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!
stefan wasn't sure if he would ever see casino aurora's level of decadence ever again. not since he was cut off from the family of tycoons. the rented suit had a rather musty smell about it, but he doubted anyone would notice. the cologne clouds around him can cover for one more person. he didn't have much money on him either, not after the trip back from cura. the aquamarine bisharp at his side serves as his passport. funny how things worked out like that.
this wasn't the sort of venture that stefan would usually have been interested in before. the gains were uncertain, and the risks during travel had been great. but the world wasn't as simple as it used to be. maybe it never had been, but stefan was willing to bleed for this simplicity anyway.
he locates the man without too much trouble. there were no particularly distinguishable traits, but stefan has never forgotten a face before. he watches for a few moments before approaching the table, but not close enough to the front to be offered a stack of chips.
ever since the hubbub about the scourge had died down, J had found a good way to spend his time and repay his monetary debt to eos. money came easily in the form of poker, and with a good amount of cash on his side - not to mention luck - he had quickly found profits and himself clean of debt. now that he owed no one, he was essentially a free man; a part of him wished to return to sinnoh, but caught up in a lifestyle of bitter powder, hot cocoa and poker, J realized that nothing else was better than keeping at this.
he swept his winnings to his side of the table, and didn't bother counting his winnings. the other people sitting at his table said nothing as wall, their faces as devoid of emotion as they could help it -- cards were dealt again, and J picked his hand up.
win some, lose some, he thought to himself, deciding to exchange two of his cards.
stefan somehow understood the rules, even though his rper didn't. years of playing the babysitter to a restless heir will do that to a person. he watches the flow of chips and cards silently. if he can spare several days to travel from cura to nerio, then he can certainly spare several hours waiting on this man.
as the game progresses, stefan is almost certain that cheating is afoot. call it instinct, pattern recognition, whatever. proof meant little in the realm of the rich and powerful. he can almost feel the bisharp's indignation when he catches on, but stefan does nothing. he is not so inclined to act rashly on the basis of principles. vertigo
rounds came and went, and at the end of the day, J triumphed. he stood up from the table, pulling away all the cash chips he had earned before tapping stefan on the shoulder as he passed. a point towards the elevators indicated that he wished to go for a smoke. he cashed in his chips, stored the money away safely before entering a lift.
stefan follows him silently, and he puts the bisharp back into his pokeball when they arrive at the lift. the pokemon's presence was mostly to deflect inquiries from the bouncers. considering the progress of the war, could anyone blame an eos trainer's need for places like aurora?
it's not a lot of space inside of the lift, but somehow the silence does not feel suffocating. stefan never found it to be the case, actually. other people were usually the ones who made it so. it's nice that j is not one of those people.
the elevator reaches its destination before long, and stefan is pleased to see that this floor is much less crowded than the last.
now what did an empire builder want to do with an eos deserter?
the rooftops, while usually abuzz with some sort of party, was completely silent and devoid of lights, save the ones coming from the city itself. it felt like some sort of reversed world; where the stars laid on the earth and the empty lands were skies. J cared little about the landscape, however, as fire from his lighter illuminated his face, which gave way to a dim glow when he took a drag from his cigarette.
J could care less for company. those he chose to make acquaintances with were often nudges of fate, and those that went a little farther than that were the choices he made. he watched the city down below from the rooftops and wondered how easy it had been for the people running the casino to just off someone up here, away from the sights of people.
he hadn't only been gambling in the casino. he had been watching, and whenever someone was coerced into the elevator, his pulse ran a little quicker and his hands gripped the cards a little tighter.
J exhaled, continuing in a timbre that may as well have been mentioning the weather.
the stars do not fill stefan with the same sense of wonder that they provide for so many others. he's heard of hoenn's space projects at the parties that he had served at, but the earth is the only human domain that stefan recognizes.
and if eos fails, that may not even remain true. the idea should probably bother him more than it actually does. that's what he liked about cura. the people kept their eyes on what was in front of them instead of blindly swallowing the reports that were meant to drum up support.
the wind isn't so loud tonight that it drowns out j's voice. a formality. stefan is good with formalities. "pretty quiet for the end of human civilization, actually"
re: every newspaper headline that he picked up since arriving in nerio city. vertigo
quiet? he liked quiet. got used to quiet, in fact, until he discovered that talking wasn't the only way to fill up the void. music worked, too, but that was something he hadn't been doing in a long while.
silence it was.
he said nothing else, and held out a packet of familiar substance to stefan.
then he starts to look inward and asks himself 'stefan wtf r u frickfrackin doing remember the last time you jumped at social mobility and ended up as an indentured servant for ten years to rich dudes that you didn't even like'
one would almost think that the dubious look on stefan's face was going to freeze into place like that.
it's actually the most believable answer that j could have given. stefan has seen firsthand what people with too much time and money will do to satisfy their whims.
"you make it sound very simple"
which is stefan-speak for 'well i traveled through a desert and several cities to listen to your story so i guess you can finish with whatever you're trying to get at'.
J didn't say anything. all that stood between him and ownership was boss santiago, who technically had no pokémon because the image links were all broken so this is as good a time as any to overthrow him, mano-a-mano or something along those lines.
"it's fine if you're not game." he took another drag of smoke and watched it plume after his exhale. "i can do it alone."
"it takes more than a few months of poker games to attain what you want"
honestly, if it was poker luck, then erik probably would have owned half of proserpina by the time he actually became old enough to gamble. instead, he's probably scourge food somewhere.
at least neither j nor stefan are scourge food.
stefan doesn't see the broken image links. he sees the shadows that he has been dancing around all his life. this is the path with different enemies. enemies with teeth and fang were easy. the ones with influence and presence were a different beast.
suddenly, he realizes the elephant in the room.
"we've only fought in a handful of scourge battles and spent a few days in mors desert, and you trust me."
he isn't even sure whether or not he should phrase it like a question. j hasn't even seen stefan's ability in anything except killing wild scourge. fighting the scourge meant allying with anyone who didn't want to be torn apart. claiming a piece of a city meant doubting even kin, if the alejandros were any indication.
stefan sincerely hopes that j did not base all his business interactions on bitter powder aficionados.
...at least he seems to be doing much better for himself than one would expect from a man who spent months wrangling the scourge.
"you needed a man who can do more than make a good poker face, then?"
j claims to require no help, but that's not why he called a man from cura. that's not how business calls worked. vertigo