[Josh Devlin]

As helpful as Twilight would be for a challenge to Ash City's Gym, Josh couldn't in his right mind expect her to battle right before an important race, especially not the day before. She was already tired from running qualifying, and on such a brutal track, too. Arciel's Gyms seemed tougher than Johto's, for sure; each one seemed to have a challenge that tested the trainer's ability to think outside the box. He wondered what this Gym's would be. As he turned the corner to the street the Gym was on, he got his answer.

An escape room.

Josh had done an escape room with his school friends Ace and Aravan back in Johto. If it weren't for Aravan's smarts, they would have failed miserably. This time, he was going to need to complete one on his own. Rolling his eyes, he requested signup paperwork for a Gym match. He thumbed through it and skimmed the disclaimers. No ice-types seemed to be allowed at all. Common sense dictated ice-types probably weren't a good idea for this Gym to begin with, though something like Lapras would still work well against fire Pokémon. After making one final review, he finished signing the forms and returned them to the Gym's receptionist, then sat back down and started browsing on his phone while he waited for his name to be called.

7Ly7fK7Y

---

Number of Pokémon: 3
Format: Singles

Pokemon 1: Aslan the Lv27 Male Litleo
Type: Normal | Fire
Ability: Moxie
Moveset: Noble Roar; Headbutt; Ember; Work Up; Flame Charge; Fire Fang

Pokemon 2: Illumina the Lv23 Female Chinchou
Type: Water | Electr
Ability: Volt Absorb
Moveset: Bubble Beam; Confuse Ray; Thunder Wave; Electro Ball

Pokemon 3: Blitz the Lv22 Male Luxio
Type: Electr
Ability: Intimidate
Moveset: Bite; Leer; Charge; Spark; ---; ---

[bone]

A wild puzzle has appeared!

What will you do?

Josh Devlin

"Please take a number and have a seat, Mr. Devlin." This gym must've been really crowded, because Josh was challenger number . . . 5742!? How many people were taking the challenge today? If he looked to the receptionist for help, she would only look back at him with cold, unmoving eyes. It was as if the most pokerfaced woman in the universe had been drafted for the role.

Of course, as Josh went to take a seat, he'd notice it was already taken by a small, wooden box. Whoever was last in the reception room must have been pretty rude to leave their toys lying around.

Or . . . were they?

No skills here! This is all observational skill and dice rolls!

[Josh Devlin]

5742...man, that must have been one long roll of tickets inside that machine. From how yellowed the paper was, it seemed like the roll hadn't been replaced in quite some time. "Must not get many challengers..." Josh mumbled. He turned around to go back to his chair when he found a small, wooden box directly in the center of his chair. "...This wasn't here before."

As he picked up the box and started to examine it, a fan started to whir from above the ceiling. It didn't take him long to start sweating. "Who turned on the #&^%& heat? It's *#&%$(# May!" he mumbled again, this time a bit louder. He sat down with the box in hand, the receptionist still as a statue, like they were suspended in time or some voodoo. He looked around, and the reception area was completely empty. The front door had been closed and locked, as well. Was the reception area the escape room? This was getting creepy. Sweat started to drip down his face as the temperature of the room slowly rose. He lifted the box up to face level, slowly rotating it first on a horizontal axis, then a vertical axis, to carefully examine all six sides.

nf3g98hf

---

{WC: 204}
{PC: 1/10}

[Jenesis]

Nothing happened!

All rolls were failed.

Josh Devlin

You discover nothing unusual on the outside of the box. Where will you look next?

[Josh Devlin]

As Josh flipped the box around to examine its sides more closely, Josh noticed the noise from the ceiling sounded less like a fan and more like a furnace. As he stood up and paced along the outside of the room, a blast of hot air blew his hair around. Caelean was serious about screening challengers - much more so than Hiro was! Everything in the Gym's lobby was still, and so was everyone--everyone except Josh. It was creeping him out more and more by the moment. The digital thermostat on the north side read 84 degrees Fahrenheit...and climbing. Eventually this room was going to get so hot that there wouldn't be anything left in here!

Having struck out on the most obvious clue in his mind, Josh started walking in a counterclockwise circle around the edge of the room, looking for paintings, bookshelves...anything out of place...anything that could give him a clue. Taking a seat in the row of chairs opposite, he took a closer look at his ticket, front and back. Perhaps there was something hidden in the fine print.

---

hBjJ3Uia

{WC: 184}
{PC: 2/10}

[Jenesis]

Nothing happened!

All rolls were failed.

Josh Devlin

You discover a lot of legalese written in the fine print on the ticket - most of it concerning the ramifications of choosing to stay in the room after it heats up over an hour - but no additional clues.

Perhaps you could try searching the room again?

[Josh Devlin]

Josh groaned after poring over the back of his ticket and finding the same legal warning that was given to him in the registration paperwork. He had not made a lick of progress on getting to the Gym Leader; he wasn't even through the first room yet. Supposedly, at the end of the third room was the way to the Leader. He took another glance at the clock and thermostat again - he had lost several minutes just from glancing over the bookshelf on the east side and poring over his ticket. The temperature continued to rise - already at 88 degrees Fahrenheit. A hot summer's day in Goldenrod. At least it was a dry heat; while it wasn't arid like a desert, there also wasn't stifling humidity to go with it.

Josh stood up and slowly walked away from the northern waiting area, his skin tingling again when he again met the completely blank stare of the receptionist. They didn't move at all - even their eyes were completely still. Were they even breathing? Josh shivered before shaking his head. Maybe they couldn't see him? Confident in his assumption, he began searching for clues behind the receptionist's desk...

---

D_kWd52s

{WC: 196}
{PC: 3/10}

[Jenesis]

A random event has occurred!

What will you do?

Josh Devlin

Success! You find a wooden frame in one of the receptionist's desk drawers, the exact size and shape as the box. When you insert it, a hidden panel on the box opens, revealing a combination lock with four dials colored blue, green, red, and purple, in that order.

[Josh Devlin]

Aha, a lead! Inside the box appeared to be a standard, four-digit combination lock - one of those old-school ones where the all four tumblers and rings were exposed. These were very easy with someone with know-how to lock pick to get into without the code. Perhaps that was part of it - rarely did these escape room puzzles have only one solution. His first instinct was to try his ticket number. He thought he remembered it, but it would be a good idea to check.

Double checking his ticket, the corners of which were now wet due to perspiration, he saw his ticket number to be 5742, as he remembered...but each digit was a different color. The colors also were the same as the colors on the tumblers. They had to correspond, right? The hardest part at this point was manipulating the rings with his sweaty hands, the thermostat rising to 93 degrees Fahrenheit while he was in his original seat. Wiping his hands against the back of his seat, he tried to turn the rings again, having much less trouble getting to the solution as he reasoned it to be. Once he came to the solution, he tugged upward on the lock...

7452

---

s4L|hbQ6

{WC: 203}
{PC: 4/10}

[Jenesis]

A random event has occurred!

What will you do?

Josh Devlin

As the dials click into place, you hear the sound of some other mechanism being moved.

You've activated the first of three switches to advance to Cal's gym battle!

[Josh Devlin]

As Josh entered the combination and pulled up on the lock, it clicked open. He also heard a distinct clicking noise from the door to the left of the receptionist's desk. It was already getting sweltering in the reception room, the temperature of a hot summer's day - hot enough that the Weather Service would issue heat advisories for vulnerable populations. He approached the glass door and peered inside. On the west and east sides were red-hot coils, just beyond walls of thick glass. This ensured no one would be able to touch them, yet their heat could flow into the room beyond. Jets of fire blocked the way to the north entrance - there was clearly some puzzle to deactivate them. Unfortunately, he could not see the room very well. Additionally, a warning flashed on the DMD above the door: "Warning. High heat readings detected beyond this door."

Great. As if it wasn't bad enough already. He could see a digital thermostat above the door the jets were blocking - it read 98 degrees Fahrenheit, a healthy human's internal body temperature. Given that the opposite side of the door was exposed to such heat, the handle bar on the door would likely be blazing hot as well. Ultimately deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he turned around and resumed circling the room, keeping an eye for any out-of-place wall decorations, structural anomalies, and the like. Anything to give him a clue where to search...

---


pHILtYz4

{WC: 245}
{PC: 5/10}

[bone]

A random event has occurred!

What will you do?

Josh Devlin

This reception room has one of those carpets. You know the kind. Are you in a gym, or are you in a pediatrician's office? It seems to be a small, cartoony replica of Ash City. Yet . . . is there something missing from it? Or is the heat just making you feel distracted?

[Josh Devlin]

Josh's eyes caught a rug near the Gym's entrance - it was one of those rugs in almost every pediatrician's office. The last time he had seen one of those was years ago, when he got his booster shots for high school. Come to think of it, now that he had turned twenty, he was due for another booster. But why think about that now? Maybe the heat really was getting to him.

The rug appeared to be a replica of one of the large districts of Ash City--mostly the one he was in. He recognized a lot of major landmarks, including the highway and streets of the race track he was on earlier this weekend. He lifted the corner of the rug to take a quick look underneath. It was probably too obvious, but you never know!

When he started to look for an anomaly in the rug's depiction of the city, a sudden cough came out of his mouth. Right as the room's temperature cracked triple digits to 101 degrees Fahrenheit, the white, fluorescent lights turned red, accompanied by a loud-but-not-deafening klaxon. The DMD's message changed as well: "Heat level critical. Life support systems failing." Wait, what? This was quite the jump scare. It had definitely started crossing the threshold from "hot but uncomfortable" to "unbearable". He was running out of time - if he didn't find the next lead soon, he was about ready to swing the front door open and step into Mother Nature's air conditioning. Well, it would feel like air conditioning compared to this.

---

23OtLxUG

{WC: 258}
{PC: 6/10}

[Jenesis]

A random event has occurred!

What will you do?

Josh Devlin

You spot a distinctly blank patch where something should be... judging by the landmarks around it, it appears to be Ash Gym itself! Perhaps you could find something in the room to fill that spot, but what could it be?

[Josh Devlin]

"Oh, it's the Gym, silly," Josh muttered, feeling dizzy after standing all the way back up. He braced himself against the desk for a few seconds - thankfully it had plastic edges and not metal ones! He remembered seeing a puzzle like this in an old-school game from before his time. There was a 1:10,000 scale model of a city, and several parts were missing. To progress, the correct parts needed to be inserted in the correct locations. Thankfully, there only appeared to be one part missing - the Gym itself.

Having a good idea what he needed to find, Josh started his search for a model of the Gym or anything resembling association with the Gym. Perhaps a replica Badge, a statuette of the Leader, or of one of the Gym's signature Pokémon...anything related to the Gym. He was on borrowed time - the heat had reached 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so hot that Josh could start to feel his strength leaving him. He had read in the fine print there was a kill switch to prevent an onset of heat-related illness, but at what point would the kill switch fire? Was it different for every trainer? Even his heartbeat was starting to accelerate mid-search, his body having to work harder to keep from overheating completely...

---

yWtG5dFM

{WC: 219}
{PC: 7/10}

[Jenesis]

Nothing happened!

All rolls were failed.

Josh Devlin

In your haste you knock around a lot of the objects in the reception room, but find nothing representing the Gym.

[Josh Devlin]

His quick search turned up nothing. Josh wished he had more time to do a more thorough search, but it was already unbearably hot - 109 degrees Fahrenheit and climbing. Only the southern tip of Johto, the Azalea area, ever got that hot, and maybe once or twice a year if that. The racer started to get a pounding feeling in his head from all the heat, his vision starting to distort as though he was in a hot desert. Arciel's Gyms really wanted to test the trainer as well, not just the Pokémon. But like this?

The only other thing that immediately came to mind were the many wall paintings - several of them appeared to have landmarks from the city. Josh stood in the center of the room and turned in a circle, the duaaa duaaa duaaa reverberating throughout the room not helping his headache any. Perhaps there was a picture of the Gym itself. It was the best he could come up with in his panicked state.

---

GOI|YVUT

{WC: 169}
{PC: 8/10}

[Jenesis]

A random event has occurred!

What will you do?

Josh Devlin

Success! You find a small painting depicting the front of the Gym. When you feel along its edges, your finger finds a hidden button, causing the painting to swing outward and revealing a switch behind it.

You've activated the second of three switches to advance to Cal's gym battle!

[Josh Devlin]

By the time Josh pressed the red button, his head was pounding, as was his heart. What accommodations did this Gym make for people with pre-existing health conditions, or those who were heat-sensitive? Clair back in Johto liked to keep her arena hot as well, but not like this. The entire room was dangerous to stand in, the wavy vision growing more intense as the thermometer rose to a staggering 115 degrees Fahrenheit - the temperature of an equatorial desert in the middle of the summer.

One last switch was somewhere in the room, but he was searching on borrowed time. It even hurt a little to breathe in air so hot. There wasn't humidity to go with it, like there would be in the summer months of Johto, but it was still dangerous to be in. Thankfully he wouldn't be exposed long enough to cause problems for someone so healthy. He took one more look around the room, starting with the city-map rug again - the only thing he could think of in his growing dizziness.. Perhaps there was something else missing from it?

---

rthMPofg

{WC: 183}
{PC: 9/10}

[Jenesis]

Nothing happened!

All rolls were failed.

Josh Devlin

Sadly, nope. You are very definitely done with this rug.