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!
Maybe there was a view, but it was wasted on Thalia. The only deep reds she's interested in are the kind that come from a fire. Or an electric blanket. Maybe a red mug of hot chocolate.
It's freezing cold out, maybe should go unstated. She's never had a high tolerance for cold. A bad combination of being tiny, with a penchant for highly impractical clothing. The black leggings and cute short leather jacket might have looked good in the light of day, but now she's hopping from foot to foot, wishing she had a fire type. That eevee is definitely going to be a flareon, she decides. Whether he likes it or not.
Thalia skitters around the far edge of Messor Rock and begins climbing it clumsily. Her fingers are icicles. She needs a better pair of gloves. The stone is icy, but there is absolutely no way she's sleeping on that ground. With one last final exertion, she flops over the side of the top of the boulder and lays face down like a beached magikarp.
Neo had heard the sound of someone approaching. For a while, she'd sat patiently before curiosity finally got the better of her. She stood to peer over the side of the boulder, and she'd observed the latter end of Thalia's shivering, laborious climb to the top without comment.
In hindsight, she supposed it would've been most polite to have offered the other woman a hand up.
"Perhaps. You also need a winter coat," Neo said from within the warmth of her hoodie.
In what Thalia would classify as a herculean effort, deserving of no less than four gold medals, Thalia managed to roll herself onto her back. She stared up at the girl standing above her and blinked.
"Is this the part where you offer me a winter coat?" Thalia asked. "Or am I paying the price of my hubris." There's a very high possibility Thalia doesn't know what half the words she uses on a daily basis mean. admin
For a very long, sad moment, Thalia debated the logistics of being able to chop down a tree with her bare hands for firewood. What could she say? Desperation makes martyrs of us all.
"No," she exhaled. "Not all solutions are viable." She hauled herself up and started rummaging through her bag. "Um I might have something to set on fire though...I mean make a fire out of. For warmth." Six feet of shed dratini skin emerged shortly, and Thalia piled it at her feet. "I mean, I'm sure it's flammable? It has to be flammable."admin
"I am unsure of dratini skin's flammability. In fact, I am eager to discover its properties. Perhaps you have a live specimen?" Examining pokemon was, ever since she got her pokedex, always at the forefront of Neo's mind.
She reached to her bag to dig out Themis' pokeball, sending it into the air to release a Scraggy. It looked around eagerly for a live opponent. "Themis, fire punch the skin, please."
Disappointed, the scraggy did as was asked of him.
The dratini skin lit up into a brilliant flame, a blaze of blue and violet, but the old skin burned too quickly--the flames eating it up like ice cream in front of a pregnant lady.
Neo was silent for a moment, considering. Then she asked, "Would it not have been wiser to have simply worn the skin?"
Thalia stared at the charred remains of her hopes and dreams. Her face was still the tiniest bit red from the brief blaze of heat. "Yes," she said. "In hindsight, not the best decision I've ever made."
"I do have a live specimen, however." Her dratini appeared, followed shortly by eevee, jigglypuff and a disgruntled looking abra. She stood solemnly in front of her team. "We're about to lillipup pile it up," she announced. "Ride together, die together."admin
Curiously, Neo peered at the new pokemon before her, whipping out the pokedex to extract further data. She nodded as the pokedex recited various facts and trivia, committing the knowledge to memory.
When she glanced at Thalia and her pokemon again, they were huddled together in a clump for warmth.
"It only fits one person. It is, you see, for me," Hook replied with the faintest of frowns.
Grudgingly, she allowed, "It could fit two, but there will not be enough oxygen for the two of us if you fill the air with smoke. ...I am not sure there will be enough oxygen for two to begin with. Themis! Get the tent."
Dutifully, and still looking like he could do with something to punch--or perhaps kick--the scraggy fetched a teeny tiny collapsible tent and began setting it up on the ground.
Thalia stuffed all her Pokemon back into their balls at the speed of light. Tricksy little fucks weren't stealing any of her oxygen. Except--
"I have a solution," she said. "I've got a snover unfortunately, and if he stays in the tent he can turn...the carbon dioxide...into oxygen. Because, y'know. He's half plant."
Okay once she said it out loud it was a really dumb plan. admin
"You want to, in addition to full-sized people, fit a snover into the tent for one?" Neo asked, just to be absolutely clear.
She crossed her arms and cast her gaze downward at the tent. Honestly, it could fit two just fine provided they 1) liked each other, and 2) minded their elbows.
She wasn't so sure about the snover though.
"Very well. Note that if it takes up my space, I will drop kick it off the Rock."
"One, and you will never hear me say this again, in my defense I am about the size of half a fullsize person. And the snover makes another half person. Two, if you drop kick it off the rock I'll pay you. Three, please don't tell him I said that. Four, dibs on the right side."
She dived into the tent like she was an eighteen year old girl trying to escape a winter's night. Like her writer was running out of similes. Like, haha fuck. admin
Neo wondered how much money a traveler without a tent could possibly have.
Before entering the tent, she fiddled with the settings on her pokedex, setting it to wake her up in but a few hours. She named the alarm appt: drop-kick snover.
Neo glanced at the Scraggy. "Stand guard? Yell if there's anything amiss. Fire punch the girl if she touches my effects."
