Ruins.

The roar of laughter flooded the room, and inundated her ears once the Axew opened the door. "Party night, I'm assuming?" Sass asked, shuffling towards the group with a bit of pep in her step.

"Yeah, we're all sharing stories of why we decided to join the guild we did!" A spunky Purrloin, Sydney, chimed from the table, poking her chest with her thumb. "I became a Researcher to be like my sister, but also I really like alchemy and science and biology and learning and stuff!"

"Well, you know," A cute Simisage from the other side of the table directed a hand to herself, "I had to choose Explorers, not simply for the huge adventures and stuff, but because it's me in my natural habitat." Pippy leaned back in her chair, gracefully twirling her hands around, "I'm fabulous." An echo of laughter followed.

"What about you, baby?" Dim, Sass's new Sableye boyfriend, called from the other side, "Why did you decide to become a Hunter?"

Sass rolled her eyes, strutting over to the little Ghost and plopping herself in his lap. "Well, I didn't actually WANT to be a Hunter, Cuffin just decided to stick me there because Nerlfag was the only dude available apparently. I wanted to be an Explorer, though." She wrapped her arms around the little imps neck, and kissed him on the forehead. "Also, hello babe." They both smiled.

"An Explorer?" Sydney perked. "C'mon, tell us why!" She prodded.

The little dinosaur chucked, exhaling a bit. "If you insist. It's a bit of a sad tale though." A choir of scoffs and "so"s scattered across the table, which were met with another roll of the eyes from Sass. "Whatever, don't say I didn't warn y'all." She shifted her position a little bit, clearing her throat, and removing her arm from behind Dim.

She took in a breath, and then began. "See, my parents were really big on exploring, my mom especially. We would travel through the fog all the time, finding different settlements and stuff, but when I was really young we found a place to kind of, like, come back to, you know? It was this tiny little village-community sorta thing. There was a mountain that kinda shielded the fog, and then there was a huge clearing, and some woods and small streams that went into the fog. My mom liked to go out to the mountain and forests to find food for us and, sometimes, just to explore and get out of the house. Most of the time me and Dad went with her, but there were some that she went out on her own."

"Now see," She continued, taking a sip of Dim's drink, "Mom was really religious, but not like your typical 'Oh I believe in God' religious. She believed that these 'Gods' actually existed, like, she thought they were actual Pokemon. She had always talked about what it would be like to see one of them in person, but I remember Dad would always discourage her from the idea. Looking back, I kinda understand why he would, but at the time I thought he was just being a jerk ahaha. I remember her saying that there must have been a 'God' in the mountain we were parked next to, because, like..." She paused for a moment, peering towards all the anxious eyes. "Okay, well, this is kinda gruesome, but see, in that mountain? There was this super complex cave system that was super hard to get around if you weren't really good at exploring. My mom? She was one of the best explorers I know, even looking at all the dudes in this city. I haven't seen much of these guys in action, but I'm almost positive they couldn't do what my mom did. Anyway, there was this one part towards the heart of the mountain that we called... Um, shit, what did we call it?" She held her head in her hand, snapping the fingers of her other hand to herself. "Event Horizon! That's it. It was like 'the point of no return,' because, well..." She took a deep breath before continuing.

"It was like a straight line, littered with nothing but dead bodies." Gasps shot around the table. "Yeah, I know, creepy as hell, right?" She shook her head. "It was so strange, like, okay, the mountain was pretty cold, right? But right where all of these bodies were, if you stood near it, you could feel like a barrier of MUCH colder air right in front of them. I remember throwing a rock across the Event Horizon to test it, and, holy shit, I've never seen ice form that quickly. It was almost like... You know how if you run your hands under SUPER hot, boiling water, like it feels so hot that it almost feels cold? Like an icy hot? It was like that, except backwards. The air was so cold that it almost burned just to stand near it." She shivered. "It's really scary for me to think that I was that close to death, like I was literally staring it in the face. Good thing I was a relatively smart kid, ahaha..." She rubbed the back of her crest nervously.