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!
Everyone lost battles, especially battles against the scourge. It happened. That was reality. Neo kept telling herself that. She was--easily, obviously, completely--worthy of the eos program. She told herself that too. These were facts; she liked facts.
Neo sat curled up into a small huddle in the shadow of a destroyed mansion. She hadn't lost her senses; it was a pretty fortifiable mansion, or at least what remained of it. Mostly, it's defense was that it was abandoned. It wasn't in a decent tactical location, it had not even a respectable vantage point. It was a useless sort of place, and Neo felt like that was the sort of place for her at the moment. That was strange enough in itself; on a normal day, Neo didn't feel much of anything.
She sat in the dark, and she sat alone, where she hoped no one would see her. She wasn't silent though. In fact, she was just about the only sound on the entire estate, which itself sat dull and lifeless.
In the darkness, she breathed long, shaky breaths.
She felt like crying, but she hadn't yet. She would eventually, Neo knew. She just had to wait until she did, ride out that storm, and then it would be back to business as usual.
Emotions were for the dark where no one, not even she, could see.
Thalia tells herself that she's searching for survivors among the fallen, drafty mansions, searching for clues, searching for a scourge pokemon to fight. She tells herself a lot of things, and less and less of them are true each day. Her umbreon pads along at her side, ears pricked forward as he listens to each shifting minuscule noise, searching for the one that isn't a dead-end.
From time to time, he'll lead her off the rubble strewn path and into a mansion. Most of the doors are gone, ripped off their hinges or punched through by rampaging scourge pokemon. The few that are intact, like this one, usually have a shattered window she can wriggle through, and Thalia does just that. She lands heavily on her feet as the umbreon clears the frame in one easy leap, looking vaguely unimpressed with his trainer's lack of grace.
"I'll take the west wing," she tells him, and they split up. While Thalia sorts through wardrobes and desks, her umbreon is more concerned with the uneven breaths that drift through the hallway to him. They sound like the noises of a wounded animal, a helpless cub. He navigates through the darkness swiftly, blue rings glowing, until he comes to the source of the sound.
He's never sure what to do with humans. They feel too much, overwhelmingly, in ways that pokemon--or he, at least--do not understand. The umbreon settles himself with the pretend-notion that this green-furred human, curled up as she is, is a pup in need of soothing. He walks over to her, careful not to appear threatening, and presses his head against her side.
She spots the umbreon in his approach, the glowing rings on his back giving stealth the slip. She doesn't recognize him even though she's met him before as an eevee, but she knew blue rings were the color of a vaccinated umbreon. This one belongs to someone from Eos.
At his touch on her side, she stiffens--freezes still, but makes no protest. A few seconds pass, and then a few more on top of that, most of it in silence save for a brief bout of sniffling on her part. When she blinks, there's tears, and she smears them away on her sleeve.
Taking a deep, rattling breath, Neo turns to the umbreon. She unfurls herself from her sulking huddle to face the umbreon; her eyes are wide, glossy and wet, but she sees clearly enough.
The umbreon shifts back as she uncurls, and twitches one ear as she greets him. He doesn't make a sound, but noses against her hand tentatively, his tail wagging.
She sniffs, pets the umbreon like someone who's never touched a pokemon before--like they're made of smoke and wind and the lightest breeze could shatter them.
She can't understand him, but covers her mouth and doesn't quite cover up a giggle--ugh, like a little girl--when the umbreon licked her hand. Then she started crying.
"Sorry," she says, and the word comes out choked between sniffles. She wipes away tears before they can fall. "Not your fault."
"There is no need to apologize, human girl," he states formally. He wonders if this is a human thing, continuing to speak when there is no point to it. She will not understand him. He's not sure how he feels about indulging in it.
As she wipes away her tears, his tail thumps against the ruined ground, and he kneads his paws against her leg, offering up the scruff of his neck for her to pet and hold onto, if she wants. His body is very warm! He runs like a furnace. Maybe that will make her happier. "Breon," he purrs gently. "breon, breon."
She hesitates at first, but then she runs a hand the umbreon's back. It's comforting, in a fashion, to touch another living thing. It's like confirming your own existence somehow, that you live and breathe, and that you can still touch the lives of others--that you're not invisible, ineffectual, and inconsequential.
She cries, and she hugs the umbreon close, as if there was no one else in the world that mattered.
The umbreon goes limp and lets her hold him. It's instinctual to nuzzle a little bit, but he tries to keep it a non-intrusive level.
On the other side of the mansion, meanwhile, Thalia is covered in dust and hacking her lungs up. There is nothing here! Why did that umbreon insist they come in here? Where is he, anyway? She begins the slow trudge back to the front door.
The shaking and crying phased passes without fanfare, making way for another bout of sniffling and bleary red eyes. She lets go of the umbreon, pats him on the head a little awkwardly, and tries for another smile--something to say that she's okay. She'll be okay, and that's what matters. It's not a very good smile, but it was an effort. A little bit of effort is a good place to begin again.
Neo stands up, dusts herself off, as if she'd just gotten out of a particularly messy battle.
Her breathing slowed to something more regular, steady. By the time, she spotted Thalia, Neo was mostly presentable. The red in her eyes could just have easily have been fatigue as it could have been tears.
"That's your trainer?" Neo said, with an impressive deadpan. "Grats on evolving."
"Hey," Thalia said, caught a little off-guard. "I--didn't expect to see you here? Umbreon just insisted we check it out. I didn't find anything but he obviously found you."
And she remembered they were in an abandoned mansion in scourge-held territory.
"You're okay, right? Didn't get chased here by hordes of howling scourge magikarp or something--you look kinda tired."
"Feeling wiped. Ran into your scourge trainers. Two. Didn't win. Decided to lie low here," Neo answered, honestly enough.
Back to business as usual, then. Right. Done crying, need a plan now. Need something to do--something to think about, something to keep her busy.
Think, she commanded.
"We said we numbered four of us that have made it so far, maybe plus one? I think we need to meet up, face to face. I think we need to talk about what to do about this hades problem."
