POKÉMON MYSTERY DUNGEON: GATES INTO SHADOW

Chapter Eight: Moving Up in the World
raw campaign notes edition

ambur goes home to spend the evening reading then sleeping through noon the next day, while hazy checks in on the café. it is still closed but turmeric's outside and says that lavender was waiting for hazy to come back and give the all clear before reopening. they talk a bit, eric's still worried about chip acting shadowy, also a bunch of people just left town as soon as the roads cleared up. hazy spends the rest of the night weeding his overgrown garden.

next day, hazy goes to the café and finds it open though nowhere near as busy as it used to be. chip and eric are outside, chip standing guard in case anyone wants to start trouble. he goes inside and chats with lavender. talking about myths and legends, lavender's been around here for a loooong time and things used to be a little weirder, but also recently is maybe the weirdest they've been. hazy can't actually read their menu because it's in cursive and he still hasn't learned modern writing systems.

ambur wakes up at noon and goes around the town square. mike and ike are like entirely out of supplies, shallot is frazzled because most of his staff left. construction has started on carson's new wagon. mars asks ambur to deliver some mail and packages to licorice because he's really busy sorting through the months of backlog he's just received. ambur does exactly that, licorice says he hasn't been able to do much with the mouldy book they left behind but they did reach out to their contact in nori and they said they'll try their best (and do it for free). ambur tries doing a little research on the star league's history after having met polaris in the past, but can't find much besides what's basically a borderline propagandistic brochure. turns out the star league lab facility is like, part of a whole town called moonstone, out east beyond dragonsgrave. they also pick up a map of nori while at the library.

ambur heads to the café to relay the info to hazy and lay out their plan to head to nori and get gumdrop to clean up the book. eric also comes over after a bit and they talk with him about a couple things. him and chip came from soda springs and were called to pannacotta by giri in nori, but they're not in any hurry to go back there so they're not gonna accompany them to nori. he's still worried about chip, but he's glad that things have kinda gotten better in that regard. ambur calls their relationship cute and eric gets awkward and leaves.

ambur ends up massively oversleeping. hazy goes to meringue to talk about their team rank and meringue admits they're supposed to be gold rank, and offers him their new badges, then takes them back after getting the idea to make more of an event out of it for town morale. hazy goes to talk to strawberry about it (accidentally catching sight of eric and chip cuddling in one of the rooms. ambur was right all along) and she says to talk to cinnamin about it too. wisp is hanging out with the breloom and telling him about the mysterious history of nori. hazy casually drops info about the breloom's less than heroic past and he gets awkward and leaves. hazy also offers to take wisp to lavender's café since she doesn't know about it.

they go there and lavender immediately sees through wisp's vulpix disguise and treats her very very nicely as hazy talks to lavender about the rank up celebration.

ambur wakes up way after the town's kinda started falling asleep so they don't bother heading out, just doing some midnight reading and research. a shadow passes over the moon and they climb onto their roof to investigate. the shadow lugia is flying overhead seeming to search for something. its red eye focuses on them for a moment as it sweeps over emmental, then dives into the dungeon at black forest. hazy got fucking blazed and missed the whole thing.

the next day ambur wakes up to the celebration they had no idea about. hazy fills them in on their promotion then starts talking about the weird pirate dream he was having all night. in the middle of his explanation of what the fuck a devil fruit is, chip interrupts and congratulates them on getting gold rank, explaining that him and eric would be technically under their authority when doing a multi team excursion. they all go grab some breakfast at lavender's little café stall, then sitting with wisp and eric as they talk about the history of nori.

cinnamin and rigatoni are being very loud on stage and without very much rhythm. eventually meringue calls them up on stage, giving a little speech and preparing to hand out the gold badges. hazy is actively toking it up on stage. ambur, already a little wigged out before the crowd, spots a clefable way at the back and just stares wide-eyed. he meets their gaze and smirks, interrupting his conversation with a bellsprout farmer to duck away behind the inn. ambur dives off the stage and chases after him, barely missing tackling him as he tries to raise an RKS sword but still interrupting his escape.

it's syr orion and he wants to be a little more diplomatic than deneb and rigel were. he explains the rest of the star league wants to take more drastic action against them but he thinks he can convince ambur to hand over the wishing stones peacefully. ambur tells him to go fuck himself, they know the star league's been stalking their house at night. hazy shows up as orion tells them he'll be in nori if they want to talk -- but deneb is also in nori, taking some anger leave after the spiritomb incident. he teleports out. ambur swipes at the swirl on the ground as chip also shows up. they just want to be left alone. they explain the stalking to hazy.

they return to the celebration, trying their best to enjoy the rest of it.

tomorrow, they'll start heading into the black forest, taking wisp and team dirtbag along for the ride. might also check in on shallot and his farm.