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!
He understands them less and less with each visit. The training world is meant to generate bonds, pressure the ones that dream to form bonds that will last them a lifetime, go beyond dreaming into reality, where things really matter. With every bond they strengthen between themselves they take from the thin strands that connect them to him, only by the pokeballs that sit in the bottom of his pockets.
He has wondered about their priorities since the day he brought them to this place, the memory distant yet closer than he thinks, he has to remind himself. What they've learned, they learn from themselves and not him, but they still look up to him like they're young, innocent, untrained in the ways of the outside world, and in a sense, he supposes that's true.
The scourge don't exist in this place. If they did, his mind wouldn't have hesitated to bring them here, pit them against them because that's the final step at this point, the final initiation ritual that they need to go through. And as he nods his head, the cue for them to go do their thing, doubts, dark and foreboding, rise up within his throat like bile that refuses to go away.
They think they know strength, that they're strong and powerful and better than they were before. But he knows better, sees himself in them, something he's never been able to do before, and its the reason that he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. They will learn eventually, he knows that that time will come and it makes his stomach twist in knots, over and over and over again.
The times he visits the training center with the three of them grows countless. It's when he wakes up in the same empty, white space with three pairs of eyes trained on him that he realizes he's long since stopped caring about numbers and started gauging progress by bonds, how well they work as a team. By his measurements, this time will be the last - they're strong, grown from useless to useful, and as much as he worries how they'll handle in front of the scourge the time to face reality will come, and he doesn't want to be caught unawares instead.
He narrows his eyes at them, scraping his gaze from one to the other and simply lingering for a few seconds at a time. They stare back, eyes gleaming, refusing to look away like he wants them to. The realization that they know what he wants to say before he even says it hits him hard, harder than he expects and he scowls, eyebrows creasing into layers upon layers of unspoken emotions. After a moment, they turn without him and spar with more effort than they usually do - this isn't goodbye, it's a promise to meet in the real world without dying, and their actions speak volumes of their understanding. The fact that he can see it also speaks volumes about how far he's come through this excursion. It makes his blood freeze, his stomach twist into knots that he hates himself for feeling.
He understands them less and less with each visit. But perhaps it's himself that he understands the least of all.
Initiation, three weeks of getting to know each other far more than is truly necessary, graduation. Initiation. It's a long, relentless endless cycle that is different each time it begins anew. To train is to get strong, reach towards that pursuit of strength that looms in the distance. To form attachments is nothing but a dangerous obstacle that he can only hope he manages to sidestep.
Three leave, so three must take their place. He sweeps his gaze over them, the air taut with lofty expectations and uncertain futures. Some of them will fall short of what is expected of them; in a way, this is also expected, something that he refuses to accept until fate presents him proof. The strong survive, and the weak are left to fend for themselves. Attachments don't add into that equation - they are the unknown, uncertain and looming danger that doesn't just go away with time.
Heracross is the strongest of the three. "You two." The dratini's tail twitches in acknowledgement, and the aron inclines its head. "Attack. At the same time. And you." Heracross stops sharpening its claws and stares at him, eyes blazing with anticipation. "Give them a good fight. Don't hold back." And then he nods, steps back and they are at each other's throat in a matter of seconds.
It is a test of strength - a good test that brings satisfactory results. They fight until the white of the dream bleeds out and more, giving and taking in what's only absolutely necessary.
He expects last time's victory to inflate it's confidence to unnatural proportions - it's a problem that he had(still has, though he refuses to admit it) in the past, and he finds himself with the unconscious suspicion that his pokemon will go down that same path. Heracross stares at him with its black, beady eyes, dark pits that burn with flames of eager anticipation. He doesn't forget how it fought last time, bases it on what to expect for today.
A rift begins to form between them - he can see it from the looks that aron casts in heracross's direction, dratini's tail lashing relentlessly on the pure white ground. They are strong, all in their different ways, and perhaps the difference in those ways is what has caused this outlier of three in their results. He snaps, loud, and they come to attention, all three of them. It's an unexpected reaction, a good reaction, but learning to realize ticks helps him spot the way aron's eyes flicker over to heracross, the slight narrow of dratini's eyes. A bond of attachment poses a two-sided coin flip of danger and strength, but a bond of hatred will blacken and soil with time, and if he isn't careful, ultimately destroy.
This flower has yet to bloom, but the roots are there, growing deeper as time goes by. "Do the same thing as last time." He snaps at them, harsher than he normally does, eyes narrowed and hardened into chips of ice. "Find a way to beat it. Work together." And he doesn't usually give this much advice, not with how little he's been talking, nowadays, but every case is unique, special, and he needs to understand that there are certain exceptions.
Heracross stares at him, claws digging into the pale, translucent dreaming plane. Jayden stares back, but doesn't say a word. He expects it to understand, understanding without words is crucial because language is a luxury that they will continue to take for granted until it's gone.
It understands, and perhaps the other two understand as well. He watches them fight, claw and grasp at each other's throats in a way that is both brutal and restrained, yielding and unforgiving at the same time.