Deciphering the unknown Unown || Open!
“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"... "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”
Of all the renowned archeologists, excavators, backpackers and roundabout travelers who have made their marks by trekking through ruins Lucian Fontaine would hardly be the first person to come to mind. Yet, here in the midst of a exceedingly muggy spring morning the mauve haired psychic is certainly making the most of his time in the Ruins of Alph. It was rare that he traveled so very far from his home in Sinnoh yet a series of emails from both scientists and psychics alike had piqued his interest. He had been contacted by local researchers due to his infamous ability for deciphering codes of all kinds; They wanted him to study the Unown’s enigmatic messages in an effort to find out more about the genderless species. The psychics (And yes, more often than not he overlooked the messages of wannabe psychic nobodies) however seemed convinced that the Unown were growing precariously reckless, creating a schism noted by aura readers.
But that in itself didn’t surprise Lucian, Pokemon could be persnickety, especially ones like the Unown who were being disturbed after centuries of rest, this ‘disturbance’ would most likely come to pass once the researchers toned down their digs. It was the sheer amount of mail that the spectacle clad man had received that captured his attention; emails, Pidgey mail, phone calls, at any time on any given day the man would receive seven to ten letters concerning the ruins in Johto, eventually he just began throwing them out as soon as he glanced at the tag line, they all said the same thing; “Urgent problems in Johto’s Ruins of Alph!”, Psychosomatic imbalance ensues!”, “Our best minds are stumped!” The letters read like a dime store novel but slowly Lucian found himself just a tiny bit interested.
-Well if “Tiny” means taking a three week unpaid leave from his job at the Sinnoh Elite four in order to finally get this little mystery off his hands thousands of miles away.
--
Feeling the sweat building at his collar again Lucian leans back, letting out a soft groan. He was nearing the end of his stay with the Unown and he had made considerable headway with deciphering their codes and puzzles, but unlike the Pokemon themselves what he found kept evolving. Nothing was concrete and ironically enough much of the Unown’s messages and meanings remained unknown to the trainer that prided himself on knowing ‘a little bit of everything.’
It wasn’t the material itself that was challenging as it hadn’t taken him more than a day to get the hang of deciphering the broken Latin that the Unown communicated in. Instead Lucian found his own mind getting in the way, the further he went in to the ruins the more he felt the ‘imbalance’ that all the psychics that wrote to him had mentioned. The force came in waves, at first a passing headache, then a growing pain and finally a pressing weight as if his own brain was congested with all the psychic energy in the air. He had experienced this on a smaller scale at Sinnoh’s own Solaceon ruins but this was an utterly different feeling, these Pokemon weren't necessarily angry or frightened they were restless and becoming roguish.
Lucian hadn’t actually caught sight of the elusive floating letters but they had certainly made their presence known, puzzles would be scrambled, his notes would be wiped clean as if the ink had never touched the paper, most pressingly were the vivid dreams he had while staying on location in a nearby cottage, occasionally it was a vivid nightmare sometimes an extravagant lucid dream. It brought him back to the days when he was a child who couldn’t control his own abilities, the Unown managed to both frighten and entice him.
The slim man rests back on his heels, crouched against the interior cave wall, he wasn’t completely in the thick of the ruins just yet but the insufferable heat and mental strain of being so close to the mass of Unown had pushed him to take a brief break. Removing his glasses Lucian spares a glance around, the world just a blur without them. There was a strange comfort in the way he could manage to unfocus in the wake of the increasing aching in his head.
He allows himself to slouch backwards as his violet eyes close. “Perhaps it’ll be best if I just give it a rest.” His voice chimes out expecting no answer. It was horribly difficult to keep tabs on the locations of people around him when there was such a massive magnetic power leaching away his own abilities, Lucian could hardly allow himself to think coherently let alone cohesively use his esper like powers.
He’s certainly a sight there, crumpled on the floor with his usual perfectly put together appearance disheveled. Maddeningly enough his interior matched the unruly exterior, the buzzing of the distant unknown occupied all of his subconscious attention making all other cognitive actions difficult.