Early morning is for planning, even though most of Jellal's employees complain about it. However, he isn't paying them to sleep in-he's paying them to help him find cryptids.
They're some of the only people awake on the campground, since the sun has barely peaked about the horizon. Even then, Eirk, Sorano and Macbeth are slowly falling back to sleep as Jellal drones on. Ultear, Sawyer and Richard are the only ones paying attention: Ultear and Richard because they actually care about the operation, and Racer because he has to drive the RV. Meredy is sitting on another picnic table behind them, playing on her phone, which is fine because she's not an employee.
"So, the Dogman didn't work out," Jellal explains as he flattens the map out on the worn picnic table. "The next stop is Mackinaw City to cross the bridge to the upper peninsula, though we're stopping to get fudge."
"Then we head up Route 131?" Sawyer questions. He tends to study the map when he's bored and not driving, which Jellal actually does appreciate.
"My answer would be yes," Jellal admits. "But I figured that we'd take the scenic route. Go west on M55 to Lake Michigan. We drive along the lake to Frankfort and get on Route 31 to Traverse City and then on to Mackinaw. It should be a nice drive."
"We get to go to the beach?" Meredy interrupts. "Nice."
"It'll be a nice break for us," Jellal concludes.
"It sounds like I'll have to spend even more time with y'all in that shitty RV," Eirk grumbles. This is Erik's general attitude, they've been that way since Jellal was their roommate in college.
"I think it sounds wonderful," Richard comments. He tends to be more positive than Eirk, even though his role as safety coordinator is much lackluster position than cameraperson.
"And how are we going to generate revenue?" Ultear questions. She keeps the team grounded, and has kept Jellal grounded since high school though she is a believer like him. That's why Jellal brought her (and her daughter Meredy) with him as their researcher and assistant manager.
"Vlogs, probably," Jellal answers.
"Great," Sorano sighs. She's in the same mindset as Erik, sadly. Jellal needs to hire more positive people, even if she is a great social media coordinator. "More work for me."
"I'm not paying you to go on a road trip," Jellal comments.
"Hopefully not, because this is the shittiest road trip ever."
"Heh," Macbeth chuckles. Actually, it's a singular chuckle. They chuckle once. Macbeth usually doesn't speak up, because they're asleep. That's also the reason why they never finish editing anything on time.
"Then we'll need to talk about the vlogs," Ultear continues. "Erik, make sure you get some good shots of the forest and lake as we're driving. People like our more scenic openings and outros."
"Whatever," Erik sighs.
"And then we'll film wherever the road takes us," Ultear finishes.
"Exactly," Jellal agrees. "And then we'll also need to do some more research about Pressie. We can do that in between Meredy's lessons."
"We're going to the beach!" Meredy groans. "Can't we take a break on homeschooling?!"
"No," Ultear answers without taking her eyes off the map.
"Wait, who is Pressie?" Richard asks.
"The Lake Superior version of the Loch Ness monster," Jellal summarizes. "But we don't have to worry about that right now. I want to get on the road within an hour, and we still have to go shopping and get gas."
"We can shop at the gas station," Erik suggests.
"Not all of us are still surviving like we're in college, Erik," Ultear comments. "But I agree with Jellal, let's get moving."
"Yeah," Macbeth speaks up. "I wanna get back to sleep."
"You still have to edit the Dogman Hunt," Jellal points out.
"After a nap."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I'm paying you to edit the video."
"Fuck."
Jellal sighs and massages his temples. Off to a great start, already. That's why he needs a break at the beach, half of his employees refuse to work and cause him migraines. He decides to concede momentarily, and will hound them to work once they're on the road, "Let's just get back in the RV and get going."
That is something his employees can do. Erik, Macbeth and Sorano almost shoot back onto the RV, so that can squeeze in a couple hours of sleep. Sawyer takes one last look at the map before heading to the driver's seat. Meredy leaves to annoy Sawyer into letting her sit shotgun, as she always does. Richard insists on doing one last look around the campsite, to make sure that they haven't left anything. That leaves Jellal and Ultear to have a moment to themselves.
"So, thoughts on Pressie?" Jellal asks Ultear light-heartedly. Questions like that are reminiscent of their high school days, when Jellal and Ultear would debate the existence of various cryptids, from the most popular to the most obscure. This entire operation, traveling across the continental United States looking for cryptids, was just a fever dream back then.
Ultear softly smiles, "Well, I think she better show the fuck up when we get there."
Jellal laughs and the two head into the RV, ready to continue their work.
According to cryptidsorciere. com, Cryptid Sorcieré is a team of believers and researches dedicated to finding cryptozoological creatures. That's about all the say Jellal had in their website. Sorano did the rest.
At the top there's a large map that marks down their exact trail (currently, they have the northeast section of the US covered, and are just breeching into the Midwest) and each spot that they stopped has a link to their journals, videos, and what cryptid they were looking for in this location. There's links to their Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr (all of which Sorano runs) and (they need money somehow) on the side, right next to the different pages. There's journal entries, videos, profiles (Sorano insisted that they all use codenames, so that people "couldn't connect her to this bizarre operation"), a list of cryptids they've covered, and cryptozoology resources. Jellal's always takes a moment to appreciate Sorano's work whenever he visits the site to check their progress and following.
Surprisingly, a lot of people wanted to watch their rag-tag team hunt cryptids. Jellal supposes that's why TV shows like Finding Bigfoot and Ghost Stories are popular, but people actually loved the work they were doing. People donate to their to ask questions of the team or just give general support. The comments on their videos and journals are always a mix of believers showering them with praise and non-believers claiming that this is all faked (but it's not like they've actually found anything . . .), but Jellal knows that's just how it works out. He never thought that there'd actually be any support.
Well, he supposes that just goes to show how far a weird kid interested in cryptozoology can go with a masters in astrophysics and a massive inheritance from a father he barely knew.
One grocery trip and gas station stop later, they were finally on the highway and heading to the Lake. Jellal knows that the RV can't go as fast as Sawyer wishes (the former racecar driver wishes that a lot of things went faster) especially because they're dragging a boat and ATV and all the luggage (40% of their total luggage belonged to Sorano), but he still appreciates how quickly the forests surrounding the highway pass by.
Jellal unbuckles his seatbelt, giving Sawyer a quick nod, as he goes to get his employees to work. He passes Richard reading on the couch and Meredy and Ultear, who are in the middle of a history lesson, on his way.
"Can I sit shotgun now?" Meredy groans, already bored.
"No," Ultear replies. "Now, why did the US originally refuse to participate in World War One?"
In the back of the RV, Macbeth and Erik are sleeping while Sorano is on her phone. She sighs when she sees Jellal enter the bedroom, "Damn. Fun's over."
Which is kinda right. Jellal turns to her, since she is the only one awake, "Sorano, I need you to fill in our audience on our plans for the next week, and tell them that the first of the Dogman videos will be out before Friday."
"That's in two days," Sorano points out.
"Yeah, Macbeth has to get to work," Jellal continues. He would have preferred to wake Erik up first because he has experience in that, but since it sounded like he was going to wake up Macbeth, he's going to wake up Macbeth, "Macbeth! Macbeth wake up!"
Macbeth makes some sort of mumbling sound. They're awake, but ignoring Jellal.
"Macbeth! Get up or I'm going to start reciting Shakespeare, about a very particular play, sometimes known as the Scottish play!"
Macbeth rolls over to glare at Jellal, "I hate you sometimes."
"I hate him most times," Erik adds. Good, Jellal doesn't have to resort to extreme measures to get them out of bed.
"I want you to start editing the Dogman footage, I want a video out within two days," Jellal continues to lecture Macbeth. "Start off with the few days we did research and set-up, then the actual hunt. You know how it goes."
"You remind me every time," Macbeth groans as they roll out of bed. They shuffle out of the bedroom, blanket wrapped around their shoulders, before Jellal could continue. Jellal hears one last insult, "You're not my dad."
Jellal turns to Erik, who has piled more blankets on top of their head so they don't have to hear Jellal. Okay, maybe he has to resort to the old tactics.
Jellal grabs one of the blankets and rips it off Erik, causing Erik to unroll and tumble off the bed. They learned their lesson from college and now sleep on the bottom bunk. The fall was much worse in college.
"Fuck you," they groan, pulling themselves off the ground. "I thought you were my friend."
"Right now, you're my employee," Jellal argues. "Get the camera and get ready to film. It's very nice out right now, the sun is still low in the sky."
"I should be asleep."
"No, you shouldn't."
Erik mutters complaints from under their breath, but get up and grab the camera from their bag. Jellal checks in with Sorano, who has pulled out her laptop and is going through the daily routine of checking their email and other social media sites. Happy with his work, he heads back to the front.
Macbeth is now sitting on the couch with Richard, booting up their laptop to (hopefully) start editing. Meredy seems to be slowly dying from the studying, but homeschooling is mandatory. All in all, things are going normally.
Jellal's life was a wild rollercoaster. He started as an orphan, and was until he inherited a massive fortune from his late father Siegrain and was sent to live with his last living relative. He was separated from one best friend only to find another, one who has still stuck with him since. He was an astrophysics major who ended up on the road hunting cryptids. The one thing that was the same was his wonder for the unknown.
He loved to watch the stars as a child because he didn't understand them. They disappeared during the day and arrived during the night to brighten the night sky and moved to form pictures. He soon grew up and learned that the stars were just balls of gas burning in space lightyears away from Earth. It still inspired him to learn more about space and what they didn't know. But then he found out about cryptids.
Cryptids were something no one could explain. No one even knew if they existed. And then fascinated him, that there were things left that confused humanity and made them question that were still left on Earth. He started to research them himself and decided that he would find these cryptids himself.
And now, years later, he is.
Lake Michigan is beautiful. Blue water shimmering in the sunlight as it crashes into the sandy shore. Jellal made Sawyer roll down the windows to feel the cool breeze from over the lake. Erik is actually getting footage of the lake and it's the perfect day to do so. Ultear has given Meredy a break from studying, so instead Meredy is bugging Jellal about stopping and going to the beach.
"C'moooooooon," Meredy whines as she shakes Jellal's shoulders, preventing him from reading about Pressie. "Let's go for a swiiiiiiim."
"We will once we get to Frankfort," Jellal promises. "We'll refill on gas and-"
"Actually," Sawyer interrupts. "We should do a pitstop soon. The check tire light came on."
"Oh," Jellal pauses. Their shitty but loveable RV tends to break down, and it puts a dent in their funds but it has to be done, "The next town we can stop. During that time, I suppose you can go to the beach."
"Hell yeah!" Meredy exclaims.
"Please don't swear," Jellal sighs.
"I'm fourteen. I can do what I want."
"No, you can't."
"With the company you keep," Sawyer comments. "I think she can swear all she wants."
"Thank-you!" Meredy responds, but walks away before anything else can be said.
"So what's the closest town?" Sawyer asks.
Jellal pulls out the map, "Pierport. Don't know if it'll have what we want."
"But what about the signs for Magnolia?" Sawyer points out.
Jellal closes the map to look out on the highway, and there were a few road signs signaling how far ahead the closest town was, and Magnolia was closer than Pierport by twenty miles. Jellal checks the map again, but there's no sign of Magnolia.
"It's not on the map," Jellal reveals.
"Huh, strange. Must be pretty small," Sawyer signs. "Doesn't hurt to check though."
"Go ahead," Jellal mumbles, caught up in the current predicament. A town on no maps. Strange.