show them a different path?"

"And...how can I stop Nimue and avenge my family death without letting myself be consumed by wrath and revenge? She destroy everything I once loved, and the death cult will not stop their death path...but killing them will make me better than them? Will make me better than Nimue, the Scimitars...or even Saminarok?"

Heart look the ground. "I am a human, made with flaws...I may be a regional hero, and people and even Pokemon see me like that...But...to be honest I never liked the idea of be a example to someone. I don't want to let this position get the better on me...I want to be more wise. Maybe...Maybe meditation with the Primals could help me understand what I can do..."

Heart look at Kingdra. "Lord Primal Kingdra. I would like to request one thing. Koa and I been together for a long time since the beginning of my journey. We promised to each to evolve, and him to fight his long time rival. Koa really wants to reach the his final form as a Haxorus. Facing a Primal Dragon could be the best way in reach his final form."

Koa released himself from the Pokeball and bow in respect towards the Primal Dragon. "Only with your permission oh great Primal Lord." Heart also bow in respect."

[Iron]

"Claaay is a good wayy to describe it. Because the potter does not make the clay, he finds it, and then can shape it. The powers of a creeeature are just one manifestation of that power - their element, their life force, their connection to the land. Thaaat is all Earthpower."

"Alll humans have soome connection to Earthpower. As do all non-Pokemon animals. Siince the connection is everywherrre, anyone could leearn it if they ooopen their mind. As for howw to showw them a different path, I cannnot help you there. I have never realllly understood humans."

"Theese are things you will have to answer for yourself. Buut remember you are Pledged to do it, and the Eaarthpower will not let you rest easy uuntil you set your feet on a path to fulfilll that Pledge."

"I will fight your smaaalll dragon, buuut I am feeling verrry sleepy so I hope it does not take tooo long. The loonngest a mortal creaature from land has lasted against me in my own domain is threee attacks. That young Goooodra managed to knock seven scales from my chesst. If young Fraxure can match that feeaat, he will have proven his sssstrength."

Primal Kingdra is lazy and bulky and only makes one attacking move per round. But he's practically indestructible, especially to moves that aren't super effective or Legendary. He knows every move a Kingdra can possibly learn, Dragon Pulse being a common one for him. He'll also use Ice Fang when Fraxure is close enough.

Fraxure will end the scene fainted and evolve in his sleep if you can find a way to justify him lasting 3+ rounds and knocking loose 7+ scales.

[Dragonstrike]

Nathan's not really put at ease by any of that information.  "...something's not right here.  Almost everything that's still locked up here is in a panic, except for one creature in the room with the hazmat suits.  Either it's locked up tight enough to have not been affected by whatever happened here, or there's a chance it's related to the cause of what looks like an explosion of some kind..."