This world is inhabited by creatures that we call pokemon. People and pokemon live together by supporting each other, but now the scourge threatens the safety of the entire region. Kohaku has become a dangerous place, where children stay at home and only brave souls go adventuring.
Welcome to KOHAKU. Come for the nightmares. Stay for the tea and crumpets.
The season is SUMMER. It is easy for survivors to forage for food from the land, as there are entire abandoned farms ready for harvest. On the downside, you can smell the corpses.
swarms
GRAND OPENING !
Welcome to KOHAKU REGION's grand opening! If you're interested in joining, come check out our grand opening giveaway!
The Dancing Pidove was more of a pub than a bar. It had a few screens for showing televised pokemon battles as well as other sports, and the food wasn't half bad.
Neo sat at the bar with a bowl of the soup du jour, some sort of hearty tomato concoction with bits of shrimp in it, and nursed a beer--which is to say she had asked for whatever the bartender recommended, got it, tasted it, and now she didn't know what to do with it. It was a heavy stout, fatty and a bit bitter. The glass sweated condensation while Neo sipped at the soup, careful not to slurp, and left the tankard untouched.
Her eyes flickered up to the TV behind the bar every now and then, watching as a vaporeon steadily took down a gigalith.
When someone else approached the bar, she scooted to the side to make space for the stranger, but her eyes remained fixed on the TV. "Hm," she said thoughtfully as the vaporeon surprisingly turned the tables on a zebstrika.
"Watching Pokémon trade blows does get a little ordinary after awhile," the stranger commented as his robe shifted when he took a seat upon the stool. Among the animated riffraff of the pub, Mordecai stuck out like a sore thumb. The way that he hummed to himself while examining the televised battle seemed to give the impression that he, on the other hand, thought otherwise. An Ice Beam reflected off of the man's single eye as he drummed fingers upon the coated wooden surface. Those are a beautiful Vaporeon and Zebstrika though," he mused, the Eevee perched upon his shoulder completely absorbed in the television screen.
He knew why the Eevee watched the match with starry eyes. Mordecai was still at a loss with which evolution branch the Eevee would walk down, but whatever it was, he would be there to support her. He raised a hand to scratch at a spot right behind her ear. The Pokémon purred contentedly, before sliding down the man's arm into his lap to lick at a bowl of fresh clam chowder that a bartender set down before him.
"No, Molly, not for you," he chided, but did nothing to stop the Eevee from eating it. He lifted his spoon and after blowing experimentally upon the soup, sucked in its contents. He swallowed with a satisfied expression before turning to Neo. "From the way that you're studying the match, what's your call?"
"It does get ordinary, yes. It's good for learning, at first. Then one remembers that the threat the region faces is not another trainer but a horde of savage pokemon that seek out our destruction," Neo said, as if agreeing on the state of the weather. As the stranger went on, she blinked and that was her only expression of confusion. Neither her expression nor her voice changed. "Beautiful? ...I suppose so. I would've said it was a clever play by the vaporeon--and a poor one by the zebstrika."
The eevee immediately interested her more than the televised battle. Shifting to reach her pocket, Neo pulled a pokedex, brand new and shiny, out of her hoodie. It beeped to life as she stared boldly at the eevee. "Her name is Molly? She's clearly a vaccinated pokemon. You are part of the Eos program then, I take it. You--" she glanced at the eye but only for a flicker of a second, "--look the sort."
The pokedex registered the eevee while Neo observed the pokemon herself. They were rare, and while she'd seen plenty of its evolutions battling on public broadcasts, she had never seen one in person. It's evolutionary potential was somehow obvious upon examination, despite its normal type.
"I'm Neo. I'm a researcher, also with Eos. Forgive me, I was just observing your eevee. For science."
Mordecai gave Neo a slightly absent-minded nod. "Oh yes, that too," he replied, wondering if the green-haired girl was also a trainer, and if not, a fighter. After all, they noticed different things.
He raised a brow as Neo revealed a Pokédex from her pocket. He watched the researcher curiously as the machine whirred to life, small lights going off as she held the portable machine up to Molly. The Eevee's nose twitched as she stared hard at it, head slowly inclining to the side. She flicked an ear in its direction and wrinkled her nose, as if trying to catch a scent of the piece of plastic and metal. Of course, the pub was already permeated by the smell of alcohol and food, so she gave up and contented herself with licking the at Mordecai's food.
"No need to apologize," Mordecai replied, holding a hand out before Neo. "Allies in arms, in a sense, if you're with Eos. I'm a breeder, if that should pique your interest, and if I can help in any form I shall." The Dancing Pidove was a little cramped for a full display of some of Mordecai's Pokémon. He rarely carried anyone other than Molly, the Pikachu, Ditto, and Skarmory. "Someday in the distant future though, there will be no need for the Eos."
Neo glanced at the hand in suspicion for a second too long before she reached to take it. Handshakes, tools of civilized people, yes. She remembered; it was a societal convention. This was the society Eos hoped to defend.
"Allies in arms," she confirmed. "And I can only hope that future is not as distant as you claim."
She glanced at him, momentarily unsure before she made up her mind. She was no stranger to help--help was how people survived in the earliest days of the scourge--and she'd accept it when it came her way. "You can help--quite easily too. My studies of the moment are quite basic; I'd like to replicate the vaccine without the resources of a fully equipped laboratory. You must agree that with the high rate of casualties, it is not practical to trek back to Juno City every time we need another dose of the vaccination for pokemon that replace our fallen. As a breeder, I assume you have a full assortiment of pokemon, and all of them vaccinated, yes? Examining them would greatly assist me in my research. ...Although not here, here is quite crowded."
Neo stopped speaking to finish up her soup, and she eyed her beer again. "Do you... drink? I don't." She gestured to her full tankard of beer.
Mordecai let out a chuckle. "Sometimes, people lower their expectations so that they can be pleasantly surprised," he said in an ironic tone. "Though I do hope for the same." He gave Neo's hand a firm shake before going back to prodding at the thick soup with the spoon.
He gave Neo a nod, "hmm'ing" occasionally to show that he was paying attention. Briefly, he wondered if she carried any potential vaccinations on her person. "Most of my Pokémon have been vaccinated, yes," he responded. "But I have a couple who are still waiting for some from the Eos. They must have been hatched from a parent Pokémon that wasn't vaccinated. I don't suspect it will be long before they are though."
The man gave Neo a slight shrug as he took her tankard of beer. "Don't mind if I do," he responded. Despite not being a heavy drinker either, the substance rarely put a dent in his inhibitions. He downed its contents without a flinch as Molly pawed at his shoulder. He set the now only partially-full tankard upon the countertop, and pressed a finger against the Eevee's snout. "Not for you either," he said to her.
She was glad to see the beer gone. Waste not, want not, after all--of course life wasn't quite that simple, but still, always a good rule to abide by.
"When you're done eating, we could head outside. The weather is cold, but the air is fresh. If the climate's inappropriate for your pokemon, there's always the pokemon center. My room there is my makeshift lab," Neo suggested, admittedly antsy to examine a gathering of vaccinated pokemon. So far, she'donly see her own solosis and wild pokemon. The latter was mostly tangential to her research, and the former could only go so far.
It didn't occur to her that she just asked a stranger to go back to her room with her.
"Perhaps it would be best to finish this indoors," he said to the researcher with a nod. Most of his Pokémon would get along swimmingly in night air, but they were relatively young. Some of them, anyways, were still hatchlings. Plus the PC would allow him to access his full party. As a breeder, he owned a variety of Pokémon, yet still managed to find time to spend with every single one of them.
He raised a brow and with a playful expression, added, "You seem very keen to further your work." It wasn't a bad thing. In fact, Mordecai admired the eagerness in Neo's eyes, not quite like a child on Christmas Eve, but close enough. Briefly, he wondered if Neo had actually managed to reproduce the vaccine for the Hades virus, and was storing it in said makeshift lab. That would really be scratching each other's backs. He didn't mind giving one-sided help though.
Mordecai did realize that a stranger was asking him back to her room, but he felt no need to voice any concerns about it.
"I am," she said, because it was true. She did notice the playful tone, but Neo made nothing of it. "My work is practical; to complete its study will have tangible, immediate results. It's quite exciting to see it proceed. ...Less exciting to see it fail."
She waited for him to eat. Neo once had a talent for small talk--or at least she had a penchant for chattering away like any other normal human being--but now she didn't have much to say beyond eat faster, she was tactful enough not to voice.
After a while, and after the check had been paid, she said, "If you don't mind my haste, I would like to be on our way."
In the end, Molly was the one who had finished up most of the clam chowder, which was fine, since Mordecai took Neo's beer for himself. He hoped she didn't mind that he finished off the entire thing and ended up paying for it, but he supposed that she would have taken it back or pushed that portion of the bill on him if she did. He was glad that she didn't.
"Of course," he replied, as Molly climbed aboard her trainer's shoulder. "Please, lead the way."
He knew the way to the Proserpina Pokémon Center, yes. It was the first thing that any trainer who arrived at the city immediately searched for. In fact, finding a Pokémon Center was typically the first step one took. He just... didn't know the way to Neo's room.
The winter air was too brisk for a pleasant walk, so she took long, quick strides to the (blessedly) nearby Pokemon Center.
"This way," she said when they entered the Pokemon Center, not because she doubted Mordecai's ability to play follow the leader, but because she'd taken a room downstairs in the basement, where rooms normally weren't offered. ("My research might be dangerous," she'd explained.) The bed was merely a cot, the same used for emergency patients, placed in the corner. The rest of the room was an array of nurse's tables on wheels, various devices and containers placed alongside all the reference books she'd checked out of the library.
She shoved a few tables aside for space.
"Is this enough space? ...I should've asked earlier."
Mordecai decided against asking Hook why her room was located in the basement of the Pokémon Center. Less questions, the better. So he followed, now a little warily, but relaxed as Neo began to shove some tables aside. "Yes, this will be enough," he said to her.
After all, it wasn't as if Levis took up particularly much space anyways. He dug into the pocket of his kimono, retrieving a single Pokéball from it. Vaccinated Pokémon, she said? Then, yes, he supposed that the Altaria would do.
The man pressed the center button of the Pokéball, and in a flash of red light, the flying-dragon Pokémon materialized on the floor of the makeshift lab. Levis blinked and craned his golden head in Neo's direction, as if in greeting. "Aaaaal, aaaltariii," the Altaria said, before fluttering a little closer to her trainer. There was a friendly grin on the cottony Pokémon, his bright coloration, as opposed to a white and blue one, making it evident that this, too, was a vaccinated Pokémon.
Her pokedex blared to life when the altaria appeared. <Altaria dances and wheels through the sky among billowing, cotton-like clouds. By singing melodies in its crystal-clear voice, this Pokémon makes its listeners experience dreamy wonderment.>
"Do you?" she asked the Altaria pointedly. Just in time, she remembered to released Phoebe, whose telepathic abilities helped her communicate with other pokemon. "Phoebe, I need a translator. Now Ms. Altaria--does she, do you, have a nickname?--have you noticed any changes in any of your abilities, combat or otherwise, since vaccination?"
She pursed her lips, studying the pokemon's discoloration, its shiny feathers, and an understanding finally dawned on Neo. "Hold that thought!"
She stood up, rushed to the tables she had shoved aside earlier, throwing on a pair of goggles to begin her work. Quickly, she selected only two beakers and a handful of materials. She cleansed the beaker and her tools, completely lost in her work. A sampling of healing water, combined with the compounds of various battle items, a bit of this and a bit of that, but really not that much of either at all.
<Losis solos,> Phoebe explained to both the altaria and Mordecai. <She gets like this.>
Levis' head began to tilt to the right, curiously, as his eyes tracked Neo's movements to the tables. Mordecai watched with a matching curiosity as Neo slipped on a pair of goggles, mixing together strange concoctions like a sorceress. Part of him admired how intensely the woman worked, and the other part of him had a lot of trouble trying to track what exactly Neo was doing. He gave up, shortly afterwards.
"I understand," he replied to the Solosis, never once questioning how the Pokémon was able to communicate with him. He rubbed at Levis' neck, in case the Pokémon felt uncomfortable by the strangers. Levis was rather friendly though, in fact, quite enjoyed meeting new people. He was content to spread his cottony wings and show off his glittering feathers, not once realizing that Neo had addressed him as "Ms." instead of "Mr."
"You should tell your trainer that I feel just dandy~" the Pokémon sang to the Solosis. "I feel absolutely right as rain! ... I am a lover, not a fighter though. Perhaaaaps you should express thiiiis to your trainerrrrrr?" Of course, to Mordecai, it sounded like arbitrary singing. He was grateful that they were in the basement of the Center, confident that Levis' singing would have startled everyone in the building.
She didn't even notice the singing, although the solosis applauded the performance.
The carefully distilled solution she'd crafted sat in a vial on the table. It was... it was perfect, she was almost certain. Nothing would be proven until the vaccine--if this was indeed a working vaccine she'd crafted--would be ready in but a few short moments.
"I shall test this. I believe it may work. No, I believe it will work. Thank you, it seems that your altaria has given me--" she paused, searching for a word, "--enlightenment."
