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The first stop on the grand adventure of Batsen Reshigah and his travel companion Devi Ravi is… Njoty. It's about as anticlimatic a start to explorative travel as conceivable, the town an unspired collection of blocks, feeling like a simple cluster of baked cement benefitting haphazardly from having been poured into shapes resembling houses beforehand. Nonetheless, as bland as Njoty must be for its citizens, the culture shock for someone from Togi, even if they've seen the city on several prior occasions, is nothing to sneeze at - Njoty is huge, and it's laughably simple to get lost.
As such, dusk is bleeding in from the horizon by the time they finally reach the building the pokégym is set into, a beacon of glass and steel with a chunk more personality than the streets they've been wandering through. It's less of a building and more of a greenhouse by the looks of things, at least on several floors, foliage pressed against the glass like a curious onlooker. But first and foremost, it's their first attempt to find a place to sleep for the night, and while they do have some finances to help them out, hotels shouldn't start to be a habit.
Just beside the sliding glass doors leading to the first floor, orthogonally aligned to the front of the building, is a monolithic sign of brushed metal, bulging outward to defy a flat-faced tradition, with information etched into its surface. Judging both by the abstract map of the building at the top of the sign and the assorted elegant letters beneath it, the first floor is the reception, the second the pokégym, and the rest of the building is filled with a lot of other things that don't matter. Certainly no hotel. But then, anything calling itself 'Pterygotamorphic Pokémon Science Center' didn't leave much hope of containing cheap accommodation not supplied by gymleaders taking pity on poor travelling pokémon trainers, so that hardly came as a surprise.
This town is always tricky for Batsen to navigate - partially because it's so huge, but mostly because every street looks identical. Of course, he'd been far too proud to ask for directions to the Pokémon Science Center until they'd already been wandering the streets for several hours. He'd been there a couple times before, long ago, to ask Dr. Kelebek about Torinai, but evidently it was long enough ago that he couldn't remember the exact sequence of turns to get there. And so, after several hours of frustrated wandering and occasional badgerings by Devi, he finally buckled and asked someone how to get there.
Right, okay, I see now, we were supposed to turn left at that first fountain,“ Batsen comments as the duo near the building housing the gym. He pauses to study the sign, noting the location of the Pokégym. ”… I don't know, are you sure they'll let us stay the night here?“ he asks, turning back to Devi with a sceptical glance.
Devi is flexing her fingers around the straps of her rucksack, staring at the word 'pokégym' with mixed emotions and the sense of uselessly building adrenalin in her arteries. This was it - the first stop on the eight-milestone journey. The more they'd left Togi, the more the thought had eaten into her - it was no longer optional. This was what her brain was geared toward now and it would accept no substitute distractions. As such, when Njoty had come into view, she'd started to badger Batsen about their first checkpoint, arguing that it was the best way to get potentially free accommodation for the night. It was true, but it was hardly her primary motivation - but she couldn't help but baulk at the notion of a gymbattle now that it was so much more tangible.
Her gaze slides off the sign and onto Batsen's face, morphing from its strained, ambiguous state into one of mild disorientation for a moment. Then she casts her glance up at the first storey of the building. ”… 'sure' might be overstating my confidence,“ she offers. “But it's a good first place to ask,” she adds, statement full of enthusiasm, grinning back at Batsen. She could do this. She could totally do this, she'd done her homework. Accommodation was an entirely conventional request to have, insomuch as the Sehto gym circuit could be said to have conventions, given that it was far removed from a common past time.
Said, taking the lead, she's peeled her attention away from the sign and is striding toward the glass doors, prompting them to open in greeting. The light inside is dim but well-placed, giving it a well-lit impression. The warm orange glow spilling down from the ceiling illuminates the reception desk and the receptionist himself, the curved structure and its occupant not quite central to someone entering the building, but nonetheless absolutely impossible to miss both from the inside and outside.
For a moment, Devi hesitates - should they be saying hello at the reception desk or was it more intended to be informational for those less certain of their destination? She's torn between turning up on the gymleader's doorstep without announcing herself and the notion of needlessly tearing the receptionist out of their work… whatever it is that they do when they're not saying hello.
Then the moment passes and she steps up to the reception, having decided that any chance to ruin their however slim chance at 'free accommodation' was entirely unacceptable. “Hello,” she says, prompting the inhabitant of the reception desk to glance up with a practised friendly expression, met with an equally practised friendly expression given in return. “We're looking to talk to Cecile Madhukar, do we need to register with you in some way before we head up?”
Batsen tugs on the shoulder straps of his rucksack, redistributing the weight slightly higher on his back, and then follows Devi through the glass doors. He lets her take the lead once they're inside - after all, she was the one who'd insisted on coming here.
The receptionist nods in response to her question. “One moment, let me just check her schedule - did you schedule an appointment with her?” he asks, even as his hands are moving to the computer keyboard to check the schedule.
Ah-point-meant. The emphasis is on the first syllable in Devi's head as her thoughts echo the word, and the rest of the word's lost itself somewhere, or is forming some kind of mutter. But of course, appointments are a thing, gymleaders have other tasks at hand beyond simply sitting on their hands waiting for pokétrainers, especially here in Sehto, so there's a wire of embarrassment tugging at her spine - but it's quick to dissipate. It was hard to make an appointment with people if you're walking through Sehto on foot, the estimated time of arrival at Nahla's pokégym, for example, was bound to be 'one and a half days from now, give or take a day', so she's reasonably certain they have a chance of elbowing their way in. Well. Depending on Cecile's stance.
“We're on the gym circuit,” she explains, shaking her head. “We're happy to wait if we have to, there is nowhere we need to be - though a five minute preliminary would be fantastic if it can be organised.” Right, Devi, when you're done using codewords and euphemisms, you might as well say 'we're temporarily homeless by choice at the moment and we need a place to stay', it couldn't possibly be much more obvious what you're fishing for without a direct mention.
“Ahh,” replies the receptionist as she mentions the gym circuit. Right, there were still occasionally people who did that - though he hadn't seen one in some time. “Well, you're in luck, it looks like she's free now - let me just give her a ring and let her know you're coming.”
The receptionist picks up the phone, presses a few buttons, and after waiting a good ten seconds, speaks into the receiver. “Hi, Cecile? It's Jason down in the lobby. I've got a couple of trainers here doing the gym circuit, is now a good time? …yeah. …there are two. …mm-hmm. …okay, good, I'll send them right up then.” He hangs up the phone, and turns back to Devi. “All right, you're all set. The elevator's right over there…” - he points down the hall - ”…and she's on the first floor. Good luck,“ he adds with a practiced smile.
There's a nervous tinge to Devi's demeanour as she watches Jason handle the phone conversation, increasingly lucid of that she's intruding on a complete stranger's free time. A different part of her is quick to point out that this is part of what they do, Sehto culture or not, but she can't help but feel a good chunk humbled by the prospect of Cecile making any space for them at all.
“Thank you,” she says, finally, trying not to grin in elation at the positive outcome - and the two words flit from her almost in unison as she realises she's been holding her breath for several long seconds. Adventure! This was totally an adventure. They were entirely at the whim of other people's willingness to put up with them, that was already quite adventurous on its own.
Her gaze finds Batsen, and the restrained grin finally pops into existence on her face - she's glowing. “Let's go,” she prompts, unnecessarily, extending her left hand as if a part of her was tempted to grab one of his sleeves to pull him along before changing its mind - then she's walking in a way that's trying very hard not to be an energetic bound across to the elevator. They could just take the stairs - it is, after all, just one floor - but Jason's pointed out the elevator and it feels rude to walk right past it.
It's all still a bit hard to believe that he's here, on the first stop in the circuit, about to battle in an actual pokégym. On the one hand, it's definitely exciting - he's done plenty of pokébattles before, but all of the 'friendly duel' variety, mostly with Dejan or Devi. The prospect of battling in any kind of 'official' capacity against highly experienced trainers is certainly an intimidating one - if he had to admit it, he's definitely a little scared. But that's part of having an adventure, he tells himself - one's never sure what will come next.
With a soft 'ding', the elevator doors open; Batsen steps in and pushes the small square button labeled '1'. The doors slowly glide shut behind the trainers, and an almost agonizingly slow elevator ride later, they open again.
The elevator opens into the moister atmosphere of the first floor. It's a surreal experience if there ever was one - were it not for the carpet running through it, forming a sharply delineated path between the plants, one might presume one's stepped out of the building entirely and into a jungle, like in some particularly spacetime-dicing video game. Devi's hooked her right hand into the respective trouser pocket, other hand still curled about its strap of her rucksack for subconscious support, and with a fascinated stare she takes in the landscape.
It certainly doesn't help combat her disorientation, but at least the way the carpet stretches through the floor makes for a rather obvious hint. Biting her lower lip lightly, Devi narrows her eyes with a confident excitement and starts an enthused stride along the path.
The wall that it eventually reveals has a noticeable curvature, much like the reception desk below, providing a theme - the building may be all straight edges and right angles, but the inside of it is quite set on not following that rule. Manual sliding doors of a rectangular design but following the curve of the wall - clearly not made of as solid a material as their surface texture implies - that could easily overlap each other are currently ajar enough to allow a medium-sized pokémon to amble through if it was so inclined, and between the straight edges, backed by a slab of shadow making up her gym, is Cecile Madhukar.
There's no name tag and her photo wasn't on the sign outside, but it's unmistakable by context: Her hands on her hips, attention on the strangers, waiting as she seems to be, it can really only be the gymleader.
“Gym circuit?” she 'echoes' Jason's introduction, tone somewhere between a friendly mock and a genuine curiosity. “You haven't looked at a map yet, have you?” she asks, tinge of amused incredulousness in her voice, letting her gaze drift between Devi and Batsen. A Butterfree bridges the gap between the bushes and low trees to her right and those to her left, fluttering nervously to get out of sight as quick as possible, mussing a few strands of her hair with the light breeze it kicks up in the process. Absent-mindedly, her right hand reaches up to pat her hair back down.
✘ in progress