Act 38: Rehabilitation

This time the Decidueye slept better for the next hours, until it was morning once more, and time for breakfast.

The door to the prison block opens with a familiar hiss, and the familiar sounds of a pair of padded feet echo across the otherwise silent halls. The smell of freshly prepared "syruped toast" fills the air as its source approaches.
"Wake up Duci." Easani taps the bars lightly with the glass, containing a fruity juice. "Breakfast is here."

She opened her eyes, blinking a few times until her vision focused and she could see the Leafeon properly. "hhhhmmm...is it morning already?" She got out of bed and stretched her wings a bit. "What's this I smell?"

"Syruped Toast" He says as he has the hot, slightly eggy, and well syruped toast on a plate. "Along with 'orange' juice." He says as he lifts the glass. He sets the items down by the cell and slides the plate and sets the glass inside.

She looks down at the drink and the food. First the owl picks up the 'orange' juice. "hhhmmm, I don't think I saw a color like this in a drink before, what berry did they use to make this?" She asks.

"Some fruit called an 'Orange'.... Real creative name, I know." He chuckles sarcastically.

She takes a sip of this 'orange' juice, it's a taste she never felt before, it is good. "Mmmmm." She nods. The owl then looks down to the food. "Is this bread?"

"It's syruped bread. Not sure how they make it myself, I'm not the chef, but I have had it before. It is gooood." He lets out a small mmm as he remembers the taste of it. 

She picks up the plate with the toast and pecks at the syruped toast with her beak to take a bite. "Mmmmm....mmmmmmmm!" By the sound of that, she really agrees with the taste as much as Easani probably did the first time he ate it.

Easani has already had breakfast, but just for the sake of civility, he decides to eat as well. He takes out a 'ganola bar' and unwraps it, and brings it to his mouth and bites off a bit, chewing slowly and savoringly.

She pecked at the toast some more, occasionally taking sips of the orange juice. Duci is really liking this food.

Easani gives a small amused grin as he watches Duci peck at the toast. It's something he's seen every day for as long as she's been a prisoner here, but it still amazes him none the less. 

He takes another bite of his granola bar, chewing ever so slowly, making it last.

Eventually Duci finished her meal, she cleaned the plate and emptied the glass. "Aaaaaah...~ That was a very fine meal." She sounds content

"Yeah, it's pretty good stuff, isn't it?" Easani nods as he finishes off his granola bar, speaking in between chews. He swallows the rest of it after a few chews, and disposes of the wrapper in a nearby container. 
"Don't forget today we start Rehab. You'll be let out, allowed to go outside, but you'll have to stick close to me and Seph. I mean, it's not that we don't trust you, but.... er... well..." He tries to think of an explaination that isn't 'yeah we totally don't trust you to not try running off to the Grove and get yourself killed.' But fails.
"Eer, well... you know..." He says in defeat. He scratches the back of his head in embarrassment.
"Speaking of which, we'll start that as soon as he gets here. He seems to be running a little late though. Had more dungeon kerfuffles last night, it seems."
So it seems there's a few moments before that begins.

Then it seems like they will have some time to talk until it's time for this 'rehab'. "Did the Avali told you where they came from?"

"Some far off world called 'Avalon'. Apparently much like The Snows, but much colder." Easani replies casually. "I guess if they could grow food there, they can grow it anywhere." 

"Hhhhhmmm, it must be quite hard for them to be in a hot place such as the land of sands."

"Yeah. I mean, it's not exactly easy for either of us either, is it?" He laughs a little. "Though I hear the Avali have something to counteract it. Something called... 'nanites' or something? Don't ask me what those are, I have no clue." He shakes his head at the last bit.

"'Easani' is an Avali name, right? Did they give it to you?"

"Kind of. When I told them that I hated my name, they asked me if I wanted a new one. I said 'hell yes!' So they gave me a list of suggestions and I picked this one."

"Hhhmm, I see. How long have you been with them?"

"A couple of months, actually." Easani replies. "See, from what I'm told, this base was established a week or so after someone called 'Ghost Bear' left. And before you ask who they are... I believe they're the first avalis here. The ones that started this whole thing. But they moved onto other things. I don't know, you'd have to ask one of the Avalis for the full story. See a few weeks earlier, I had come in from Sandstone. Quiet little place, but dreary, guild corrupt up the wazzo. Or at least the town's official one. Racked up a bit of a tab over at this 'Barthol' place. In fact, the last day I was there, I saw some Zoura chase after an eevee who's just moved in from the maze. Was going to help her but then I saw some big Breloom guild girl go in after her, so I decided not to. At the time I thought she might have been an undercover Grove spy, so I paid what I could for my tab, and high-tailed it to the maze.   Saw her again in the maze with some Jolteon, but I was able to avoid her. "
He takes a breath and continues.
"Been living as a sav- er, dungeon dweller in here for a few weeks and was starting to get used to it, more or less, when I started seeing strange things occur. Weird bird-like figures, strange objects. Maze dwellers talking about 'Nexus' or 'Big Daddy' that. Curiosity got the better of me. Unfortunately I got myself captured, and they put me in some sort of 'brain scannie' thing.  I thought they were going to kill me for my past crimes, but they explained that they didn't do that. And instead I found myself in a position that wasn't too dissimilar to yours. Locked up here where I could do no possible harm, but more importantly, no harm could come to me. I thought about everything, and eventually, decided 'fuck it'. And decided I wanted to defect. Been here ever since."

She listened to the tale he just told her. "Hhhmm, I see."

"Yes, this base has actually been here for a while." Easani explains. "Though, it wasn't always called 'Sandgun' , and it didn't always have said 'gun'. Before that it was just a research outpost. And it wasn't always this busy. Hell, this prison wasn't built at first. I had to settle for being tied up in a tent before they got to building this." He chuckles. "Ahhh, fun times."
A moment passes.
"Is there anything e-"
His question is interrupted by another hiss of the door, followed by very heavy footfalls. Easani turns his head over to the side to see the newcomer.
"Ah, there you are Seph." Easani nods towards him as the giant synth comes into view.
"Sorry, I got held up." Seph apologizes.
"So what was it this time?" Easani asks.
"Meat hunter." Seph groans.
"Really?!" Easani replies flatly. "I thought we'd seen the last of those when Sandstone got de-nobleized. Or was it more of those Grove bastards?"
"Na. Wasn't grove. Didn't have the cape."  Seph shakes his head. "Apparently this one came from some far off town. Apparently they didn't get the memo of anything going on here."
"I trust they've been... properly dealt with." Easani raises an eyebrow.
"They will be hunting meat no longer. That's for sure." Seph says.
"Very good... 'Big Daddy'." Easani chuckles, then turns his attention back to Duci.
"Sorry about that. Anyway, we're ready to begin."
He walks over to the cell door, and clicks the same few buttons as he does whenever he needs to enter her cell. The door opens, but he does not come in. Instead, he waits for her to come out.

'Meat hunter'. Just hearing that word fills Duci with anger, but it's good to hear that said meat hunter got dealt with. "So is it time then?" She steps out of her cell.

"Yes, it's time." Seph informs her. "You haven't been out of your cell in quite a while, so take it easy at first. Stretch out, walk around. No need to start hard with running laps or anything." 
Her reaction to the word 'meat hunter' may have flown over the head of the giant Synth, but it did not go unnoticed by Easani. He resolves to ask her later however.
"I'll get the door." He announces as he goes over to the door, and with the press of a button, the door on the other end of the cell block opens, revealing the sands in all thier glory.
"After you" The leafeon says as he extends a hand towards the door, while holding the button with the other.

It will certainly be nice to go out for a bit. "Mmm-mmm." She nods to Easani and walks through that open door way, her talons touching the sand. She closed her eyes for a little bit as they adjusted the the brightness of sunlight.

Seph, and then Easani both follow her outside, the door closing behind them.

She takes in a deep breath of the air out here before looking around. "Do either of you got any suggestions on what place to go to in here?"

"Well..." Easani rubs his head. "You asked about how food was grown. So I suppose there is that. There's the mess hall, though I take it you're full. There's the bunks, the offices... I'm going to have to insist on staying away from the teleporter for now. Not that you can use it without assistance anyway." His voice gets softer and lower. "... And I still have to pay off that Barthol tab." He shakes his head. "I doubt you have much interest in the supply cache." Seph adds in. "And we're going to have to insist on not going near the quartermaster."

"The quartermaster? Why? who are they?"

"The guy in charge of keeping track of all the weapons." Easani replies flatly.

"Ah...So as you were saying...you are going to show me how the food is grown around here?""

"Yes... yes of course." He says as he leads the way. Seph stands behind her. "right this way." 
He leads them to a large tent, all ready inside the Decidueye can hear hissing and humming noises coming from inside. 
He opens the tent, bidding her enter.

She obliges and steps into the tent, not knowing what to expect inside exactly, plants usually grow outdoors, don't they not?

Inside she finds... well not at all what she expects.
There are what appear to be a series of tanks, all full of water, interconnected by what appear to be iron and copper pipes, themseleves connected to various metal boxes and cylinders, those that appear to be the source of the hissing and humming. On a few of the boxes, there are plants of various sizes and shapes, plants she cannot identify, apparently the sources of their food. Including one very slimy, fleshy, and icky one that seems to be the 'meatvine' she heard mentioned back, as true enough, it seems to be growing what appears to be various cuts and types of meat. The other plants are far less disgusting looking. One growing some sort of orange, round fruit. Some sort of leafy pink and purple plant, some sort of weird blue things with brown bark. One sort of very leavy bulb, not unlike the back of an ivysaur without the ivysaur, one sort of  small leafy plant with a dark orange root she can see in the tank. One sort of large leavy stalk containing a wrapped ... something on them.  In another such tank there seems to be some sort of green pond plant floating ontop of it. She can't tell what that's supposed to be.  There are too many plants to name or identify.
What they all share in common is that roots are submerged in water, clearly visible in the tank. below the roots there is some sort of pipe producing bubbles. Another pipe connects it to another tank, this one containing some sort of fish. One that looks vaguely like a goldeeon, but much smaller and without the horn. It in turn is connected to a series of boxes and cylinders, which, unlike the tanks, are not transparent, and she cannot see inside them.

This contraption has her puzzled, is this what is helping these plants grow? She also hasn't seem any of those plants before, and that orange fruit is well...orange, it must be the kind that provided that juice. "Who are those inside of this?" She points to the fishes in the tanks. Duci thinks that these fish are sentient.

"Those...are... ummm....."  Easani doesn't even have an answer for her.
"Those are simply goldfish." Seph however, does. "They're a species of fish native to most worlds with fresh water."
"Oh, I get what she's trying to ask here." Easani suddenly realizes it. "No, the goldfish aren't sentient. I know, it was a bit of a shock too, but not all animals in the universe are like us where we can talk and stuff." He waves his hands around to as he makes his point. "So no, they aren't prisoners of war or anything like that."
"Those fish really do not have much of a thought process outside of eating and swimming around. Which suits this system just fine." Seph adds in. "As their primary purpose in this system is to... well... defecate."
"Basically, they get fed those kind of topside grown weeds." He points to the tank with the green pond plants floating above it. That at face value, might be confused for pond scum, except they're tiny little plants instead of a sludge. "which, thankfully, reproduce like crazy. The fish eat that, they shit, shit that settles to the bottom and gets sucked out of the tank, and then that serves as fertilizer. And as the plants eat that, the water in the plant tanks get cleaned. And then the clean water gets pumped back into the fish tank. And the whole process starts all over again."
He takes a breath after that long winded explanation. 
"If you need a larger explanation works, I'm sure one of the eggheads can tell it to you in large, very hard to understand words and take hours telling you every single process. Needless to say though, it's a closed system for the most part." He explains.

"So they can't think of anything other than eat and swim?" The idea sounds very strange to her, she doesn't know if she should admire these fishes blissful ignorance or pity them for being stuck in a endless cycle of repetition. 

"Not really, no." Easani repies flatly.
"A lot of animals are like that in the galaxy." Seph adds in. "This planet is quite the anomaly in that it does not have non-sentient animals."
"Which means the noble bastards have to rely on people hunting dungeon dwellers for their feasts." Easani groans.

She blinks. "Really? I never thought it was possible for there to be creatures like this." Duci looks at the goldfish a bit more. "I'm...not really sure what more to say about this. It certainly feels...very strange."

"Well, you wanted to know where the base's food, well, part of it, comes from. And how they were going to get food to grow in sandstone. And now you know." Easani tells her. 
"As an aside... don't drink the water. Out of either tank. It's not very healthy... for you at least." Seph warns.
"Right." Easani replies flatly. 
"Anyway, is there anything else to ask in here?"

"Besides these goldfish, what about these plants that are growing here? can you tell me what they are?"

"Alright." Easani tells him. "I can identify some of these, Seph can help with the rest."
He points to the tree-like plant growing the orange ball fruit.
"This is a miniature orange tree. It grows oranges. AKA where the juice that you drank earlier came from." He points out.
Seph points to that not-an-ivysaur plant.
"That's Lettuce. It's used in a lot of dishes, but most notably, tacos." Seph says. "That small leafy plant with the big orange root is a carrot." 
"That leafy pink and purpose plant is Piru, an avalon-native plant. Again, used in tacos." Easani adds.
"That very tall plant with the wrapped things is Corn." He says. "Sweet Corn to be precise. Once cooked you can eat it right off the cob with some butter, or in a bowl or mix it into various things. Like chicken soup."
"And speaking of, I believe it's time we talk about this thing." Seph says, pointing at the elephant in the room. The ugly fleshy looking plant... if one could even describe that thing as a 'plant', though it looks more like some sort of organ.

The Owl stares at the fleshy one, her eyes wide. "Is that uuuuh...alive somehow?"

"yeah... that's... the meatvine." Easani says. "it's also not sentient. Or at least we don't think it is."
"Essentially, this plant produces meat. Not meat alternative, straight up meat." Seph explains. "It used to be a very long time ago that the Avali, being a omnicarnivorous species, had to either hunt for-" 
"Non-sentient" Easani quickly adds in.
"-Meat," Seph finishes after Easani adds in, "or raise it themselves. Kinda like the fish. But then a discovery was made on an atropus world. Normally, Atropus worlds are some of the most awful places in the known galaxy, grotesque, zombified worlds full of what some call 'the living dead', made entirely of rotted meat and bone and eyes."
"I don't think she needs it described." Easani rudely interrupts. "Needless to say, they're bad places."
"They also appear to have an omniscient hive mind that drives anything on the planets to insanity within minutes." Seph adds. 
"Yes yes." Easani interrupts again dismissively. "Long story short, there are few good reasons to go there, and good things that come from them... and that's one of them. If you can get past the ugliness of the plant, you have a constant source of meat and chicken without having to kill anything." 

That is quite a bone chilling description, but she has to admit that growing food as if it were crops sounds like a very good idea. "If we discard everything else but the fact that it can produce meat, uuuuhh...it's pretty good."

"Yeah..." Easani replies uncomfortably. "Anyway, if that's all in here..."

"Yeah, I think that's all." She nods. "So about 'the offices' that you mentioned..."

"Alright. Though we won't be able to stay in there for long, or do much chit chat."
Easani pulls aside the fabric to the tent, bidding all of them to exit. He goes first. While Seph, in his typical style, waits for Duci to exit before him.

"Alright." She steps out of the tent and waits outside for Easani and Seph to come guide her.

Seph follows behind her, and they move onto the next destination. The offices. Easani comes to a building, not too dissimilar in make to the prisons, and opens the door, which opens with a hiss much like the other one. Easani goes first.

The Decidueye follows right after the Leafeon.

The sight inside is... well, rather underwhelming. It's mostly just a few avali sitting at some desks, some of them shuffling papers, some of them looking bored, while another one wiggling their fingers on top of some unseen thing.
"This is the office. Basically, the paperwork department." Easani says. "There's not a whole lot to say about-"
"Hey!" One of the Avali suddenly shouts at him. "What's she doing in here?" he points at Duci.
"Erm, Rehab. You know, getting around, getting exercise."
"Yeah, well, you're supposed to do that out there." The Avali says as he points to the door.
"Fine, Geez!" Easani huffs. "See, I told you that we wouldn't be long." He says to Duci before he exists, seph lightly pulling on Duci's shoulder to urge her to exit before things get worse in here.
"Crabasses." Easani growls under his breath.
"Yeah, you'd be a crabass too if your job here was to deal with the paperwork." Said Avali growls. "Honestly, why they don't just assign this to a drone and/or a nexus node is anyone's guess."

Before she could ask what everything here was all about, she is lead out of there. "...Why do they work with papers for? And why were they so irritated?" The Owl asks, perplexed by that scene back there.

Easani just shrugs. "Beats me."
Seems Seph doesn't have an answer to that either. 
"We just kind of avoid it. Not sure why I pointed it out to be honest." 
"Perhaps we should go to the science area next?"
"Maybe. They're generally a lot nicer. Though I wouldn't recommend conversation with them either, for the exact opposite reason." Easani warns. "They aren't crabasses, but they will talk your ear off for hours on end with things you really don't have a hope of understanding."

"Is every Avali difficult to talk to...?"

"Not really." Easani says as he approaches the building. " Its just that the last group was stuck on paperwork. And this group tends to forget not everyone's a scientist.
They reach the building. As before, Easani opens the door and heads on end.

Like before, she headed in right behind him.

Now this one is a lot more mysterious, and interesting. There are white metalic things with lights and buttons on them all over the place. There is a stretcher in the middle of the room, various contraptions hanging from the ceiling, some beign looking, others... not so much. Strange square things hanging from the ceiling with images on them.  Strange bright orange lights, texts, and symbols floating above some of the button-light boxes.
And then there are the avali themselves. All of them wearing some sort of large white coats with pockets and various gizmoes hanging out of them. Moving about from one thing to the other.  Some of them staring at some of the ceiling squares.  Some of them doing the same finger-waving motions in the air that the office avali were doing. At first, none of them seem to notice them, until one of them finally does. 
"O-Oh! Um hello!" A male approaches them, and in particular Duci. "We didn't see you there."
The labcoat wearing avali takes a look over Duci. 
"Ah yes, this must be the 'grove' person that was brought here? She seems to be some form of order Strigiforme, bears a passing resemblance to the Asio flammeus sandwichensis species." He takes out a device and begins to look her over. 
"I'm picking up haroglyphical readings on the 11nth and 9th quatrain, clearly indicating some sort of O.G. Orbifold in-"
"Doctor, please stop. It's awkward enough as it is without going on about all sorts of stuff we common folk can't understand."
"W-What?" The doctor looks at Seph. "O-Oh, my apologies, I forget that not everyone on this base versed in scientific language." 
"Like I said, they can get carried away sometimes." Easani says. 
"S-So you're not bringing her here for an examination?" The 'doc' says disappointedly. 
"I'm afraid not." Easani sighs. 
"Well, phie." The avali sighs. It's obviously some sort of curse. " Oh well. And... what can I do for you today, then, hmm?"

Wow, Easani wasn't kinding about these 'scientists' being able to say words one can't understand and end up confused. "uuuh...what is it that you do here?"

"We study the dungeon here." The scientist says, trying his best to not devolve into technobabble. "And its dwellers. How they operate, how thier powers work, the energy and molecular composition the dungeon materials, the radiological composition of-"
"You're doing it again, doc." Easani sighs.
"Oh. Again, my bad." The scientist says.

The Decidueye is trying to pick her words carefully here, Easani did say these scientists can go into huge dialogues. "And how has your research been going?"

"Quite well. Especially now that the Grove menace has been dealt with, actual progress can be made. Although we're still in the process of figuring out how exactly the rocks of the dungeon ..." he looks like he was about to drift off into more battle, but quickly catches himself.  "... move themselves of their own accord."
"Yeah before the big gun, these guys were basically what the base was built for." Easani adds in before the scientist can go into babble.  "And now that it doesn't have to worry so much about the Grove coming back, at least not for the foreseeable future, we can do more of this." He says.

"Hhhmm, I see." She assumes he probably already asked the locals what they knew about the mystery dungeon's way of working. But she likely knows just as much as any other native of this planet.

"Well, best of luck to you all." Easani waves to them before turning to leave for the door. He exits the door, and Seph nods to Duci, indicating that they intend to leave as well.

This was all pretty interesting. She wonders what these scientists will find out about the maze, maybe they will discover things the pokémon can't hope to do alone. With these thoughts, she follows Easani back outside.

"Well, I guess that's it." Easani says to her. "If you want to exercise some more, well, there's plenty of room." He extends his hand and shows the wide open space. "Otherwise, just let me know when you're done for now."

Duci then looks up, pondering. "If it's possible for me to use my wings a bit..."

"Well I told you about the shield, so don't go too high." Easani replies. ' 

"Hhhmm, how high exactly? Can you give me an estimate?"

"Here let me show you." To prove his point, a sharp leaf appears in his hand. He throws the razor leaf up, high into the sky, like a shuriken.  Once it reaches just past the length of the gun barrel however...
*BZZT*
A sudden green mass of energy appears in front of the flying leaf, blocking its rise. The leaf stops dead in its tracks, before falling back down to the sand, lodging itself in the grains.
"Does that answer your question?" 

Her eyes were focused on his attack, watching where the projectile went until it hit the shield. 'Yes, yes it does. Thanks." The Owl takes a few steps back, opens her wings and begins to get aloft, though not ascending too fast.

Easani watches her fly. Part of him is feeling nervous. If it wasn't for that shield, he'd worry she was up to something.

She is well aware that it's a bad idea to try to fly around, so she stays in place up there and decides to sight-see instead. What will she see? Well, there are a few of the dungeon dwellers out and about in an open space she can see from up there.

From what she can see from here, the dungeon stretches out almost as far as the eye can see. She swears she can see one of the exit walls from there, but it's very far off. 
There are of course mons running around below the walls. But she's too high to make most of them out properly.

"hhhmmm..." Mysterious as ever, the dungeon is to her. Well this is enough usage of her wings for now, she hovers back down to the ground and lands near the Synth and the Leafeon. "Alright i think that's good enough. So I guess I'm going back to the prison then?"

"'Fraid so. Unless you'd rather wander around and stretch some more, maybe take a lap around the base?" Easani asks.

She shakes her head. "No, it's fine."

"Well, then yeah. Back to the cell." Easani frowns. It seems he doesn't like that prospect any more than her. But technically she hasn't defected... yet. So she's still considered a prisoner.

Duci complies and lets them take her back to the prison.

There are very few words as they march her back to her all too familiar cell. Once they reach the building, Seph nods, and wanders off, apparently having something else to do today. Now it's just Easani and Duci again as he takes her by the shoulder and leads her back to her cell. He clicks the buttons in a particular order, and the cell door opens.

The Owl goes back in her cage. Though that time she had outside of it was very good. "...Thanks again, Easani." She smiles to him.

"You're welcome." Easani says. "Your dinner will come around in a few hours, and another chance to run about outside." He informs her.

"Alright then, I will be seeing you..." She goes to sit on her bed for now.
One hour later or so, someone comes into the base through the teleporter. It's that Meowstic who is the ruler of the town of Sandstone. But then the teleporter is activated once again as someone else comes following right behind him...it's that human advisor of his, Mattias.