All Hallows' Faire

a few months ago i guaranteed a prize to everyone who offered to participate in my all hallows’ trick-or-treat, and without further ado…here they are!

@risendawns, you win free tickets to all of ursula’s performances for the next six months!

@3000yearmonarch, you win an ancient jewelry box engraved with a persian!

@eevee-sohma, you win a bushel of a mysterious herb that claims to be able to restore all HP and cure all status conditions…or can it?

@astralinity, you win a dagger from ancient kalos with a mega stone in the hilt!

@sparklingemeraldidol, you win a gilded, gem-encrusted microphone! 

@gottamuseemall, you win a gyaradosite carved in the shape of an imperial gyarados! (read: chinese dragon LOL)

@grimastor, you win an albino houndour puppy with the egg move nasty plot!

@firewarriorshamus and @stageonmay, you win 1) a female shiny salandit and 2) a melanistic chimchar! who gets what? that’s up for your muses to decide >:3

@imbicilite, you win a fully functional gardevoirite carved into the shape of ursula!

hope you all enjoy! if your name isn’t listed here and you signed up, please let me know and i will add you straightaway!

Well damn. Fuck you too, asshole.

She was lucky that a certain someone was still out, and to be frank, she forgot she even had her out still. She still got wet, but she was at least telekinetically fished out by an Extrasensory before the water had gotten to her thighs, though a surprised yelp still made it clear she was caught off-guard. Apparently, someone forgot their manners, and she’d put that thought in the back of her mind… for later. The spike of anxiety she got from the little stunt was something that’d settle on its own, though she knew it’d take at least a couple hours before it diminished completely.

Bottom of her dress now soaked, she wrung it out over the water, body wavering a little. Figures the brat had something in store for her, though she was expecting it more in the reward than the trip, though she should’ve seen it coming. Frost-colored irises scanned the bottom of the pool, just to see if she’d have to make a run to the PC box, or if she could just have her ‘savior’ fish it out. She heard a growl from the other side of the room, something that roughly translated to “I was damn right in sticking around as a bodyguard.”

All she could do to respond was laugh.

whew, that was close! but where’s the prize? the lights come back on and you look down into the water, expecting to see something, but there’s nothing visible. you know better than to go and inspect, expecting another sort of trap for someone stupid enough not to heed the first one. 

luckily, you don’t have to. a shining yellow light appears in the middle of the pool, growing steadily bigger as it approaches. you and your pokémon tense, expecting some sort of an attack, but what comes out of the water isn’t an attack at all. instead, it’s a beautiful golden gift! you’ve received a golden ampharosite-made, fully functional statue of…oh, they have got to be kidding.

it’s a statue of ursula posing with her garchomp. go figure.

firewarriorshamus‌:

allhalllows‌:

what a lovely way for two friends (yes, really, just friends) to spend the day! relaxing by the pool in the autumn sun, sipping on pinap berry juice imported all the way from alola and flavored with sweet tsareena sap. and all of this was given to you without your even asking. for a bunch of racist homophobes, ursula and her family are really too kind!

as the two of you sit back, you hear a rustle nearby. is it the bushes? no–it’s shamus’s backpack! digging through the pack, you discover that someone has invisibly placed an envelope inside. opening it to read, you find the following riddle:

I lie where I would be most often forgot There where you find me, I am and am not.

where would you like to go? > BASEMENT > GUEST ROOMS > POOL CHANGING ROOMS

Shamus took a look at the riddle found in his bag and wasted no time in deciding an answer. 

“Well, obviously it wants us to go to the basement! People are always losing stuff in their basement and it’s the perfect place to be forgotten.”

May, brimming with curiosity, leaned in to look at the riddle herself. Oh, yeah! She had heard about these going around. It sounded like fun!

But she took a bit more time to think. Well, ‘i am and am not’ is kind of weird. Does that mean we’re looking for something that we can’t touch?

She was kind of stuck on how many things you could forget and not touch. People forgot themselves sometimes, but that seemed kind of weird for the options they had. And she could think of something you could lose, like time, but as far as she was concerned, you could lose time literally anywhere.

So, she looked to Shamus. He seemed pretty confident in his answer. And well, she might’ve gone with the changing rooms if he hadn’t said anything, but since he did, and she didn’t have the best reason to back up her idea anyway…

“That’s pretty smart, actually! You wanna go now?”

you head to the basement, expecting something dark and scary and spooky…but instead what you get is pretty much another layer of the house. the lights are off, except for the nightlight plugged into an outlet on the wall, but it’s just so much brighter in tone than one would expect. lavish flooring, elaborate wallpaper, furniture fit for display in a tourist magazine to set the tone for a wonderful destination: if the derosiers thought any of this could possibly be creepy without added decor, they were sorely mistaken.

suddenly the lights come up, and you see another envelope floating in front of you. it opens by itself to reveal the riddle:

You’ve held me close and held me tight I serve you, to your great delight And though you may without me stand, I’ve always come back to your hand. I will follow you, and so It does not matter where you go Thus, neither riddle tells a lie They speak of me, myself and I!

wait--what the heck--what object in the basement even followed people around, and in such a stalkerish manner? 

    Dear Arceus, Motonari would be proud. Certainly a more… creative way of learning from the text, but–then again, maybe Hiroko just wasn’t that familiar with the other ways people had applied it. After all, she was from Ransei. They tended to take a more literal approach to… well, the art of war.

    She reshelves the book and figures–to hell with it! As long as they’re both right in front of her, it wasn’t like she was wasting any time in checking both; it isn’t as though she’s terribly familiar with the contents of either. She grabs both Dao De Jing and The Book of Lord Shang and leafs through them in rapid succession in search of her next clue.

rifling through the dao de jing, you find nothing--fitting, seeing as that book led the likes of han fei to believe that the best way forward was to empty the self. but halfway through the book of lord shang, a dark spot from a ghost pokémon’s hex appears on the page. you watch as it gets larger and larger, seeming to swallow the book whole, reaching for your hands to engulf them…

but then it retracts. and in its place is a glaceonite, elaborately carved into the shape of a mega glaceon itself! aural energy from a lucario swirls around it, creating a rotating band of glaceonite stone chips that look like the very diamond-dust flurries that the pokémon could create. in spite of its carved form, the stone is fully operational--and the lucario aura used to keep the chips rotating would even add an extra boost.

it all makes sense now. I speak of virtue, yet not of virtue--shang yang spoke of his own unique set of virtues, but not the confucian type of virtue that he was reacting against. I speak of fear, yet not of suffering--shang yang wrote that effective rulers caused their people to fear punishments, but not of the suffering that this had inflicted on his people. I speak of the law, yet I am not law--the book of lord shang was nothing if not obsessed with legalities, yet no actual laws were written within its pages, only philosophy. I speak of the Way, yet the Way I am far from--he had often mentioned the way of ruling, but his way was very different from the way of the daoists and confucians. and of course, since shang yang was obsessed with warfare, the gift found inside his book would aid with defeating one’s enemies.

you have no idea that lila is the one who wrote that riddle, which leaves you with only one question.

How the hell is Ursula smart enough to come up with this?

the stage is empty and the audience is abuzz. what is the 411? what has everybody been up to? what is the hot gossip? tell me everything. some of them can’t wait for the contest to end, whereas others wish for just one more night, if only so they can see how the whole thing would blow up even further. in all the hubbub, the crowd seems to miss one minor detail: where has ursula gone?

the murmurs don’t even fully quiet down when the lights dim and the music kicks up.

light purple spotlights shimmer as they spin about onstage. a dark void worthy of darkrai opens up in the center and the lights stop, seeming to be swallowed by the night shade-hex combo that makes a black hole in the center. with a flash of orange dazzling gleam, motes of confuse ray spin out of the hole as shadow sneak hands shoot out from the oozing mass that also releases infestation bugs that skitter into the aisles. each hand seems to use thunderbolt on the way up, like the electric bars of a cage--

and then ursula herself appears, rising out of the hole thanks to gengar’s psychic, completely dry in spite of being underwater because of the very same move. she bows as the audience applauds, and begins her speech.

❝ladies and gentlemen, i’m proud to announce that the all hallows’ faire is now over!❞ a profound sigh of relief swept through the crowd, which ursula ignored. ❝well, not really. i still have to announce the winners and everything. everybody, come on out!❞ 

one by one the contestants file onto the stage, in the order that they performed, to the audience’s tumultuous applause. as each one takes their place, ursula hands them each a black key with a glowing orange pumpkin tip: each key is topped by a jack-o-lantern with a wicked grin.

❝i am so happy you all could join with me here for the contest. your performances were truly exceptional, and uh--❞ she looks at her hand--❝i couldn’t have done any of this without you. please accept these custom all hallows’ souvenir keys as proof of all the, uh, good memories you shared of this contest--you all are welcome back next year.❞ if there even would be a next year, she thought as she handed them out.

❝anyway, let’s see what our first, second, third and honorable mention places will be taking home today!❞ she clapped her fingers and at once the prizes appeared on two screens flanking the stage. the one right above the stage remained empty, but it would not be for long.

❝in addition to being able to access our wonderful castle here, second place will get to choose from some of our properties, and lucky first place gets to access it all--and more!❞ she clasps her hands together and smiles, all her previous nerves gone; thinking about her family’s wealth never fails to cheer her up. as she describes each property, it flashes on the top screen. 

❝there’s our castelia city penthouse, complete with two bedrooms, a piano, and a balcony with a view of the entire city. there’s our villa in the geosenge countryside, with its own private forest. and finally, there’s our beach house in undella bay, with its own private section of the abyssal ruins for you to explore! so, first place, you’ll have free access to all these wonderful locations, plus a few more that i would really love to show you. and second place, just let me know where you want to go at any point after the performance is over--don’t worry, the time you take to decide isn’t going to cut into the time that you have to live in it!❞

❝now, who’s going to win these fabulous prizes?❞

❝Let’s find out!❞

holographic keyholes light up above each contestant’s head as the lighting dims to a dramatic halloween-y green and the drumroll starts. 

❝the first round scores!❞

black holographic dots whizz into each of the souvenir keyholes, filling each one in proportion to the scores that the contestants received. the evil jack-o-lantern grins light up even brighter as the scores are received, as though they are drawing sustenance from the energy. at the same time, orange numbers appear above the keyholes to match the actual scores.

❝the second round scores!❞

this time the dots are orange. the point numbers scroll as they increase like slots on a slot machine, ticking steadily upward as the new results come in.

❝and now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the thing that tips the scales…the votes!❞

the final round of dots, this time yellow, begins to peter in. the numbers continue to increase, but at a slower pace to reflect the smaller volume of points earned from votes than from the first two rounds.

the highest number shines bright above one contestant’s head. the number above their keyhole flashes as the rest of the keyholes fade away. a brief fanfare plays as ursula’s gengar invisibly uses dazzling gleam to surround them with a brilliant golden light…

as i’m finishing up this contest…presented here are the two options that the winner of the all hallows’ faire gets to choose from: the faire key, which will count toward the three keys necessary to participate in a master class showcase in any region. or, the faire ribbon, which counts toward the five-ribbon total necessary to participate in a grand festival in any region as well!

note that on the faire key, the space between the two heart-shaped arboks is actually hollow: the face in the middle glows at night. in addition, the gengar face on the ribbon lights up at night, to parallel the action on the ribbon.

hope you all like!

here is the google drive link to mine, and below is @imbicilite‘s. do these for your muses, yourself or a combination of both. enjoy >:3

YO so if anyone else wants to get votes in, i sorta mentally extended the deadline to the end of tonight because…ngl there’s some ooc stuff i need to take care of before i finally end this contest, not to mention people had irl stuff like work and surgery that interfered with the 4:00 pm deadline. but no more after 11:59 PM tonight. that’s final.

Freestyle scores from Professional Coordinator Silica Lynne entering as a guest judge! Participants mentioned: @dracaelum-faerie & @stageonmay ; @heartists @allhalllows   

    “What a wild and varied set! It’ll be such a hard choice to narrow these terrifying teams down when all these performances are filled with absolute cutiiiiiees!”

    Despite the over the top, her gaze had been intense throughout the entirety of the shows. There’s a lot going on right now behind the scenes, things she’d heard that was hard not to take into consideration. But she was, first and foremost, a performer. It was her job to maintain the hype of the stage for all who watched and not the drama beyond the curtain.

    “What’s really important in performances with themes like these is to have flair without overdramatizing. Terror in a stage performance is no easy feat to claim I have to give my first vote to Annalise. Conceptually, the idea of sirens as more than just aqua eyecandy is always appealing nowadays. But literal maneaters? Can’t help but love that~! Tales of the sea are a common thing no matter the year, and I think it takes something special to pull off such a haunting performance. Lovely visuals, and an enrapturing story. The atmosphere set chills down my spine, and the execution… was to die for.”

    Boo all you want. She’s not taking it back. 

    “Next, my second vote is going to May! Terrifying wasn’t particularly what came to mind when it came to this performance – though I admit, that scream made me jump – but there was a charm to it that I couldn’t help but latch on to! It was a nice change of pace, even while it fit the theme. The flow of their moves and how they maneuvered as one was rather captivating, and you have to give props for the costumework. I have a lot of respect for someone who takes their place on the stage and owns it! And fireworks always make for a dazzling finale!”

    “So that’s that! And to the rest of you, everyone did a stellar job! Nice work, kiddos!”

>STAGE CENTER

What was this, a children’s rhyme? A bored, nonchalant yawn escaped her mouth as she made her way on stage, her never-faltering gait taking her up the stairs gracefully on nimble, ever-dancing feet. Something that never sat nor stood, but forever hung from above, no? But was the riddler smart enough to put the note on the most powerful part of the stage, or were they convinced by common opinion and left to wither in mediocrity and silence?

Well, she’d find out sooner or later, but she had a feeling she already knew her answer. A fool who knew they’re a fool is forever ahead and ever-so smarter than a fool who thought they weren’t. Why? Not only is that knowledge in  of itself, but it was also a prompt to better one’s self. It was a simple, but powerful explanation to a question with more than one answer.

Of course, the world was full of fools, and Yuu couldn’t count herself out of it quite yet. But at least she knew she was a fool, and thus, would better herself until she was a fool no longer. After this little entertaining game, she’d show everyone that she knew she was a fool. A fool far more cunning and clever than the others, that was. A fool who at least knew her place in the world, and one who wanted to make a fool out of the host.

Funny how that worked. One might dare to me a bit cheeky and call it foolish.

with your pokémon in tow, you make your way to the very center of the stage. nothing seems to bother you on the way there--the place is as quiet as the night before christmas. you expect there to be some additional hint, but the stage is empty and the rest of the room offers no clues, so you stand there, rather confused. this is surely where the riddle leads, right? then why is there nothing here…

suddenly the lights go down. you’re plunged into black.

Mentioned performers: @stageonmay @kxkuko @ranseiuniter

The elite trainer thought carefully before making a decision. There were so many amazing performances that it would be hard to choose just a few, but he was prepared to vote fairly and without any biases.

GHETSIS: Decides to write out his judging instead of speaking

GHETSIS:  “I forbid you from putting yourself in that sort of danger ever again.”

FABIEN: 

Voting

((Tagging? On mobile? Why would they make that easy??))

“My first vote goes to Grimsley. I personally look positively on taking great risks in contests. Though what happened was, er, a “happy little accident”, did it ever make it exciting! And that made the Pokémon forced to improvise, something that many cannot or will not do.

I also enjoyed the story, and was happy to see the dark type Pokémon be the “good guy”, even though they are typically cast as the “bad guy”.

My second vote goes to Annalise, who also had a risky and story based freestyle! She mixed beauty and horror well, and all of her Pokémon had their essential roles. Like I said earlier, I love risk, so that’s a bonus. I loved how although it was scary, it was enticing enough that I couldn’t look away.