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 had her scarf wrapped around her face. She had a surgeon's mask on underneath that. She also had a gas mask in her bag just in case. She didn't exactly want to make her homecoming with a gas mask on though. It wouldn't seem like home if she looked like she were walking into an apocalyptic wasteland. ...Granted, this was pretty much an apocalyptic wasteland. Most of the buildings were lucky if they still had four walls and a roof. Others had simply collapsed.
The house--her home--was mostly still intact, if you didn't mind that it was missing most of its walls. It looked like there'd been a battle there; she wouldn't know, she'd run away pretty fast when the attack began. Neo had planned on going in through the front door, but there wasn't much point in that. She just circled around to the back and stepped right into her room.
Most everything was still intact. No looters, although she did notice her lamp had gone missing, as well as her glow-in-the-dark stars from her walls for some reason. She hoped someone else had put them to good use.
Everything that remained was tinged slightly purple--toxic poison, no doubt. Neo put on gloves before she removed a photo album from her bookcase. The latex fingertips were purple now too from a filmy layer of poisonous resin, but she didn't mind too much.
She pushed back the covers on her bed, and the sheets underneath were thankfully less purple. Sitting cross-legged at the foot of her bed, Neo began going through the photo album.
the first and most important rule of a good lie, zahir learned a long time ago, is you must forget that you're lying. the second rule was harder: beauty is not an indicator of goodness. there is no correlation between where blessings fall, and where they are deserved. that was what was true.
but people didn't want what was true. they wanted what they thought should be true. they wanted their leaders to be virtuous and strong, their love to be selfless, their lives to have meaning, and they wanted to believe all of this was possible at once. that the world was not a cruel and unfair place, that there could be a reason for everything that happened.
zahir was not sure what he believed himself. he just knew that decima made him feel raw and exposed, stripped of any meaning he had tried to collect to give himself purpose. he hated it, all of it, the empty streets, the steel and concrete buildings, the unbreathable air that finally reflected how disgusting this place was, in truth.
he hated not being batin, in this place, but he had wanted to do this part as zahir. for her. the gas mask melchior's underlings had handed out itched and made his face sweat, and he shoved it down from time to time as much as he dared, searching for clues among what remained on the houses of the street where she had lived. he didn't know which one had been hers, and he took his time with each one, scared of passing over some small clue.
zahir lowered his gas mask and ran a hand through his hair before stepping into the next house on the block. the walls had fallen out of this one, and he could see almost clean through the entire house. he could see a girl. batin knew her, zahir didn't really care.
he stepped through to the room where she was sitting.
Neo looked up from the album at the blonde haired man. She didn't recognize him, although if pressed, she'd admit the voice seemed familiar. Mostly, all she saw was a stranger in her room, and small-town hospitality wanted to take over. Neo should offer the guy lemonade and cookies. Her mother would be displeased that she hadn't already done so.
Her mother would also be displeased at all the purple, toxic shit all over her walls. But that was neither here nor there.
"No, I suppose it is my place still, which makes you a guest in my house. I'd offer to take your coat, but you should keep it. I'd offer you a drink, but it'd be poisonous. Sorry. Hospitality's a little limited these days. Circumstances, you see.
"maybe," zahir said. "you used to live here? did you ever know any a lady named afia brand? i've been looking for her house for sometime, but i can't find it. all i know is that it was in this area, probably on this street."
he digs around in his pocket and comes up with a ripped scrap of paper torn out of an address book. half an address is listed on it, revealing the street they're on, minus the number of the house in question.
"my father tried to destroy any trace of her, but i wanted to see where she was, at the end. if she left anything behind that hasn't been taken by looters yet."
Afia, she didn't recognize, but Ms. Brand in the red-brick house with the apple trees--that was a name she knew.
"Sure. Lent me books, when I was little. Down the street. Around the corner, technically. The road winds." She frowned, surprised that her memory of the woman fell short after she'd turned ten or so. "Haven't talked to her in years though. Not since--" not since she'd found Neo and taken her safely home after a disastrous prom after-party, "--high school."
Gently, Neo used the semi-unpoisoned sheets on her bed to wipe the toxic sheen off of the photo album. She closed the book. "I can walk you there."
"that would be amazing," zahir says, folding up the piece of paper carefully and putting it back in his pocket. "did you know her then? what was she like? i'm sorry--i never knew much about her, except for what my father told me, and the few visits i was allowed."
Neo hugged the photo album to her chest as she stood up. It was entirely unnecessary, but she led her guest through the hallways of her home back to the front door(frame, because that's all that remained), which she exited as if the house were still intact.
"Can't say I knew her well. Seemed like a nice lady. I borrowed a few books from her over the years, mostly novels, but also an atlas and she had this coffee table set of books: The Illustrated Guide to the Regions. My favorites when I was seven." Neo didn't know if Ms. Brand had just been given the set by a distant relative or if she genuinely had any interest in travel. Either way, the pictures were catnip to younger Neo, who dreamt of seeing the world.
"I always had the impression that she'd flay me alive if I damaged one of her books. Then again, I was seven. I had that impression of most adults." Awkwardly, because she'd realized she'd just implied that the man's mother was a violent flayer of skin, she added, "She was always kind to me. It's a shame you didn't know her... did you tell me your name? I must've forgotten, sorry. I'm Neo, by the way."
Indeed, the rusted remains of a mailbox they'd passed had still been very clearly labeled THE NEO FAMILY.
"she wasn't from kohaku originally," zahir said. "i don't know why she stayed here, after she left my father." he laughed softly. "i don't remember her ever being angry, really, but she had a very intimidating way of being disappointed in you. she'd sound so sad you wanted to crawl under a bed and never come out again."
he eyed the mailbox as they walked by. "nice to meet you, neo. my name is zahir." THE NEO FAMILY, rusted over. "i'm sorry i just pulled you out of your house like this."
"It was a quiet place, peaceful--quaint, if you liked that sort of thing. A good place for children." She'd never felt anything but safe in Decima's streets, which had made the scourge attack something out of a movie, not real life. No one attacked Decima. There was nothing in Decima, just some good folk minding their own business.
"No, it's probably for the best. I might've lost track of time and died." #decimatownproblems "Besides, Ms. Brand helped me out a few times."
She considered asking if Zahir knew if his mother was still alive or not. Neo figured he'd probably already checked amongst the survivors living in the underground. If she'd made it out the other end of Pax, she'd have sent word from Nerio, certainly. Otherwise...
"There are a lot of refugees in Hespera City. I hear they're trying to put relatives in touch with each other." That must've sounded like it came out of nowhere, but Neo didn't want to just say hey maybe your mom's not dead.
zahir looked down (way down) at neo and seemed to consider answering her question. he didn't want to upset her, but zahir wasn't that fond of lying either.
"i don't think she's in hespera," zahir said. "did you stay in decima after high school?"
Neo looked up (way up) at Zahir, just to check if she should back off on the subject. He didn't look upset, but otherwise, she couldn't read him.
"I moved out. Started working at the museum in Hespera as an archivist. I came back pretty often, but I didn't really talk to the neighbors as much anymore. Just visited family, friends. I was vacationing here when--" she gestured towards the streets, "--stuff happened."
Neo frowned to herself in thought. "Maybe she moved out of town over the last two years. I wouldn't know."
"but you're not in hespera now," he said. perhaps zahir shouldn't know that. he continued. "or were you just visiting where you used to live? it must be crowded in the city now."
he could see his mother's house rising up from the street. there was a careful row of flowers around the front that must have been carefully maintained while she was still alive, but had overgrown in her absence. zahir thought of her, watering and clipping the flowers before returning to her empty house to make herself dinner, perhaps turning on the tv for background noise as she cooked, and washing dishes alone, going to bed. sending a text message to her son in nerio, perhaps, who wouldn't notice it until the next morning, firing off a distant "hey mom, what's up."
he stuck his hands in his pockets. he was afraid of what he might do with them otherwise. break something, probably.
"If I had family left to house, I'd have found them, fled with them, gave them a place to stay in Hespera. No, I went to Juno. Started a new career, new life. Felt like a good time for a change." It had felt like change was inevitable; like some older part of her had died, or at least gone deep into hiding, and Neo had to pick up the pieces to make something anew, almost unrecognizable out of the pieces of it.
Neo was a few steps ahead of Zahir before she realized his posture had changed. "You sure you good to go?" she checked.
"yes," zahir said, smiling. "i know exactly what i'm getting into. seeing it is just different than knowing."
he strode past her, fumbling the keys out of his jacket and unlocking the front door. there was a fist sized hole in the front window, but aside from that, the house seemed relatively intact from outside.
"you're with EOS, then? not many other options for starting over these days." she had the same steady way of speaking she'd had in their battle, an unruffled cadence.
"Researcher, yes," she answered. "But there were other options. Hespera needs volunteers to help with the refugees. Cura is safe, although work might be harder to find--but Sol City always has jobs for girls. Or I could always have just spent all my time drinking and gambling in Nerio."Like a certain gym leader.
Neo was, quite honestly, pretty good at calculating her odds of success at the poker table--when sober, anyway.
She followed him, but she didn't enter, instead hovering outside the front door, where a welcoming mat was surprisingly still present and mostly unscathed, save for being a noxious purple. Perhaps belatedly, she took the gas mask out of her bag, using it in place of the surgeon's mask and scarf.
He asked a lot of questions, she realized.
From the doorway, she asked, politely inquisitive, "What about you? Work kept you too busy to visit Decima? Shame. Last year's festival of the hunt was pretty spectacular."
