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!
She used to play here, as a kid. It wasn't a very safe place to play, she guessed, but that was part of its charm. She could bring a flashlight and a book and hide away in any one of the darker, shadier corners of this place. The aloneness was comforting. It was herself and a story or an adventure or a knowledge locked in ink and paper.
Now it was a pretty crowded place, swarming with desperate survivors and people looking to make a buck on a very skewed economy. There wasn't really a dark, shady corner for her to bring a flashlight to read all day.
That was alright, she supposed. She was glad to see people alive.
Neo had a bag of goods, mostly hand-me-down toys, old books, and other such knickknacks. She'd gone bartering, which was her version of charity. She paid slightly more than fair money--or medicine or food or on one occasion a book for a book--for whatever sentimental objects a survivor was willing to part with. It was a form of charity that wasn't quite charity.
She set up her tent off on one end of the underground town, and sitting outside it, she sorted through the... well, what was one man's trash was another man's treasure. For her, this was trash, but she didn't want to just throw it away. That seemed rude.
There was some jewelry, mostly stuff that looked like childhood friendship bracelets but the occasional steel ring as well, those she simply wore. She didn't know what to do with the full collection of Shakepearean plays, not did she know what to do with the stuffed cleffa.
J had gone back to stock up on bitter powder; he enjoyed consuming the item more than any pokémon ever would. eating another spoonful as if it was candy, J walked along the stalls and tents, but hadn't bothered looking at the wares until he spotted a familiar face.
neo.
"what can i buy with a live scourge garbodor?" he asked, bending down to her level and looking at her items, but never touching them. the virus ball sat on a chain latched to his belt, and dangled off the side as he glanced up from the items to neo.
She was still looking down at the stuffed cleffa in her hands, poking at its star-shaped body, when she heard a voice. For a second, she froze--paled, although it was hard to see that in the underground light--and her grip on the cleffa turned into a vice grip.
Then Neo looked up, which didn't really help. Expressionless still, she looked at him with suspicionn until she saw the garbodor in the virus ball. Not Delta then, not unless Delta had managed to run to Juno and back so soon. She relaxed, deigning to gift J with a faint smile. It was good to see him, truly.
"My heart and soul, stranger--long time no see," she said. She gestured for him to sit down. "But if you'd like something else, I have... Shakespeare's anthology, if you're that bored. A jigglypuff pillow, for camping, maybe. A pop-up book about the Mighty Transformin' Ditto Rangers. Friendship bracelets, lots of those. A... lucky rock?" Looked like a piece of worthless pyrite, but it sparkled nicely.
She glanced back down at the cleffa. "You can't have the cleffa. I like the cleffa--more than my heart and soul."
J settled down next to neo; it was good to see her again after some time. lake pax had come and gone too quickly for his liking, and neither of them had spoken to the other about what had happened. he dropped the pokéball into neo's hands and leaned back against the wall, quiet for a moment.
"nah, i don't want anything, except a carcass to exchange for a fossil," said J as he looked at neo. "have at it." the garbodor was starting to melt into a dead scourge pokémon, but with neo's efficiency, he was sure that she would be able to make the most out of it.
"Thanks. I'll, uh, refrain from cutting it open here. Too civilized." She remembered the trubbish and the incredible stench of it from Proserpina Library. She imagined a garbodor could only be worse.
Neo hugged the cleffa to her chest in parody of a girl and her favorite pokedoll. "I will."
Joking aside, and she set the cleffa aside too, Neo examined the items before her with unusual determination. She wasn't really looking at them at all, not so much as she was looking in any direction but J while she worked up a bit of courage.
She didn't like prying into people's lives. She didn't like talking about her own, so she did everyone else a favor of never asking about theirs unless it came up. She was pretty sure J's had come up though.
Neo licked her lips, glanced at J nervously before turning about to face him. "Sorry to ask, but--I figure you don't remember anything since waking up at a hospital, but do you have family? Next of kin? A brother, an identical one specifically?"
Rather unnecessarily, she added, "I met a guy. Looked like you."
J's rare half-smile emerged again when neo hugged the pokédoll close to her, before dissolving to a more serious expression when she dropped all eye contact and started rummaging around for things. he could've sworn she was actively trying to avoid his gaze. he said nothing, though, and waited until she finally looked at him.
did he have a brother or next of kin? as far as he remembered, no. he wouldn't have inherited the whole amount of everything from his parents and grandparents combined, had there been anyone else. J shook his head, slowly. family was a touchy subject for him, and he wasn't sure where neo was going until she revealed that she had met someone who looked like him.
J was almost relieved. not quite relaxed yet, though; he was still tense, as if afraid that his past might become unraveled in a foolish move.
"yeah, people have been telling me that." it was just delilah and mordecai, but perhaps neo needed to know that, too. "said i looked like their brother."
J didn't look like he enjoyed this line of questioning, but at least having a doppelganger wasn't news to him. She shook her head. "More like a clone. I had a pretty good look. Acts different though, talks more, smiles too much."
Neo still felt pushy--intrusive and not in an inquiring way, this wasn't for science--for pestering him about his past. "Hey," she began again. "Sorry. We don't have to talk about this."
J narrowed his eyes. this didn't sound like a person younger than he was. it unnerved him to think that someone just like him, yet so different was running about the place.
he relaxed, though, when neo decided to drop the subject.
No siblings? She couldn't tell if that made Iskander's similarity to J more or less disturbing. "Well, he sounded like you too. You should laugh a little bit more maybe. It sounds nice."
Alright, now she really needed to change the topic.
"How's Decima treating you? I'd give you a tour around my hometown, but as you can see, we're going through some tough times. Not much to see."
J wondered if he should laugh more, as neo had suggested. he quickly pushed that thought to the back of his mind. there had been no situation which had warranted the thought of laughter from him; the trainer shrugged at neo's second statement.
"pretty good, i guess," said J, "i enjoy the bitter powder here."
Neo was well-educated on a variety of topics, mostly those that were historic or pokemon-related. She wasn't an expert on natural medicine.
"I'm not your doctor or anything, but that doesn't sound like a health supplement so much as a health replacement. Are you sure it's enough? Should I try hunting more?"
