[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Just before Aurelie was transported via the teleportation beam toward
Motostoke, she caught sight of an exceedingly odd interaction out of the corner of her eye. Someone from the League suddenly burst out with a furious, rambling harangue at the Avatar of Groudon, who lightly flicked his hand in response. Sadly, Aurelie was whisked away before seeing what happened next. Still, it did remind her of
Isaac Merlo's description of a Ranger meeting—though how Isaac knew so much about
that was still a mystery to her—that devolved into pie-throwing mayhem.
In this case, maybe this person's outburst was triggered by
WO-CHIEN's aura of vindictiveness and spite and wasn't necessarily a symptom of ongoing dysfunction within the League. But it was still food for thought. And definitely good for a chuckle or two too.
Then all such thoughts fled Aurelie's brain as she landed in a strange city that must have once been magnificent and industrialized but now looked dilapidated and ruined. Putrid smoke darkened the air, and thick, noxious sludge instead of water filled the canals and channels.
This must be Motostoke, she thought, accurately and somewhat sadly.
The red-haired smith found herself near what was still recognizably
Motostoke Station, judging from the elevated train tracks winding away into the distance. Instead of the whistling and rumbling noises she'd expect from a train station, the sounds of screaming and splashing filled the air. Aurelie gasped in horrified astonishment to see waves of viscous, slimy purple-black sludge pouring out of the station onto the streets below.
"Miss, you can't just stand there! You have to get back!" a voice shouted just behind her. A hand tugged urgently on her arm.
Aurelie spun around to see a stocky middle-aged man dressed strangely like a medieval peasant trying to pull her behind a makeshift set of barricades, where other peasant-like people were also clustered. Too startled to resist, she stumbled after him just in time to dodge a spill of noxious, poisonous sludge. It sizzled as it hit the ground where Aurelie had been standing, and a huge, disgusting
hand stretched out from the spill, flailing blindly toward her.
Thinking quickly, Aurelie wondered if its purplish color indicated it was a Poison-type attack or if it just
looked poisonous and nasty.
"Argile," she exclaimed, turning to her
GOLETT,
"use EARTHQ...uh..." She glanced at the row of barricades and the peasants hiding behind it and stopped herself, amending her words in order to
avoid toppling their defenses and knocking innocent people to the ground.
"Uh, use STOMPING TANTRUM, please!" The metallic Pokemon obligingly stamped on the slimy, dribbling hand, crushing it efficiently. The watching peasants broke into scattered applause and appreciative, relieved murmurs. Emboldened by their positive response, Aurelie flashed a brilliant smile at them, before nodding at the barricades.
"Are these meant to keep the sludge from getting closer to you?" she asked, jabbing her thumb at a jumble of tables and chairs heaped together. The man who'd saved her nodded yes.
The red-haired smith ran a critical eye over the barricade before her, absently waving her hand to beckon her
GOLETT back to her side.
"It's not bad," she said judiciously,
"but you could do more to build it properly.
"You've definitely got to extend it further out so the sludge doesn't just...ooze around the edges! Or get in through the cracks, like here," she added, pointing at the open spaces between chair and table legs with a deepening frown.
"You can't just pile stuff up at random, for Arceus' sake! Who's the person in charge of all this?"The peasants stared at her, most of them probably wondering how a strange woman with an eyepatch was daring to lecture them so. One person eventually ventured,
"You?""Ha! I hope not!" Aurelie snorted, before clapping her hands briskly.
"Still, that sludge looks like it's not going away, so we better get to work. A barricade is something you construct, after all! It's all about the craftsmanship!" She looked about herself speculatively at the streets nearby.
"Are there carts and barrels you can get hold of? Metal sheets or crates? Even some big rocks or loose paving stones? I'm clearly new here, but you all know the area and where to look for things like that.
"So, grab as many as you can and line them up across the street until they wedge together. Fill up every tiny bit of space on the ground and make a wall!" Aurelie called out, raising her voice to make sure all the peasants could hear her and gesturing decisively toward them.
"And you and you, let's turn these tables and benches over on their side so they're flat on the ground! Let's move!"eZ6IbaB|[attr="class","aurelie_tag"]
TL;DR:
- Wearing jeans, T-shirt, sneakers, sunglasses, and a dark hoodie with the hood pulled up all the way
- Lands in Motostoke and is saved from being devoured by the sludge by a random peasant dragging her out of the way
- Uses GOLETT'S STOMPING TANTRUM to fight off a sludge hand
- Starts organizing the peasants to improve the construction of the barricades so they're tighter and stronger to hold back the sludge waves
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Ugh, she hated this. The pipes and mechanical nonsense of industry.[break][break]
