route_1065 | Sometimes, quiet is violent.

Entry tags:

Sometimes, quiet is violent.

Who: Solf J Kimblee (

explosivecombat; anyone in Olivine City who wants to engage him, really. OPEN LOG, do your thing, tag yourselves in
Where: Olivine City
When: Slightly backdated - morning of February 8, 2014
Summary: Somebody wanted a war. You're going to have an investigation.
Rating: PG-13? ...look, if things go badly this is pretty much Kimblee going Michael Bay on Olivine City, so.
Log:

His timing had, admittedly, been poor.

Namely, the three-day time period he'd thrown down was not accounting for the sudden snow; while he could hold the fort reasonably well in below-zero temperatures, that had never really been his idea of a good time. Fortunately, the most important of those bombs he'd photographed had been set prior to the announcement going out - it wouldn't do to be acting suspicious in public after a bomb threat, after all; those he hadn't set before then...well. He'd been more than capable of waiting until those who were going to move had actually moved before sending Alekhine and the non-human Archer out to go get those taken care of. They're rather skilled at...convincing people that they really, really want to be elsewhere all of a sudden, after all.

The Alakazam is nearby but out of sight, having been instructed to keep an eye on things for him (as he's fully aware that he's not going to be able to one things get underway); the Gardevoir is at his side, as he always is during these sorts of games. His usual white suit has been abandoned in favor of sharply-tailored black, with a black shirt buttoned clear up to his throat beneath it and a bloodred tie around his neck; his face is obscured by the usual hooded mask, long ponytail tucked up beneath the fabric.

It's a lovely day today.

He's got something in his hand that he's playing with once in a while; something that he can rather cheerfully buttonmash if he feels like it, apparently, as there are a good amount of buttons on it. He presses a few of them now, almost idly; he pauses for a moment before clicking the red one at the top of it.

Hopefully no one was partial to a few of those indie bars toward the outskirts of town; that explosion is going to be a large one.

Let's begin, shall we?

[OOC: Okay, apologies for the delay but RL punched me in the throat. AS IT STANDS, HOWEVER, the deal is currently this.

There are currently eight bombs planted throughout the city, including the one that just went off on the northern side of town, because Kimblee clearly hates hipsters this morning and has decided that they can't have nice bars. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to find either the bombs or the asshole detonating them. Or both, if you all can manage, let's not sell ourselves short. Don't worry, he's somewhere within the city.

You're welcome to search the city if you wish; I'll gladly guide you through that part with meta directions in brackets - letting you know what you find in certain locations, if anything. The NPCs in certain locations (the hotel, the Pokémon Center, those hardware stores Blake was checking out earlier, the guards at the lighthouse) will not remember any suspicious activity having occurred, but they will have really large conspicuous holes in their memories if pressed. And hey, I'll guide you through that as well, if you have something to say to them.

Basically, feel free to investigate at will; throw a location in your comment subject, wherever you want to search. Let's make a game of it.]

[OOC PART II: Here's your current counter, guys.

Bomb 1 - hipster bars, northern side of town: DETONATED
Bomb 2 - Olivine Inn: LOCATED / NEUTRALIZED
Bomb 3 - docks, southern side of town: NEUTRALIZED
Bomb 4 - cargo holds, western side of town: DETONATED
Bomb 5 - specialized shops, city center: STILL ACTIVE
Bomb 6 - restaurants, city center: NEUTRALIZED
Bomb 7 - location currently unknown: STILL ACTIVE
Bomb 8 - location currently unknown: STILL ACTIVE

You've got your work cut out for you, Hero Squad. Godspeed. :|b ]

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[Most interesting.

That completed, and having peeked in to ascertain that there are presumably no bombs hidden in the elevator shaft, she's...

...

Actually going to have Chief ask Amphy two things: which route Jasmine usually uses to come visit her, and if she's lately seen anybody besides Jasmine using either route.]

[Jasmine takes the elevator down. She usually takes it up, too, but not many people can do that.

Normally, people have to take the stairs and ladders up and pass the guards to get up here; there are usually guards on every floor when the place is busy. Once people have made it to the top floor, they can take the elevator down, but it's programmed to only let them go one way - you need a key to take it up.

Jasmine and head of security are the only ones with keys to the elevator. Amphy hasn't seen anyone else lately, though - not outside of a couple of tourists during the day, maybe, but there haven't been many since Monday.]

Edited 2014-02-10 04:46 (UTC)

[Well. Whether Amphy intended it or not, that begs a follow-up question that she's going to take a minute and indulge —

Back out onto the observation deck, then, and leaning over the balcony to scope out the guards still presumably clustered near the entrance. She could shout down to them, and is tempted to, but having Chief facilitate will probably be easier —

Is one of you the head of security, and if so, do you still have your elevator key?]

[So! Surely you remember Captain Squinty - he was answering for the group like he was in charge earlier.

GUESS WHAT.

He's a bit started by this message being shoved directly into his brain, but after a moment it finally seems to occur to him that hey, maybe he should look up. And lo and behold, it's the crazy lady.

And he still has his key, actually. :|a Why?]

[The Phantom of the Olivine Lighthouse is there, Captain Squinty. Inside your mind.

Still, he's helpful in answering, so he'll get an explanation out of her — that Amphy told her about how the elevator up here works, and she wanted to double-check and see who actually had access to it.

But if he's still got his key, then that's the answer she was looking for, thank you, and she's going to head back inside and take the ladder down now. o/ ]

[Shine on, you crazy diamond. In red. ...Crazy ruby? :|a

Either way, congratulations and welcome to the fifth floor; it seems to hold...uh.

Well, it's holding a lot of nothing right now. The floor actually looks a lot less made of "eeeeeeesh" since they rebuilt the place at some vaguely-defined point that surely happened sometime in 2012; it used to be cracked to all hell. But now it's pretty nice-looking, obviously redone.

Given that this is a circular lighthouse, predictably the only way to go is "around"; there's a thick solid column extending into the room, both for structural support and containing the elevator shaft from earlier, but it's not walling off any part of the room.

Across the room is...another ladder, heading down.]

[There are such things as red diamonds, you know. Rudeness.

But that is neither here nor there, because what matters the ladder down, and since there appears to be a fat lot of nothing on this floor, she might as well keep moving.]

[And onward we go, because there was, in fact, a fat lot of nothing on that floor.

Not that the next floor is any more pleasant, because wow, the room you are being dropped into is certainly a tiny box. I mean, it's not unbearably so, but it's approximately a ten-by-ten room with two of the walls rounded off, so it's...pretty small in comparison to the open space above.

There's another ladder going down, but just to ensure that everyone has a good, solid case of Being Given The Wig before you consider taking it, Chief will notice that his psychic perception hits a solid wall of interference at about...well, the walls of the room you're in.]

[Ugh, tiny rooms. And double ugh, that sensation of being psychically cockblocked (which naturally, Chief relays on to his trainer like a good partner).

Still, if that's not worth investigating, she doesn't know what is, and there does appear to be at least one window in this room, which by extension suggests that there might just be windows on the other parts of this floor as well.

So rather than continuing down the ladder, she'll check to see if those windows open first.]

[Normally, this would be about when there would be eyerolling and asking if you want some sort of jumper to get any ideas, given that we're still well over forty feet off the ground and looking out over some waves crashing on the rocks.

Curiously enough, however, one of the windows does open, and if you look down from it, there's a ledge running the perimeter of the building. Not wide enough to be considered another observation deck, mind you, and there's no railing on it - jumping down may actually be considered a rather unwise idea, given that the ledge leads down to the floor below you. It'll put you on the third floor, and won't really do you much good in getting to the rest of the fourth.

On the other hand, it is somewhere to go if you're getting tired of the ladders.]

[Fortunately, this is Carmen "I Backflip Off Monuments Six Times Before Breakfast" Sandiego, for whom randomly climbing around fearlessly on shit is about as second nature as breathing. Speaking of which, she's also not particularly afraid of that lower ledge (prudently wary, maybe, but not afraid), but down is not where she wants to go yet.

Oh, that she had her jetpack hang-glider right now.

But since she doesn't, she's got the next best thing, which is her dragon — for whom she'll be whistling right about now. He's only a few floors up; it shouldn't be too difficult to get him down here such that she can fly a slow circuit around this floor of the building and look in any other windows that might be around.]

[Looking through the windows will give you a feel for the place at least; probably the most striking thing about the room is that it seems to be almost entirely empty. There's a table in the center of the floor, near the separating wall blocking off this area from the smaller room you were just in; the table has a wooden box sitting on top of it, simple in design and unfinished-looking in terms of lacquer. About the size of a cigar box. The box appears to have some of those white cards that Seth tends to use for the sake of communication lying on top of them.

Continuing to circle the building will reveal two things; the first is that there's an opening in the side of the building - it's larger than the windows, more door-sized, really. Just...chilling there for no real reason, because that isn't hilariously dangerous at all. The ledge below it is thicker, however, and closer to a deck; almost as though one is supposed to jump down. Either way, it's a way into the room.

The second is that the room isn't nearly as empty as it seemed; there's an Alakazam hanging out in the shadows thrown by one of those walls.

The Pokémon doesn't seem inclined to stay; he makes sure to get a good look at Carmen's face before Teleporting right the hell out.]

[And that will be the welcoming committee, she presumes. Still, from where she's sitting (figuratively, as opposed to "on a dragon", which is technically a place she is also sitting), it's probably a better sign that her freshly-spotted guest just left than it is if he'd stuck around. Leaving means he's probably the warning system; she'd seen that he'd gotten a good look at her before he left, and given that he's a highly intelligent Psychic type, that's probably exactly what he was told to do — get a good look and report in. It'd be worse if there'd been instructions left to engage; there's a vast difference between actively hindering her progress and just letting someone know that she's there, after all.

And if he is one of Nietzsche's, then Nietzsche has just learned where she is.

(The thought makes her cringe a bit, the way it would ordinarily make her smile, but this isn't really the time for self-congratulatory feats of wordplay, anyway. Not when there's still business to be attended to.)

She also wonders, idly, if that box might be a bomb. She doubts it, but it's the sort of thought that tends to occur to you when that's what you're actively searching for, following a citywide threat to that effect.

One way to find out. In through the opening she goes (after a cursory glance for possible traps, of course), because if nothing else it'll get her back inside and relatively out of the cold.]

[Well, nothing is wired to explode as soon as she enters the room, which is a plus; really, it seems that outside of maybe the Alakazam (who is solidly gone by now, and Chief will find himself no longer being interfered with), there isn't anything waiting for her outside of the box and those white cards. ~~And the floor. There's a floor in here.~~

Those cards lying on top of the box do have writing on them, however; it's different from Nietzsche's usual - it's Seth's thick, blocky and deliberately-obscured writing - but it is there. The box also isn't locked, nor is it wired to anything; it's got a little bit of weight to it, enough to imply there's something in it, but whatever it is won't slide or anything if that box is picked up.

So. Box. Cards. Decided lack of traps. What now?]

[~~Excellent. A floor. Now she doesn't have to explicitly check.~~

It would be a bit rude to rig the room to explode upon entry, wouldn't it; that's a move of Lee Jordan's caliber, and look at that, now all of a sudden she's got thoughts of Lee Jordan (boy, it's been awhile, hasn't it) on the brain as she heads over to those cards and picks them up by the edges to examine them one by one. Are these the cards from his broadcast? She tries to recall if there was any background visible when he'd made it; there usually isn't, but one never knows. Maybe he was in here when he sent it.

Absently, she reaches for her belt again and produces the third of her roster — this time her Mightyena, Murphy. He's not trained as a bomb-sniffing dog by any means (far from it), but if nothing else, it makes her feel better to have him at her side — and there's always the chance he might get lucky.

There's a certain irony in the idea of her feeling better about having a Pokemon named Murphy Slaw at her side in a situation like this. She'll have to tell Nietzsche about it when she finds him; he'll laugh.

...assuming she doesn't have to explain what Murphy's Law is, first.

With a silent gesture of her hand, she directs him to have a sniff of the box; it can't hurt, at least, since she's made up her mind to open it either way.]

[The cards aren't the ones from the broadcast, even if the writing from the first card is the same as one of the others.

LET'S HAVE A WAR.

There are more of them, however, and none of them are the three-day warning; they seem to be directly addressing...well, whomever found the box and the cards.

YOU CAN STOP MY WAR AT ANY TIME.
YOU JUST HAVE TO MAKE THE CHOICE.

I'VE LEFT YOU THE POWER TO PUT AN END TO IT.

WE CAN DO IT THIS WAY, OR WE CAN DO IT THE HARD WAY.
IT MATTERS VERY LITTLE TO ME.

I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT IF YOU USE WHAT I'VE GIVEN YOU,
MY WAR WILL END. MOST OF OLIVINE WILL BE SPARED.

BUT IN ENDING MY WAR, YOU RISK STARTING ANOTHER.
ONE WHERE I CAN'T GUARANTEE THE OUTCOME EITHER WAY.

IT'S UP TO YOU WHETHER IT'S WORTH THE RISK.
EITHER WAY, I'LL HAVE MY BATTLEFIELD.

I WIN.

...Well, then.

At the very least, Murphy won't be detecting anything too weird about the box. No explosives, anyway.]

[It doesn't hit her until the text of the second card is different from what she's expecting, but when it does, she goes still and cold — and it has absolutely nothing to do with the chill morning weather.

She flinches, that much is certain, and in the moments that follow she warms up with a brief pang of annoyance and frustration at herself for flinching. He didn't write these for her, she tells herself. The words are in blocky, too-thick print instead of smooth text on a screen, handwritten instead of pixelated, but her strongest associations with Nietzsche have always been through text and the voice she's always mentally given his words (still different from the voice he actually speaks with, but having grown more similar over the duration of their acquaintance) comes through strong even from the cards.

He didn't write these with her in mind.

Stop it. Slow down.

He didn't write these to her. Not everything is about her. This isn't personal, this isn't targeted; the Alakazam that disappeared isn't reporting back to say, "Everything is unfolding according to plan."

It's cute how she thinks his motives are that sinister and convoluted, isn't it?

Stop it. Slow down.

He wants his war for the sake of the war, and he likes to see how people think.

Let's stick with that for right now.]

Well, Murphy? Who am I to turn away a gift as thoughtful as this.

[Absently, her gloved hand finds its way to the fur at the top of his head, petting around his ears until she feels some of the residual anxiety beginning to recede. Then, after reordering the cards and setting them aside, she tugs her Philosopher's Hotline Gear from out of her pocket and powers it up, typing a brief message without hitting Send. This, she passes off to Chief, and directs him to go outside with the Baron while she and Murphy handle the box.

Maybe it doesn't mean anything in the long run, but it makes her feel a little better to have done it.

She checks her watch; she's spent a fair amount of time in the lighthouse already, and there are still other floors she hasn't searched. Every second she wastes is one more second she might've been able to put toward better ends, and the clock keeps running regardless of how long she dallies.

All right, then. Time to open that box and see what Nietzsche left for h—

...

For whoever happened to find it.]

[Well, if she remembers the images that were sent with the message from Seth earlier that week, she might recognize this; it's a bit more finished than it was in the picture but it's far from elegant, a simple black stick with a red-accented trigger, one of the ones photographed along with the bombs. It's nestled into fabric such as to keep it from sliding around inside the box, and for good reason; the last thing anybody needs is for this thing to set itself off accidentally - it's not an explosive itself, but presumably it'll set one off somewhere.

Congratulations, Carmen. You seem to have found a detonator, because Team Rocket provides some excellent toys to those who ask.]

[For a second, she just looks at it — not precisely stunned or disbelieving, because she's had her suspicions of what she might find in here since the point when the message on the cards had started to come together, but just...

Sad, maybe? Disgusted? There's assuredly disgust present, though it's hard to pin down if there's actually an identifiable source for it or if it's just her natural and deep-seated repulsion of weapons in pretty much any form.

There's a touch of anger there, too. Somewhere in the thrill and intrigue of teasing out this mystery, she'd let herself start to lose sight of the grim realities underlying this game. (Is it a game? It's something, but no one's laughing and if she and the psychopath are the only ones having fun, well, what does that say.)

Pressing her lips into a thin line, she retreats from the box, but only far enough to fetch Chief and the Baron; there ought to be room enough for the two of them through the hole, and she doesn't want to move the detonator any more than she's going to have to — for the moment.

Once inside, they'll receive calm, steady instructions. While Chief carefully lifts the detonator free, the Baron is going to make good use of Ice Beam, and freeze it solid in a block of ice.

It's a cold day out, and that's one way to keep it from moving.]

[It certainly is.

However, once that's taken care of, there's not much of interest in the rest of the lighthouse; searching it will turn up a lot of floors that are much like the fifth: namely, containing a whole lot of nothing. The third floor contains another uncomfortable tiny partitioned-off section, but there's nothing of interest either there or in the larger room making up the rest of the floor. The second is built exactly like the fifth; the first is a rather nice lobby, with the double doors leading out rather obviously having been welded shut from the inside. The job isn't terribly precise; more likely done by Flamethrower rather than anything done by a human with proper tools.

Nietzsche isn't here; there's nothing else here, either. Just the box and the cards and the...rather frozen detonator.]

[And she does, of course, check all of the floors to be certain, but soon enough she finds herself back in the detonator room with her three roster members.

The first order of business is to clean up; she puts the box and cards back the way she found them, minus the detonator, and then rechecks the room to make sure nothing else is left out of order before turning back to her three members.

Chief trades out her Philosophers Gear for the ice cube detonator; he'll Teleport back to the Pokemon Center and then book a hasty retreat back to their prearranged meeting place. Murphy gets some pets and kisses before he's returned to his ball and his place on her belt. And the Baron will go wait outside for her, since he's her ride down — or, well. Back up to Amphy to wave goodbye, and then back down from there.

But for the moment, there's no need for her previous pre-typed message, so she deletes it, and sends this one instead.]

Good morning. Where should I meet you?

[There's a certain sort of humor to it, but she'd be hard-pressed to explain it to anyone, if they asked.

And with that, she and the Baron will take their leave as well.]

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Sometimes, quiet is violent.

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