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manchasama · 4 months

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So in true "gosh I don't want to go back to work tomorrow" fashion, it's 1am. The perfect time to edit and post a new chapter of a ficlet many have forgotten about. :>

Hard to Swallow Part 2 (Part 1 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5)

School was...well, it was interesting. Ingo and Emmet's parents had decided that the two of them should join public schooling rather than homeschooling, to force them to interact more with their peers. Ingo and Emmet had protested, (Ingo quite loudly at that, but Emmet no less fervently), but their parents had been adamant. Neither of them had been looking forward to being stuck in a small room with the few other kids from town, who already thought they were weird and off-putting.

Then their parents had informed them that they weren't going to be attending the local school, but instead the larger school in Nimbasa. Which they would get to by train.

After that, Ingo and Emmet had been beside themselves, impatient to start the school year. If all of their enthusiasm was in planning for the travel itself, at least they were no longer protesting, their parents reasoned.

The thing was, school was there both to prepare young trainers for the journey they would begin in a few years, as well as to broaden their horizons to other professions and interests outside of pokemon battling. Most youths paid little attention to the latter, despite the probability that most of them would end up in a more menial job than champion or gym leader. Others, like Ingo and Emmet, had passions alongside of their pokemon obsession. Fewer still imagined a future where both combined.

Then there were the more practical lessons. Like Home Ec. Which brought Ingo to where he was now.

The girl—Ingo thought her name was Greta—looked at him with hopeful eyes, a small bundle held in front of her in offering. In the little bundle of cloth, some lopsided cookies lay.

"Would you please accept my cookies?" she asked, voice trembling slightly. Her friends shoved at each other behind her, obviously there as moral support. Ingo wished he had moral support right now too, but Emmet had stayed behind to talk with the teacher, and Ingo had offered to head to their lockers and gather what they needed to head home.

"I..." he looked around, hopeful for any distraction, but there were none to be had. In fact, their little gathering was quickly becoming the center of attention for the other teens passing by, some loitering to gawk. He ducked his head down, wishing again for Emmet's steady presence at his side. "Of course," he said helplessly, not knowing what else to do, not being able to force more than that out of his mouth. "Thank you," he added, because it was polite.

She beamed when he took one of the cookies, then continued to stare at him expectantly. Oh dear. She expected him to eat it now? Feeling entirely self conscious, he popped the cookie in his mouth. He did have to admit they tasted pretty good. Maybe not something he'd pick for himself, but…

She kept staring at him, and as his nerves grew, he realized the moment he'd made a grave mistake.

He couldn't move his jaw, teeth clenching tight around the sweet morsel, throat rebelling against the mere thought of swallowing. The cookies were quickly going from "doesn't taste terrible" to the mushiest texture imaginable, and Ingo knew he was in trouble. His eyes started to water a bit as he tried to force himself to swallow, desperate to not insult the still hopefully staring girl. It was such a small thing! Why could he not do it? Just swallow, compliment her, then he'd be free to leave.

Somehow he managed to start swallowing. Then his eyes widened and he dove for a nearby trashcan, coughing and retching as the soggy mess dripped into the plastic container. He heard a few disgusted cries from the group of girls, but he couldn't see through the tears in his eyes, couldn't get his hands to unclench from the sides of the garbage as he gasped in short breaths.

A moment later a warm, familiar hand was on his back, and a water bottle was dangled in front of him, already uncapped. Emmet's voice rang out above him, though for the life of him Ingo couldn't make out what he was saying. Knowing Emmet, it was something decidedly blunt and rude. Ingo would have to apologize properly for both of them later. Now, he raised a shaking hand to grab the water bottle, straightening up enough that he could tip it against his mouth and take a small sip.

The cool water was a balm to the burning inside of his mouth and throat. He was grateful he hadn't thrown up more than the little bit of the cookie he'd eaten. It wasn't the first time it had happened, nor would it be the last, but it was distressing and embarrassing.

"Ingo?" Emmet's voice broke through the throbbing in Ingo's head, and he pulled himself away from the trash can. The hallway was mostly empty, the group of girls nowhere to be seen.

"That was...quite rude of me," Ingo said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Ingo," Emmet said again, though his tone had turned disapproving. "Stop that. It is not your fault! Besides, she shouldn't have done it in front of everyone. I know you. You would not say no. She knows too."

"Still," Ingo said, sighing. He leaned he head against Emmet's shoulder, humming when Emmet immediately embraced him, hands rubbing soothingly on his back. After a moment, he muttered, "I hate this."

"I am Emmet. I know."

"I don't know why it happens. There is no reason. It doesn't taste bad! So why—"

"Ingo," Emmet cut him off, pushing him back by his shoulders so he could shake him. "It does not matter why. Do you ask why I do not like Pecha? Do you ask why you do? It is just something that Ingo is."

Ingo grimaced sullenly, but did have to concede the point. Emmet had many textures he refused to eat, most of which Ingo could understand. There was no reason to feel his own issue was any different. He just wished he could predict when it would occur. Sure, it was more likely to happen when he was nervous, but it was not always. And sometimes it was when he was eating his favorite food! Ridiculous.

"Is your engine sufficiently settled?" Emmet asked, still holding Ingo by his shoulders as he turned him from side to side. Ingo allowed it, arms swaying limply with the motion.

"Yes. Overdue for departure." Ingo was very ready to head home. "Oh, but I failed to retrieve our books from the lockers. We should head there post haste."

"Hmmm." Emmet gave him a considering look. Ingo hated it when people acted as if he were fragile after one of his episodes, and Emmet knew it. So instead of arguing, his twin merely nodded. "One detour. Then full steam ahead for home station." He slid one hand down to tangle with Ingo's, squeezing gently. Ingo appreciated the anchor, and squeezed back.

(Ingo did manage to apologize to Greta, Emmet all but attached at his hip in support. While she understood it hadn't been anything against her, it became well-known not to offer either of the twins food after that. It was a reputation Ingo could live with.)

#fun times ahead #pokemon #submas #pokemon writing #hard to swallow #thank you discord server peeps #i had the motivation to WRITE something #and while it started poorly #it was easily fixed #i am so happy to be posting something #i already have the next bit half written too #*happy wiggles*

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friendcorp · 1 year

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Session 4: Day 1 Deja Vu

So I realize it's been some time between Session 3 and Session 4 and that's for very good reason. See I want to constantly be making noticeable forward progress in these posts, I don't want to muck around explaining that I'm stuck with a particular challenge rather than just showing you a few of the failed attempts and then being able to progress past it and show the eventual success.

That being said, we pick up on Day 21 having just opened Central Command. Grabbing Spider Bud and Bloodbath as I trust these abnormalities won't pose too much of an issue for even our new recruits in Central, which; in a rather uneventful turn of events is true. Day 21 goes by slowly, but we manage to hit the required 420 power quota before even reaching our noon ordeal.

On Day 22 we take a couple more easy abnos with Ppodae and Old Belief and Promise, and again; you may notice that I'm playing it really safe with my abnormalities here, outside of Big Bird (who is honestly really manageable when you understand how it works) nothing here is even that dangerous if it breaches. This seemed like a good idea, we're on our first loop, we're dealing with mostly Teth and HE level abnos, so we shouldn't be working with too much low level gear, and there's nothing here that is too dangerous that I'm really worried about our employees! This seems like the perfect plan, but "seems" is the key word here, and as I know you've already read the Session/Episode title I'm sure you know what's coming down the line shortly. On Day 22 I mostly focus on training up the new hires while almost exclusively working with the HE and WAW level abnos, this was because I knew very few of our employees would actually survive a Noon ordeal, perhaps they could handle Red Noon if I micromanaged the fight, but if we get hit by a Green Noon or even a Violet Noon I have some concerns about Big Bird breaching. So the new dilemma becomes generating more energy in less actions while simultaneously not neglecting the lower level abnos we're picking up for their gear while ALSO not neglecting the new hires who need to train their stats. It's all a juggling act to the say the least, but it's one I've handled many times before and I'm no stranger to this song and dance. We pass Dawn with a little over half our daily quota and I'm feeling pretty good about how things are going, and sure enough I'm able to pass Day 22 before we even hit Noon. However, we're getting a little too close for comfort.

There is a moment at the end of Day 22 where I do some critical thinking, I take a moment to reflect on my facility and it's employees,

Bella here is only level 3, and is only having to handle Teth level abnos, but should the noon ordeals start rolling in everyone in Central will need to be able to pull their own weight.

Remi and Yuri are both only level 2, and this is when I realize that... Yuri doesn't even have an EGO suit. In fact most of Central doesn't have EGO at all. I have to rotate out who gets the "good" EGO for the day (good meaning HE level at this point) just so I can work them with higher level abnos in hopes of getting them ready for noon ordeals, but the day we'll need to face those ordeals is fast approaching and with 10 members of Central and only a few days to ensure they're ready I'm put in a tough situation.

Starting off Day 23 we pick up Rudolta (which, trust me I'm as happy about this as you...) and Little Red, at this point I have to be willing to escalate the risk if I'm going to keep pushing through this. I need to be willing to work lower level employees with higher level abnormalities, and well; that goes about as well as you'd think. There's panic, there's death, and there's plenty of days being reset. I literally go through so much difficulty with this that I legitimately opened a google doc spreadsheet so I can record work results, EGO defenses, and abnormality damage and I put all my experience with data entry work to good use calculating exactly who has the stats to work with what abnormalities while wearing the lowest possible grade EGO gear. Because you see, if someone already had higher stats it means I could essentially transfer their EGO onto someone with lower stats to help balance out the overall defense levels of the entire facility. Sure I'd be weakening my best agents to do it but in doing so I would create a facility where I know anyone can work with anything. It was ultimately a lot of work for very little progress, but it did help me to push some of the lower level employees into high risk high reward scenarios where they were able to actually survive and drastically boost their stats. However, then my fear became reality;

So for all of you reading right now please note that the reason this took so long to come out is that for whatever reason despite having a draft saved all the way through DAY 26 tumblr just decided to delete everything I had written, everything I had included; and put me back here. Talk about meta narrative, I feel like I'm really in a damn time loop... but I suppose I should get back to it...

Where were we, ah right; The Noon Ordeal of Day 23... while this might not seem like such a setback just trust me there's a lot to cover here.

This was the point I realized that our agents weren't nearly strong enough to take on a Noon Ordeal, not even Harmony of the Skin (which is arguably one of the easiest to manage) and I'm still a good ways behind on quota, so I do the only thing I can think of.

I gamble, I know there's abnormalities in this facility my employees can work with to the point I don't even need to worry about them, they know these abnos inside and out, what makes them tick, what makes them produce just a metric truckload of energy; and that's precisely what we needed in this moment. I gather everyone into the main department room of Info and send my regulars off to their abnormalities; keeping a select few stronger agents with the group to act as a sort of suppression team. I figure if the Harmony enters the main department I can at least let them distract it safely while the others run off.

Right when I think things are under control, like maybe I actually managed to wrangle this hellhole of a day into something achievable...

We hit another meltdown. At this point Harmony is just down the hall and I don't have a choice but to send off most of the remaining employees I have. At first I think that I could send one of the weaker employees to work with Fairy Festival, it's just Fairy Festival after all! However no, Harmony is in the way and I can't risk that, not when I'm this close to success. I send who I can but it dawns on me that there are still agents working, there are still agents on their way, if I can just hold it off long enough those who are working might be able to generate enough energy! If there's one thing you should know about me, I'm a gambler at heart; and everyone I've ever gambled with has told me I'm a damn good one.

Since there's an elevator on both sides of the room Harmony is in I can easily shield anyone passing by so long as I'm quick about it, this will allow them to survive a hit or two very easily while passing through and it also means Harmony will stay still so long as I keep a constant flow of employees coming through. This means no more dead clerks so I don't need to worry about Big Bird, and I can also safely buy my other employees just enough time to finish the day.

Day 24 rolls around and I'm feeling good, our agents may not be powerful enough to handle a noon ordeal just yet, but we have something these ordeals don't; we have a strategy. I pick up both the Luminous Bracelet and Dreaming Current as we desperately need the higher energy output and higher grade EGO at this point. The day seems to be going off without a hitch, that is until as always;

Yet again we're faced with the dilemma of another noon ordeal that seems unavoidable; but I know better, I was smart about this I knew the only chance we'd have at meeting that quota was to send our best and brightest to work with our most deadly energy producers; and it was working; we just needed to wait but unfortunately for us, we didn't have the luxury of time. Rudolta had decided that we should take a pay cut today and breached without warning. Rudolta is slow, but the damage it dealt would be an issue, no not for my agents; but for the clerks. With Big Bird in this facility I had to be constantly mindful of my clerk numbers and I knew if Rudolta hit the main department of Central Command it was over, that bird was coming out; and I didn't have white shield bullets unlocked yet.

By some miracle everyone finished their work with mere inches between Rudolta and the door and I wasn't about to question a suppression effort; I took the minor penalty to the Lob Points and moved on just happy to have gotten away with not having to handle another Noon Ordeal on top of the breach...

Day 24 may have been seemingly simple, but 25 was an entirely different beast... The day started with a mishap resulting in Maritza's death;

Sorry you had to see that... don't worry I'll reset the day and it will all be not but a bad dream.

Finally understanding how Portrait worked (I hardly ever use the abnormality). I restarted the day and confidently sent everyone off to work, but the facility decided to have other plans, two back to back ordeals would be our obstacle today and the first was the Amber Dawn, I took a moment to reflect on a mishap back on Day 22 that I neglected to actually discuss... Vanessa had been killed by an Amber Dawn and hearing Tiph announce that "this could have been avoided had you paid more attention" stung for the first time in the entire run; see most of the deaths in this run have come from unavoidable circumstances, situations where I had to put agents in situations they weren't ready for, a few others like Maritza's had come from a lack of understanding with abnormalities I don't often use but... a Dawn ordeal? This late in the game? It felt like Tiph was right, and I couldn't deny that, had I just paid more attention everything would have been fine, and I wasn't about to make that same mistake twice. I knew I couldn't just throw my agents at this ordeal and expect everyone to survive; I use the best weapon in my arsenal and yes that once again is strategy.

I had Rain and Marx meet up with Central Command 1 and 2 respectively, I figured the extra firepower would come in handy given their lack of EGO currently.

It was working perfectly

This time I was ready for a proper fight; I knew I had a Violet Noon right after this and that above all else I had to make sure there weren't too many casualties in this ordeal, I knew the Violet Noon would take out a large chunk of my clerks and it was far too early in the day to have Big Bird breach and still have any hopes of finishing the day. I had to move fast, but I had to be cautious.

I had to pop in and check on every group but I couldn't linger for too long I literally paused, checked how it was going, paused again, zoomed out and moved on.

I had been dealing with quite a lot of deaths lately, and I was determined to put an end to that; I no longer considered them "a dawn ordeal" I no longer thought of them as "only a Teth" they were a threat, they were capable of killing my agents and I realized if I didn't treat them like the threat they were, more would die.

I had to prioritize my use of shields, I knew I needed to keep the clerks from dying, at least I needed to calculate my losses here; but I had to prioritize keeping the agents alive, sorry clerks...

As each group killed their department's set of ordeals they joined the others... while I know the Asiyah branch agents may have their differences they sure make for one hell of a team when they put those differences aside and work together. It's nice to see them fighting together instead of fighting each other.

Though to say this ordeal didn't have a few close calls wouldn't be doing it justice. Our agents fought valiantly and a few even risked their skin for it;

Geminiano and Kanna took it upon themselves to handle the ordeals in the control department even without Dia.

I had to get them out of harms way however as their brave efforts nearly resulted in Geminiano's death. Though while the wounded ran to recover, Kanna wasn't ready to leave things as they were; charging back into the fray and being joined by fellow agents none the less;

It always warms my heart to see these nuggets work together, and just like that; after a long fought battle we managed to emerge victorious without so much as a death to our tally.

I had to be very careful about who I sent to work now; I couldn't afford to lose someone after that, I didn't want to betray all their hard work.

This was it, time to prove ourselves;

There was no way around this, there was no way to rush work or simply avoid the ordeal. We were going to have to face this one head on, and while I wasn't worried about the damage (thanks to having black shield bullets) I was scared of our lack of damage output...

But literally it was over before I could even get good footage of the agents fighting; I really underestimated everyone; Violet Noon is a pushover however Big Bird did only have 1 counter left so that was a little scary...

Thankfully clearing both Ordeals pushed us to quota and day 25 was complete with all 30 agents alive and breathing!

Day 26 however, was a very different beast. It became apparent very quickly that we no longer had enough EGO to support everyone, we needed to fix this. I couldn't keep pushing through the research and bullets wasn't enough to counter the sheer damage output of these abnos, we didn't have enough energy output nor did we have enough EGO so I did the only thing I could; I reset... to day 1.

S̴t̴a̵r̷t̸i̸n̴g̸ ̶f̸r̸o̶m̴ ̷t̷h̸e̵ ̷b̵e̸g̶i̷n̵n̶i̵n̵g̶ ̵w̷e̸ ̵s̵t̸a̴r̵t̷ ̴D̴a̸y̸ ̸1̸ ̴w̸i̷t̶h̴ ̷o̵u̵r̷ ̴F̷r̸i̵e̷n̵d̶ ̴C̴o̴r̶p̷ ̷C̷o̶m̵m̴u̴n̵a̵l̸ ̴N̸u̶̠͋g̵̱͝g̴̪̈́ȩ̷͐ṭ̶̏ ̸̟͂O̷̘̅C̶̩̓ ̸̙̉r̸͕̄ẽ̸͜ṿ̷̏ê̷̝a̴̫͒ḷ̵̔!̷͉͛ ̶̹͊P̴̬͋l̸͈̎ẻ̴̦a̷̞̾s̵̘͘e̴̳̓ ̷̣̇w̸͇͊ë̴̪́l̷͓̾c̶̱̏ŏ̸̹m̸̤̓ẹ̴̊ ̴̪̽S̸͓̎Ǫ̶͍̰̤̗̼̲̎͊̈́̾̾͝M̷̢̨̡̜̥̞̓͗́̆͐ͅU̴̢̠̙̣̣̮͆̄!̷̲̼̫̫͙̲̹̿̈ͅ

...Sorry about that; don't know what happened there. Anyways I'm sure it's fine, you know tumblr is weird sometimes LIKE WHEN IT DELETED ENTIRE DAYS OF MY WRITING!

Now I won't waste your time on the boring stuff, we all know how Day 1 goes, there's no way we don't just throw Dia in there and get the day done; so let's jump back to the good stuff, the new stuff!

I streamed a lot of the Day 1 -> Central Command over on Discord in an open VC with a lot of the FriendCorp fam; it was an absolute blast and I fully plan to do it again sometime so if chilling in a VC with friends and having input on how this run goes sounds fun to you well you know where to find things (I promise we're gonna be fixing the pinned post soon lol)

Our facility this time around was designed with 1 goal in mind, get more EGO. I cared about little else, I needed our nuggets to be stronger; which is precisely why we picked up abnos like Crumbling Armor, Singing Machine, Knight of Despair, Judgment Bird, Burrowing Heaven, and Naked Nest just to name a few.

I knew we'd likely need to do another reset, this facility had no rhyme or reason to it, there was almost no synergy to be found; however it did allow for a spectacular combo...

Epsilon (who somehow became the new Safety Captain) could now pick up the Heart of Aspiration and then complete work with Knight of Despair which would give them a bit more defense when dealing with ordeals; while I unfortunately didn't catch it on camera Epsilon did finally solo a Doubt ordeal by themself; and don't worry I'm sure it's not the last time it will happen and I promise I will get it on camera for you all because it was a glorious moment to behold.

This new facility held a lot of abnormalities I'm not used to, Singing Machine, Naked Nest; these were things I would avoid like the plague before and learning to manage them under these conditions was brutal but rewarding. By Day 25 we were back to where we once were, except now we were stronger; much stronger. We had a plethora of EGO at our disposal and high grade EGO at that, and I wasn't about to not see how we'd hold up against Apoc Bird even with half our facility in Zayin level gear.

Oh. Well, uh; this was expected but I'm sure this wasn't the CC Sweep we were all looking for...

There were some issues regarding Central Command's SP levels; simply put I couldn't even get the gate to spawn without the majority of them taking so much fear damage they'd spiral into a panic and from there they'd either scatter and kill others or kill themselves. I tried pairing them up with people who had white damage weapons so they could hopefully recover the needed SP before doing anything drastic but it was easier said than done. I realized even on the off chance I could survive until Apoc's spawn there was no way we had the current damage output needed to take on the egg. I mean, it was hard for us to even take down Grandma...

But we DID! (RIP GRANDMA RIP GRANDMA YOU'RE DEAD NOW! NOTHING CAN HURT YOU RIP GRANDMA... why was I sending white damage to fight her...)

The nice thing was, with all our fancy new EGO even Noon ordeals became something of a joke to us, we didn't even need shields anymore which meant we could use them for the bigger threats.

oh and boy did need the shields because Grandma give us some trouble... (fun fact this gif is played back at literally 800% speed because it was so long tumblr wouldn't upload it otherwise but please enjoy THE ENTIRE FACILITY taking turns whacking Grandma... which is something I didn't think I'd write when I woke up this morning...)

PLEASE GRANDMA STAY IN YOUR CONTAINMENT UNIT PLEASE!

With Grandma staying in containment and the facility producing a moderate amount of energy we're able to push on to Day 26, look forward to welcoming the Welfare Department in Session 5!

-Cryptid

#FriendCorp #FriendCorp Plot #Friend Corp #Sorry for the lack of activity here I'll be fixing that shortly just been absolutely swamped between the holidays and work #I hope you don't mind all the little references to the discord server shenanigans #there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes and I'm working to bring that to you all here

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