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!
"so you weren't a local after all" stefan murmurs as he looks down at the young woman at his feet. not that it matters to him. as long as she doesn't get in his way here, then he doesn't even have words for her, much less a fight.
the houndour leads him along the tunnel, having much better night vision than humans. not that it mattered much to stefan. living in the grimer court meant having a certain finesse with dark tunnels, whether it be the underground sewers or the di manes cavern.
still, he holds an unlit stick torch in case he needs it. for now, he doesn't feel like disturbing the local zubat population. he liked the blood in his face where it was, thank you very much.
stefan walks around her fallen body, but the murkrow perched on his shoulder watches his back. he doesn't forget old debts, but neither does he forget his current obligations. if she won't make a move, then neither will he.
Neo got up and dusted herself off, not very perturbed. Content that was no lichen or other stuff sticking to her clothes, she turned and squinted at the retreating not-quite-a-stranger until she figured out why she recognized him by his murkrow.
"You're very good at running away," she observed.
"I didn't know Eos recruited for that sort of talent."
he isn't perturbed by her taunting - stefan is too aware of his own position to allow some woman's words derail him. how could he, when even the organization that he works under hardly recognizes his true intentions?
patriotism, humanity, and brotherhood?
hm.
stefan doesn't hesitate in his steps, and neither does he look back. he's walking plenty slow, so he doesn't see the need to raise his voice. "if you don't intend to look like a sneak-thief, then i suggest that you don't act like one". his lips curl. how ironic it is, being given a lecture by the princeling of the grimer den himself.
he doubts that he will find any hints here, but it is still worth investigating. who knows? the man that he is looking for had a fondness for danger. stefan doubts that there is a place on earth that he wouldn't be poking into. admin
"And you shouldn't run from a scrappy warehouse tussle if you don't want to look like a coward, but I'm glad you did. If I ever find you on the fields of scourge, I'll at least know you'll be the first to turn tail."
Neo didn't particularly care that the semi-stranger had fled and left her to fend for herself against two wild pokemon. She fended just fine, and the whole battle with a few ice pokemon had been rounded up without any fuss.
So she wasn't being petty; she held no particular grudge. She was just plain mean.
stefan thinks that he could have genuinely laughed at that - a rare commodity these days. for anyone. he doesn't. the man is on business today, and he doesn't have time for indulgences.
he isn't a liar (not yet). even if he wanted to respond, stefan would have denied nothing. the scourge are merely an inconvienience, not a priority. the day that he found erik would be the day when he would turn in his membership. he uses eos, just as eos uses everyone who is involved in it. nothing is sacred - not the bonds between trainers and their partners, not hatchlings who had never seen their parents, not rangers dying for a foreign land. yet they hold so much pride in their service to such a program.
it's all so ironic, yet no one laughs. everyone grits their teeth as they muster their forces for the worst, telling themselves that they are fighting for their future. what kind of future can anyone secure without a solid footing in the present? he doesn't chase erik because he is the heir of the family fortune. he chases erik because who else would he be, if not the loyal dog of the alejandros.
he has better things to do than fight for dead pride.
so why is he walking away?
suddenly, he remembers. he remembers that information isn't usually avalible in the crevices of rock, but from the wellsprings of speech. the girl has travelled from proserpina city to the di manes caverns. surely that means that she would have heard or seen something?
stefan pauses in his step. even if she did, the likelihood of a legitimate answer seems slim, if her temperament was anything to go by. still, he has to try.
"i might trade you a new dex entry...does the name "erik alejandro" mean anything to you?"
if her mind had conjured a large hotel chain, then she would be right. if her mind had conjured one of the richest families in proserpina with a fondness for charity balls, then she would be right. if she had conjured don juan junior, then she would have been right.
Unfortunate news for Stefan was that Neo was a liar.
She scowled. "Everyone's looking for someone. Most of those someone's just a corpse by now." By the end of the last sentence, her tone had softened.
Neo was silent for a moment. She had no inclination to help this man, but she remembered name of the famliy: Alejandro. Big in the papers in Proserpina. The photos had shown the business-owner Alejandros, neither named Erik, but she knew they had a son. If only she remembered that photo a bit better. Still, she took a few guesses. "Erik, maybe. Alejandro, who knows."
She was silent for longer before she finally shrugged. "Grey hair? Or blue, maybe, it was dark. Too much money? Likes the sound of his own voice? The world is his oyster?"
That could feasibly describe some rich kid. She knew the breed.
stefan's lips thin. "that's rather generalized, don't you think?" for all the high-end parties that he has served at, the girl might as well have described him with "two eyes, two arms, and two legs"
then again, a man is lucky to even have those in these times, he supposes. for those who are inclined, idealism is just as difficult to hold on to as one's limbs.
it's not the kind of answer that he was looking for, and stefan thinks that they both know that. for a few seconds, his frustration gets the better of him. "you might want to practice in front of a mirror next time, but i'm glad that you didn't. if i'm ever trying to comb a hideout, i'll at least know who is the last person i count on for a pair of eyes"
or maybe she would like that. regardless, stefan could not resist the mimicry. he thinks that he's met plenty of her kind before - hell, he could argue that they were more similar to each other than the adoptive brothers would ever be. people like that, he knows, are less drawn to honeyed words than they were to cold, hard resources. prose dissapates at the end of the day. information doesn't.
regardless of whether she speaks the truth or not, stefan can tell that she is no romantic, and he thinks that he could like that about her.
if only he didn't want heidi to burn her fingers off, that is.
the skepitism does not leave his eyes (when does it ever), but he withdraws kaiser's pokeball. while the girl had spied on them before, the charmander had...undergone quite a few changes since he left the last city.
the larger flame of the charmeleon even provides enough light for them to see her face, at little as stefan wants to.
She shrugged, and she gave her rather unwanted advice, "If you're combing a hideout, you'll probably want to use your pokemon. Oh, wait, yours can't even win a little tussle in a warehouse."
She saw the charmeleon had evolved. Well, maybe there was hope for him as a trainer after all. "Nice progress," she congratulated, quite honestly, and her pokedex beeped agreement.
Neo sighed and added, "I spent nearly a week scouting and camping through Ceres Forest. I met a fair deal of people, but no one introduced themselves by that name. It's a big forest, and I ran into a too many abandoned campsites for the number of people I met--but not by many. If he's a part of Eos, statistically it's highly unlikely he's part of the first wave that's journeyed as far as the caverns already."
Her $0.02: "If you're looking for him here, I think you've overshot. You should backtrack, watch the cave entrance, or if you really think he's made it this far, do the opposite: push forward and guard the Nerio side of Di Manes. He'll have to come by that way eventually."
unwanted advice is also stefan's trademark, but that doesn't make it any less unwanted. that is to say, the man pays her advice almost no heed whatsoever. this is no hideout. this is a wild cavern that has been untouched by human entrepreneurs for quite some time. stefan isn't quite so foolhardy to bet on odds like that.
erik isn't going to stay here. not in some decrepit, cavern like this. if anything, he would make a stop out of curiosity. no, what stefan is looking for is information. a lead. anything. he doubts that a pokemon would understand exactly what he was looking for. alexander, maybe. probably not the rest.
kaiser looks as bored as ever. at the mention of ceres forest, however, stefan's head cold returns. best not to think of that cursed place.
regardless, her information makes sense - if she didn't already pin herself as a liar. stefan isn't sure whether that renders all her information obsolete, or only a part of it.
either way, pressing forward was always a part of the plan. nothing has changed, and nothing will have changed.
"i will keep that in mind"
he retrieves the charmeleon, but keeps the other two out. the distrust lingers in him still as he turns to walk away.
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