intro post 8)

[0189d8cf]

[ A lone figure can be seen walking up the western beach of Ohritori, past Banyan Labs and towards Turnbloom, carrying a backpack and dressed warmly (beanie, turtleneck, cargo pants, gloves and boots) despite the tropical weather. They seem to be talking to themself, looking around with jerky, birdlike head movements, and poking at a classic Pokégear on their left arm. ]

"Now ain't this a pickle. Don't think I stumbled into weirdspace, don't think I'd be eligible to bubble up twice in a lifetime, but if this beach is in INDIGO I'll eat my hat. And that means... drat. The POKéGEAR's no use either. 'Area unknown'? Come on. It's not even doing anything interesting."

[ They over-enunciate the words "Indigo" and "Pokégear", as if each proper noun were its own sentence. ]

"Well! Nothing for it! Guess I'll hoof it 'til I meet someone to ask for directions."

[ With that, they start whistling a tune and continue on their way... ]

((OOC: Heh, been a long time since I wrote this character... or did LJRP at all, for that matter. But I saw advert posts about Faraway Place and decided I might as well dip my feet back in. Hi all! ))

Comments

[0189d8cf]

"TURNBLOOM CITY, got it. Is that the town up the road from here, to the north? I met someone else while I was walking, who said that was the way back to civilization, but I imagine you've got a few towns around here. No way to know if it was that one."

[ Mandy enters some notes into their own Pokégear. They'd have to scout out exactly where the Market is; it'd be the obvious place to set up in the short term, but they always preferred someplace on the edge of town, if possible, so that they could dabble in wild business after hours. They look up from their notes when Umbar chimes in. ]

"Well, keep in mind that GOLD's POKéDEX was set up a bit differently from the ones I'm used to. Back home, you had to aim them a little, and they ruled out anything that was actually touching the device. I've never managed to scan myself with one, even when I tried. I did get scanned accidentally once or twice, but it was always from broken customer devices where some fault was making them scan nonstop; it was easy enough to pass off errors as a side effect of the problem they already knew about... and if they discovered their new items later on, they didn't have any reason to link it back to me.

"But that does mean I'll have to be a bit more careful, now that I know POKéDEXes might be floating around which were built different. I'll just have to think of a cover story ahead of time. Maybe get some decoy object for the shelf behind me - something like those maneki-MEOWTH statues, which wouldn't sound too crazy to blame for a POKéDEX trying and failing to scan it."

[gold_drum]

"Yeah, it's to the north," Gold says. He's no good at navigating, but he does know where north is on the maps. "And there's another town more to the north too. I dunno if there's any other ones on the island, but I guess there's more on the mainland." Not that Gold knows anything about the Ultern Region outside Ohritori Island.

Umbar listens to the explanation. Though he doesn't get technology, Pokedexes are something he's seen enough that he can somewhat understand what Mandy's saying. Dealing with broken Pokedexes is probably the best way to hide Pokedex errors caused by your presence, now that he thinks about it.

"You can't scan yourself when holding the Pokedex? Hmm, I suppose that makes sense," he says. Privately, he now wants to try and scan himself once Mandy's no longer close enough to be detected by the Pokedex.

"Ah, I'm glad meeting us has brought some benefit," Umbar says teasingly. "Knowing is half the battle, as they say. Ah, besides Maneki-Meowths, perhaps you could get decorations featuring those... man-made Pokemon. The little duckies. I think they'd be fitting. What were they called again?" He looks at Gold.

"How should I know?" Gold says.

Gold and Umbar look at each other, then at Mandy, hoping they would know the answer.

[0189d8cf]

[ Mandy scratches their head. Man-made ducks? Like those rubber Psyduck toys? But why would that have to do with glitches? They wrack their brain for a moment, trying to remember what duck Pokémon there are. And what did he mean by "man-made"? Unless... ]

[ All at once, they realize what Umbar was trying to say, and smack their forehead with a chuckle. ]

"Oh! PORYGON? There's an idea! Appropriate. I could do a lot worse for a mascot. Maybe a PORYGON-Z - lean on the idea of it being a friendly place for devices that aren't behaving quite normal!"

[ They chuckle again, and rise to their feet. ]

"Well! With that thought, I should probably get going. Again, awful grateful to have met the both of you, even if things got weird there for a bit. I'll be sure to keep in touch!"

[gold_drum]

"That's the one," Umbar snaps his fingers. He wouldn't even know about the Porygon family if it wasn't for that incident in Hisui back in the days when a bunch of strange Pokemon appeared through time-space distortions. When Mandy took so long to remember it, Umbar was starting to worry it hadn't been created yet. Good to know he didn't accidentally break the timeline or anything.

"Oh!" Gold jumps to his feet. "I'll lead you out!" When Umbar moves to stand up, Gold tells him "No, you wait here. I still wanna chat with you when you're like that!"

"Oh, very well then," Umbar chuckles, and waves to Mandy. "Good luck with your work, and I hope to see you around!"

And with that, Gold leads Mandy back out of the house, the same way they came in. He pauses in the doorway, holding the door open.

"Um, I still feel kinda bad about knowing your secret, so, maybe next time I'll tell you a secret about me so we're even!" He then pauses awkwardly, not sure what else to say here, so he ends up just saying "Bye!" and closing the door, whether Mandy was responding or not. Sorry, Mandy.

((ooc: since the thread seems to be ending i wanna say this was a lot of fun and i hope we can thread again! mandy's a really neat character concept! and it was fun having umbar interacting with them like that))