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!
Felizia still tried to sneak glances at people. She’d rather watch a kid pick his nose than her Cubone eating. It was just a weird thing to watch. Soon enough her eyes settled on someone vaguely familiar, and after a bit of squinting she recognised the guy as someone she had battled in… that Dream World battle place. Okay, so she had no idea what it was called, but she recognised the man and his goatee. And she remembered that his Pokemon had been a low level. A newly hatched kind of low level.
“C'mon,”she said to her Cubone as she stood up. Carina groaned, but stood up anyway, and jumped form the table to the chair, then the chair to the ground. She looked at what remained of Carina’s ice cream. Only the cone was left. Well, she guessed she could risk that, so Felizia picked up her Pokemon and held it like she had seen others do. It meant faster walking but still felt as uncomfortable as ever. “Why is your tail so pokey?” she huffed quietly at her Pokemon as she walked fast to catch up to the Goatee Guy.
“Hey! Hey!” The wrong people turned their heads around and were confused when they didn’t recognise her, but Felizia ignored them. “Guy with the goatee! Goatee! Swablu guy!” It was getting harder to ignore the looks she was getting. Apparently people just didn’t yell ‘goatee’ and ‘swablu guy’ in the streets.
"Huh?" The shouted description of someone remarkably like him attracted the pokemon researcher's attention, and so he turned... just like the rest of the people in the street. Like Brazil, they too were interested into exactly what kind of person would just shout out things like 'swablu guy' and 'goatee guy' in the streets - last he checked he hadn't really slept with anyone, so his brain was at a loss for reasons to be shouted at so publicly. Still, the focus was on him now, as the amassed crowd picked up on the fact that he had a goatee - and the Swablu perched on his shoulder only put the final seals on the casket of confirmation: he was the target of her uproar. So, with the spotlight of a few dozen eyes burning into the back of his head, Brazil Evans stated again, simply, and loudly,
"Huh?" He had no clue what she wanted.
"What do you wan- wait... do I know you from somewhere?" So he had meant to ask, but got sidetracked by the semi-familiar face. He couldn't exactly recall meeting the girl, but something about her expression seemed to... well, seemed to ring bells in his mind. Sensing this, Ayla began to hum from atop the researcher's head.
"I guess Ayla remembers you... uh, I'm Brazil, Brazil Evans - maybe if you tell me your name I could see where you seem to know me from." A wholly unhelpful suggestion if he was being totally honest, but the girl seemed to show a fierce interest in him to just call out to him in the street like that.
"Or uh, you could tell me where you know me from."
Just keep ignoring them, just keep ignoring them. Felizia kept chanting the mantra in her head. Thankfully the right guy finally turned around before the mantra actually escaped as actual words from her mouth. He turned around with a stupid look on his face and voiced a stupid syllable.
She was a bit too excited (and not the fun kind) from the attention to not see anything as stupid, to be honest.
Felizia only bothered with one of Goatee Guy’s questions with a rushed, “Yeah, you do,” before pausing to listen to the weird hum that came from his Pokemon. She had never heard it before, but pushed her initial thoughts (a mix between 'that's cute' and 'that's really kind weird') about it aside so that she could cut to the chase.
“Your Swablu. It’s young, isn’t it? Just how old is i—” She cut herself off and looked down at her forearms. One felt cold, wet and stick, and she was horrified to discover that there had been some ice cream left in Carina’s cone after all. Until it had been dropped onto her sleeve, that is.
“Dammit Carina!” The words were too loud to be considered muttered. “You’re cleaning that.” The Cubone said her equivalent of something along the lines of ‘Nuh-uh’ and Felizia dropped the topic for now. They could squabble over it later. Instead, she turned her attention back to Goatee Guy (okay, ‘Brazil’) and asked, “Hey, have you answered me yet?”
A part of her wondered why she should be bothered about someone else’s baby Pokemon, but that part of her was quickly shut down. Too late. She was making a deal out of it now and there was no turning back.
"..." It was an interesting turn of events, to say the least;a barrage of questions and then a breakdown of, well, dignity to put it politely. The girl was embarrassing herself.
"Uh well, Swablu - or if we're gonna actually use her name, Ayla - only hatched a couple of weeks ago, so yeah, she's really young." The Swablu's humming increased slightly at the mention of her name; the cotton bird pokemon didn't particularly care as to what was going on, but the feeling of being included was enough attention to satiate the researcher's blue bird.
"If you like, Ayla could clean that for you - Swablu are meant to hate dirty things..." He trailed off, his eyes transfixed upon the girl's pokemon, his hand subconsciously moving to his back pocket in order to retrieve his pokedex. A quick snapshot of the oddly crowned pokemon revealed that it was a Cubone. Meanwhile, Ayla ruffled its cloudy feathers in anticipation of eradicating that infuriating spill. She chirped, as if asking for permission to deal with it from her orange haired owner.
"She won't shut up if I don't let her clean that." Brazil said plaintively, almost apologising for helping the girl out. Apparently that was all the permission Ayla needed, for she pitched off the researcher's shoulder and got to work on the girl's ice cream stain, rubbing it softly with her feathers. In no time the blemish was gone, and the Swablu seemed happier for it.
"That uh, that Cubone seems cool. What did you say its name was? And speaking of names, you still haven't told me yours - let's discuss that." Brazil smiled, the few drops of sarcasm on his words making him chuckle.
Aha! She knew it! Poor Ayla the Swablu was still a baby. For a second Felizia felt proud of getting that right (even if it wasn’t exactly a hard thing to guess in the first place), but her mind didn’t stray too far from the young Pokemon. But just as she was about to open her mouth again and tell this guy off, he beat her to speaking first and offered to have Ayla clean the ice cream stain.
Well that was unexpected. So was the small handheld machine that Felizia only needed to see briefly to realise it was a Pokedex. Without her notice, Felizia’s arms tightened around Carina defensively.
It irked her a little that the Swablu hadn’t waited for permission to clean her, but she guessed that she would have given it anyway, and didn’t say anything other than a half-sure “Thanks, uh, Ayla” to the Swablu. Carina gave Ayla a grateful look and offered the fluffy bird the last bite of her ice cream cone. The offer didn’t stand for very long though as her arm received a quick but light tap from Felizia and a firm, “Don’t.”
All attention was back on Brazil the Goatee Guy when their sarcasm detectors went off. “Unfortunately her name doesn’t live up to her coolness, so she’s better known as Queen Cool.” Felizia ignored the bony nudge from ‘Queen Cool’ and continued. “I’m Felizia, one of the Queen’s many honoured serva—no, never mind.” She shook her head. “Look I’m here to talk about your Swabayla. Ayla. What was the big idea of sending her into battle against my Totodile? Did you want her to get creamed?”
"..." He couldn't believe it. Queen Cool? What sort of name was that?! Was this girl five years old or something? Brazil felt a twang of sympathy for the Cubone, but this was quickly assuaged by the continuation of the researcher's conversation with Felizia. Besides, he was suddenly under fire!
"If you know of a better way to get pokemon to level up that doesn't cost any money, then I'm all ears!" He quipped, laughing a little. But then he remembered... he'd battled this girl before, in the Dream World - she was the person with the Totodile! Brazil's face lit up; it had been a short but enjoyable battle, after all. Still, he continued, a more banterous tone to his voice now he'd been enlightened as to the identity of the person he was talking to.
"Besides, Ayla doesn't mind losing - it's all about learning, right?" The Swablu chirped appreciatively, partially because her name was mentioned again, partially because she agreed. She'd stopped humming for now, content with looking positive for the time being.
"If you minded beating her so much, maybe you should've let me win huh?" He joked.
Of course. The levelling. It was something that mattered less to Felizia than it did to others. Her parents never made a show of levelling their Pokemon, so it had never seemed like an important aspect of breeding too her, even though she guessed that there had to be something going on for the Pokemon to have evolved.
Oh crap, that memory had started to dry up her throat. Felizia swallowed, but a tiny lump was still there. Not trusting it, she initially just shrugged, then decided that a shrug wasn’t enough. “You… You could have at least had her battle another young Pokemon. Or one that was at the same level.” Or have it dodge around a makeshift obstacle course of garbage; Felizia kept that one to herself, sure that it sounded better in her head than it ever would out loud.
She was surprised that the Swablu agreed with the researcher’s statement. Felizia’s eyes flicked to the ground and she mumbled something unintelligible. Her eyes stayed fixed on the ground as she concentrated on forgetting the small guilt she had gotten when she had realised, sometime after the battle, that she had ordered her Pokemon to beat up a baby Pokemon. “And maybe you should’ve sent out something a bit stronger!” she snapped and forced herself to stop there.
Battle another young pokemon? Well who was in charge of that! He couldn't help it if she sent out monolithic badasses against his precious baby pokemon! Still, he kept it to himself as to diffuse the argument - despite himself, Brazil was coming to grow fond of Felizia. She was funny, in that totally irritating and stubborn sort of way.
"Well, I'm sure my Kadabra would annihilate your entire squad - maybe I was just being nice!
... though uh, about your entire squad... d'you have any other cool pokemon like that Cubone? I'm a researcher, and I kind of need to see as many pokemon as possible - ah, so if you don't mind..." He might as well have got something out of the conversation, after all!
Felizia looked back up, mostly to make sure that Brazil the Goatee Guy caught her rolling her eyes at him. “Of course. I quake in fear at the mere mention of your Kadabra.” If she actually took a minute to think about it, she’d realise that she’d be happy avoiding a battle with a Kadabra.
She patted Carina’s head. Skull. Head-skull. “I dunno,” she responded, pretending to be thoughtful. “I don’t think any Pokemon’s coolness can level with Queen Cool’s.” Carina snorted at the comment, not buying it for one second like the smart girl she was, and started to wriggle around. “Fine, fine.” Felizia put her Pokemon on the ground.
“So,” she said, turning her attention back to Brazil. “What’s in it for you? I thought you guys wanted to study the scourge Pokemon, not the healthy ones.”
"Well it's a lot easier to tell the differences between a scourge pokemon and a healthy one if you've already got the healthy pokemon's data down, right?" He replied simply. He reached for his pokedex, intent on scanning all of her pokemon there and then, but paused. Brazil sighed. He should learn to be a little less conscious of his actions, it would make this whole scanning business a lot easier.
"Uh... come with me, I don't really wanna do all of this here, yunno? Let's go to Ceres Forest, it's much more relaxed and chilled there anyway. Maybe uh, maybe the city might angst-up your pokemon or something..." He didn't want to say it. He couldn't say it. As much as he was just doing his job, he didn't really want Felizia to feel used - why he cared about her feelings so much, if at all, was completely beyond him; maybe it was the way she carried herself... And she'd already proven to be a pretty strong trainer - better than him, in any case, despite the Kadabra threats. It'd be better for him, if they ran into any scourge pokemon, to have her by his side.
She had never actually seen a scourge Pokemon herself, but that didn’t stop her from saying, “I thought they looked, y’know, all virus-y and evil looking. With red eyes or something. Isn’t it kinda obvious?”But what Brazil said, did make sense, she guessed. And what if it wasn’t obvious? That was a scary thought. Maybe Felizia would have to stop avoiding pictures of scourge Pokemon before she ventured too far. It didn’t hurt to know what to avoid.
Felizia eyed up Brazil suspiciously. “My Pokemon don’t get angsted-up by the city,” she said defensively, even though she knew she couldn’t vouch for all of her Pokemon. She looked around – angst-up or not, this place wasn’t roomy enough for her to show off her bigger Pokemon. Of which, there was only actually one, to be honest, but the Pokemon she had received from Lady Mercedes’ were the best for showing off.
And if she gave that a few seconds of thought, she’d realise that it wasn’t exactly a good thing and kind of annoyed her.
“Fine,” she gave in easily in favour of bigger, more spread-out spaces. “It’s just Ceres Forest, so…” She finished the sentence with a shrug. It was the best way she could think of finishing it. “Uh. Let’s go?”
"Mm. Let's." He replied simply. Ayla gave a little chirp as Brazil turned, making a point of not telling Felizia to follow behind; the researcher completely expected her to follow obediently... like a dog - though in his case, definitely a feisty one.
"Ceres Forest is this way right?" He said after a while, realising they'd come no closer to the aforementioned forest since starting their journey together.
