[ti]private[/ti]To Understand The Alien

She was left in something of a difficult situation once Josh and her had defeated and captured the Naganadel boss in the sands of Ostellia. Alicia had hummed, bidding farewell to Josh once they had visited Thunderfall Shrine for him. She told him there was something she wanted to confirm for herself before she left Ostellia, and then promptly dashed off before the blond had the chance to advise her that that might not be the best idea. Still, her performance against the boss probably left him a bit more confident in her chances alone than he otherwise would have been given her level. One did not hold the line against such a beast without a significant amount of resourcefulness and overpreparation.

”Alright… let’s try and make some sense out of you, Venex!” Alicia called, loosing the beast onto the sands once more.

When Venex emerged, he let out a roar of what was, to her, a garbled mess. Which did confirm that there was an inherent strangeness in their encounter with the Boss Naganadel. She wasn’t sure if Josh noticed it, but even for clearly alien creatures they were especially weird vocally. The fact that she couldn’t understand Venex even with her PokeSpech settings fully active was testament to that. Some kind of language barrier seemed to be in effect, enforced by the game’s coding.

”Oh what I would give to be able to take a recording of your vocalizations out of the game to work on…” Alicia mused, thinking of what she might be able to work on using her computer set up. Ah, who was she kidding? Much as the idea of working some scifi magic was appealing to break through the barrier, there was a reason the genre had ‘fiction’ literally in the name.

Still, if she was going to make any progress trying to understand the newest member of her team, she had to try and start somewhere. Fortunately there wasn’t much in the way of wind right now, so she whistled softly to get Venex’s attention.

The Nagandel let out a question chirp as he floated over to the Gardener. And Alicia couldn’t help but be struck by the feeling of the Ultra Beast almost studying her with a similar curiosity. So the Gardener took a breath and settled herself. How exactly did one try to begin communication with something from another world?

”Okay, first thing’s first. Let’s… try and see how much you can understand me. ‘Try’ being the operative word here.” Alicia mused out as she thought of where to begin. ”Nod for ‘yes’, shake for ‘no’. Can you understand me?”

Venex looked at her for a moment, tilting his head back and forth slowly. And nothing was happening. He just kept staring at her.

”… Yeah that was a long shot.” Alicia muttered softly to herself. Of course Venex would have no idea what she was saying. She was uttering gibberish as far as he was concerned. ”Hieroglyphs? Words and letters are no good. But there is no guarantee the images will mean the same thing to him as it does to me… plus I don’t know how to read Hieroglyphs specifically myself. But the idea in general might have some merit?”

Venex trilled at her, nudging his head against her cheek and trying to figure out what Alicia was thinking. She then sighed softly and pet the Beast softly, smiling. The bee-like dragon was still completely uncomprehending, but at least he could tell Alicia was being nice in some way. They had so long to go on figuring out how to communicate.

If she could just get him to give her an idea of what his language was like, she might be able to at least try to make heads or tails of the way he thinks.

…

Maybe that lab she remembered seeing on the lap might have something she could use? But boy it would be dangerous going in there alone.

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Status: Venex (Naganadel) Rarity increased. (Invasive -5 to Common +0)