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 !
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to be completely honest, iskander was not that foolish to have spent all his time in juno. he theoretically was in juno, but his mind was somewhere else -- in a library, actually. the books in his house had long since been read more than thrice, some even four times because he enjoyed it. the young man traced a finger along the bookshelves, dodging fallen papers and letters as they filtered into the library.
the fluttering noises they made disrupted the silence of the library. funny how it wasn't the living who made sounds, but the non-living.
iskander snapped his book shut, placing a finger to his lips as he watched parchment scatter and glide.
physis is not overtly fond of the library of lost things. sophia had been the ghost-whisperer who saw the future in oracle bones, but physis had no such inclinations. let the dead rest where they may, and may the living thrive without being shackled to history. how a woman could wish for kohaku's revolution while dragging her heels from the past, physis does not know.
she had come to meet with methuselah, the pax mentor who had survived. she is not ancient history, so physis is only baffled that she is so engaged in it. instead, she finds iskander, who makes for a rather poor substitution. he was not there to experience the catharsis at the institute. what could textbooks and charts provide that experience could not?
"...eltanin" she gives a curt nod. "...i did not expect to find you here" vertigo
"you were expecting methuselah," iskander's reply was a soft and quiet one. the small smile he had put on upon seeing sophia - physis, whatever the hell she wanted to call herself like he called himself delta - faded. "she's not here. she just left," said iskander, glancing at the empty space that used to be parchment and the professor herself. his smile returned.
on second thought, he wasn't sure if physis was putting two and two together. when he had spoken of going to the library, he didn't exactly mean the pitiful collection of books in his house. those had long since been exhausted -- here in the library of lost things, there were always new things to read, because people were forgetful. and he would remember on behalf of them. he'd keep those facts stored away in his mental recesses and use them when needed.
he replaced the book he had back on the shelves. even though everything was constantly in a disorganized state in the library, he had taken it upon himself to instate some sort of order where he had been, so he'd know when something was amiss.
like the parchments from before. he gathered them in a stack before flipping through them idly. a few recipes, some letters to a parent -- those weren't gems of information, but they helped when he needed to whip something up for a guest.
"you have nothing to speak to me about," said the young man as he glanced up from his papers, "have you?"
he wasn't batin. hell, he didn't use to be zahir either. iskander was never of importance to sophia -- physis -- and he didn't see things changing soon.
except her name. oh yeah, he'd need to get used to saying it.
she isn't too surprised when he makes the correct guess. not many people were interested in a graveyard of knowledge. most people believed in making their graves in the living world when they could. sophia had tried it once, and failed miserably. that's where physis came in.
"thank you" she supposes that she could always try on another night. methuselah has been rather difficult to track down as of late. when the matter isn't urgent, physis prefers not to chase her at all.
she knows little about iskander. she knows little about any of the agents, really. even back when the group was much smaller, rarely did she encounter cameron. she only met with aaron when he would take up residence at nerio city. she had never known much about zahir's activities as an agent. a part of her had hoped that he would remain a civilian if she displayed little interest in the takeover. he had proved her wrong before she could do anything about it. the agents were never the priority before now.
that was no way to win a war.
"...i do not think that we have had ample opportunity to speak at length. would you like to?" vertigo
would he like to talk about himself and what he had been doing all along? maybe, but they really weren't supposed to talk in a library, of all places. it was almost as if what he had forgotten was the golden rule of being silent in this very place -- iskander glanced up and around himself, half-expecting to see a piece of parchment detailing his thought process pop up somewhere.
he was once again disappointed. he did not forget things; his name and ideas would never appear in this sacrosanct archive.
and much like them, sophia had never once featured in his life -- so why now, physis? iskander's eyes settled on the female agent, and a smile quirked his lips. he pulled himself a chair from an overturned table and sat upon it, still watching her. "we could, we could," he said, more agreeably than he expected of himself. "i don't know what you wish to learn -- i've only heard of you and frankly, i've never expected to meet you in person. i'm not sure if that's going to be an improvement from hearing passing mentions of you from aaron or batin or hyde, though."
he leaned forward.
"what should we talk about, physis?" oh, the name worked just fine on his tongue.
if there was something iskander knew, it was that he didn't quite agree with her tone or her choice of words -- it made him feel belittled, useless and incapable as an agent or even a human being. would he like to talk to her? oh hell yes, it was certainly an honour to be talking to lady physis the great warrior agent of terra firma -- never mind the fact that the person she was looking for was methuselah, he ought to be extremely grateful that she had even noticed him!
hyde is not someone whom she meets regularly. in fact, hyde is not anyone that she has directly met at all in the past few months or so. "...so you have been spying on me or my companions." her voice does not hold disapproval. not that people who really cared that much about disapproval could become hades agents, probably. she can't say that she would never have done the same thing, had she been privy to a scourge metang.
her presence is only a dream, but she still feels the instinctive need to get rid of a crick in her neck. suddenly, physis remembers the other reason that they had not talked at length. small talk had never been her specialty. iskander conducts himself like a showman, and she cannot help but envy him a little for it.
there were plenty of questions that she could have asked him, about the land maybe. or what he's been reading in the library of lost things. except those aren't the things that will make physis return for iskander, and not methuselah.
"what do you think the future looks like?" whatever it is, it certainly won't resemble what they have now. not if the agents have their way. vertigo
"i have not -- aaron has, though. he's the one gathering all the data and information. he's like a secretary of sorts for us agents. and before you ask -- conversation isn't so easy to come by, so odds and ends can make for interesting topics to discuss about." iskander regarded physis for a moment. she didn't interest him like the others did; she seemed so absorbed in the world she crafted for herself and it was like she had no use for the others, and so, iskander couldn't care less about who she was and what she did. (it irked him slightly that her name change had went unannounced, but he had found out sooner than later, and therefore everything was a-okay.)
his voice was pleasant and held none of his emotions other than the one he wanted her to hear: a hint of interest and dash of friendliness. these things came easily for iskander, unlike most of their kin. "the future?" he repeated after her, and wasn't surprise when laughter flowed from his throat. "i can't tell you a story about the future! i'm not a seer and neither am i someone else you may be thinking about -- i haven't been out there either, so beats me what happened in the meantime other than those major things.
"i think we might have been fighting kind of stupid all along, but i can't be judging because i wasn't there." a shrug, nonchalant, uncaring. as long as the pokémon continued to scream and whisper anguished voices in his ear, he could live amongst the nightmares as he always had. they made him a promise, and he told him that he was going to sit back and see if they managed to do what they had swore they could and would -- he was willing to provide himself as a vessel, and they had managed to strike balance in negotiations. he wasn't obligated to do anything else; what he had done with aaron and batin, though, were simply out of self-interest.
the future? he could care less about his thoughts for the future -- what lied ahead was a promise, and it could either be broken or fulfilled, and iskander was fine with either outcome.
"...i suppose they would be" physis has been using aaron for similar purposes, so she does not object to iskander's arrangements. it might have been much harder to get into contact with her at all, otherwise. she had her haunts, but she did not stick to any particular schedule. where she is needed, she will go.
lately, those places have been increasing. physis does not complain, however. this was how things were always going to be. it just took them a little while to get here. three steps forward, two steps back.
"i wasn't -- i'm not looking for stories" the persona of physis was born so that stories may die. nevertheless, she wonders who iskander believes that she is thinking about. "i am only chasing revelation. stories are fragile -- easily manipulated." the fragile crumble to dust. the strong did too, but at a less significant rate. "what kind of stupidity did you think that we are fighting?"
this, physis was significantly more interested in hearing.
"more like, we've been fighting like idiots all along. the best of us fight, the rest of us hang back. the new ones are gung-ho. we have never had a proper meeting; the one time we did, the chapel got demolished a couple weeks later.
"we need a better plan. something better than overrunning cities, because not all of them are intelligent and are willing to cooperate. some just want food, and while those work perfectly well, you need timing. basically, we should gather a few of us - the first few of us, i mean - and meet somewhere.
"make it cheesy and cliché. a rundown holiday villa somewhere in pax. at night. we gather around a campfire and assess our abilities, or lack thereof."
"...we could" it's not as if physis has never considered the possibility. she's turned it over many times in her head like a mossy rock, except it wasn't her priority. she prioritized finding the strength to fight the world again. she has been skirmishing for the past few weeks. is she ready to fight again? "the risks of a meeting would be minimal in the dream world, and aaron would be the best person to send word in the waking world."
iskander was smiling. had she not known of these potlucks?
that was probably why he had never seen her, come to think of it. he thought she was just preoccupied with other businesses. never knew she was interested in socializing. people could be very odd things at times. iskander reclined.
to be fair, her anti-social air was probably what kept aaron from bringing up the potlucks, maybe. which is really funny when one considers that she is actually social with aaron. or as much as she'll ever be. nobody should really put it past a zulf character to miss that, though. did everyone simply assume that physis knew about the physical realm of castle forlorn?
"...i do not think that i was ever informed."
is this an invitation? physis thinks that this is an invitation.
"i...am no longer privy to the same resources that i once had access to." she did dump it all into zahir's medical bills, didn't she? what an impractical thing to do. "...wild game doesn't tend to last around fantine." scourgification did have its drawbacks.
"did you think i just extended an invitation to you? because you know -- this entire thing is on hold until we figure out just how much resources we have right now."
