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!
The Dancing Ducklett was a fine establishment, the usual sort of its kind. It was a dockside pub and casino, the sort that served food and had a few pachinko slots and tables for card games. There was a widescreen tv on the wall, broadcasting pokemon tournaments in far off regions. The place smelled like salt and sea. It was meant for locals. Nothing shiny about it, although the beef stew made by the owner's wife sure smelled like heaven.
It wasn't his usual sort of haunt, not anymore. Griff had somehow managed to get used wining and dining at the rooftop bars in Nerio City, overlooking the tiny people in the streets below. They played at being gods in Nerio. Here, he was but a man--or more likely, only a boy.
He shared a table with a few sailors, a fisherman, and a deck of cards. They were all a fair bit older than him, and Griff made sure to laugh at their jokes. It wasn't hard. They were funny enough, especially after his second beer.
Griff had cards up his sleeve--he always did, usually metaphorically, but this literally as well. He didn't touch them though. Winning didn't matter much here, and they were playing for pennies anyway. He didn't mind donating some loose change to mingle with the people here.
Instead, he counted cards. He learned the tells of the other players. The fisherman laughed whenever he raised, but it was drier--a harsher sound--when he bluffed. The youngest sailor licked her lips if her cards were poor. They were all human, and it was nice to be among people after half a year behind bars.
He adjusted the scarf at his neck. It was his tell, Griff had decided before they'd dealt him in. He did that whenever he thought he was going to win--or he had every time so far. Currently, he held a pair of twos. "Raise, I think," he decided after a moment's thought. "Three hundred."
ZULF ? we're doing this old-school brother dancing ducklett time
Mikael has little to no idea how he ended up at the Dancing Ducklett. He's never been able to wrap his head around cards, save for a quick game of Go Fish. Playing cards had been one of Maria's favorite items to pluck off unwary passerbys. She beat him each time and tried to teach him blackjack, but he never did pick it up, never understood why it was so important for him to learn how to play poker.
It wasn't as if they'd ever have enough money to gamble away anyways (he kept telling her to stop running around with his little gang, but Mikael had liked Griff just fine). Now there was a kid who inspired hope, told everyone that there would be a day when their stomachs wouldn't feel as if they were devouring themselves.
Quite frankly, he didn't know what he was doing out in the Dancing Ducklett. A part of him felt that it was a force of habit. Pubs meant drunk people who weren't quite all there, and a casino meant rich people. Drunk rich people were the best sort of targets because he could probably outrun them as they stumbled over their feet. In fact, he needs to tell himself to keep his sticky fingers to himself because he doesn't need them to go diving into pockets anymore.
Eos is his ticket out of there.
Mikael has half the mind to leave as quickly as possible. He hates rich people, but he hates rich drunk people even more for reasons that he never even shared with Maria. It was best that she didn't know, anyways. The reason why he had taken that job as a hired hand in Nerio City had been so that she didn't have to know.
Best that it was him than her, he thinks. He wouldn't have ever wished for her to be in his position in the first place.
There's something here to distract him though, a head of clean, pink hair (clean?). He doesn't say anything though, because who knows what alias Griff is using this time around. Instead, he raises a hand to readjust the goggles on his head to catch Griff's attention. Nobody wore goggles on their head except for him, anyways.
hook ¿ three years later I still think that name is clever.
Griff spotted the glint of light, a reflection off of a pair of goggles. It was familiar. He'd learned how to pick it out of a crowd.
"I fold," he said, abruptly. It was a bad time to abandon the table, but he had his priorities. He grinned a little apologetically, hands in the air--no other choice. "Been a good time playing with you lot. Next time I want to lose my allowance, I'll know exactly who to find.
He laughed, but before he left the table, coat in hand, he was serious when he added, "Stay safe. Stay out of the dark."
There was an amicable chorus of the same well wishes. Stay safe. Stay out of the dark. Watch out for the scourge.
Griff left the table, looked again to find Mikael. His old friend hadn't found a seat yet, and Griff cut across the pub floor over to him.
What to say to someone you hadn't seen since... well, at least he had a good excuse. He didn't disappear from the world by his own choice, after all.
"Long time no see," he said, casual-like, as if he were greeting a friend he'd intended to meet for a meal. "I hear the stew here is to die for. Grab a table, get something to eat? Lots to talk about, and who knows, it might be our last meal."
Griff's smile was all teeth, but in times like these, it was hard to tell if that was a joke.
The first thing that occurs to Mikael is that it's a strange feeling to have enough in his pocket to eat a meal. The second thing that he realizes is that he's going to be able to eat a freshly-cooked meal, one that's warm and will probably leave him full for a good seven hours. The last thing that hits him is that it's even stranger to be eating a meal that he'd actually paid for himself.
Bumping into Griff here is probably the most bizarre part (then again, Mikael's not really sure if he should be surprised to find Griff at a place like the Dancing Ducklett). It's a place where people come with their pockets lined in gold, theirs or not, and then watch it disappear into thin air in all sorts of ways.
It's probably a good thing that Griff actually speaks and that he usually knows exactly what to say. "It's good to see you again," Mikael says. It's a genuine statement, primarily because Mikael was never a very good liar. If anything, he was sincere and meant everything that he said, probably the greatest reason why he didn't say much.
Mikael picks a round table off to the side, fittingly secluded, perfect for exchanging news that they may want to avoid eavesdroppers from picking up on. He pulls out a chair, noting that the pub is brimming with enough activity that most of their words would be swallowed up by the din anyways.
He sits down and cuts to the chase; Mikael rarely wastes time. "Where have you been?"
(when was the last time they saw each other anyways?)
"Detained," Griff replied. That was brusque, he realized. He owed Mikael a bit more of an answer than that.
He ran a hand through his hair, and he grinned, something caught between awkward and sheepish. That was another practiced gesture, one he saved for when he needed to buy time.
"Cloud didn't tell you?" Alternatively, Mikael had never asked his brother, or both of them never saw each other. Those were options too. The world got a little crazy after Griff disapeared from the world. "I had a nice talk with the men in blue. They gave me free room and board in a place of utmost security, in exchange for, you know, staying behind bars for the rest of my life."
Technically, it was a sentence of thirty years. What's a man to do with his freedom at 50 when he's been locked for the last three decades though? For Griff, that was lifetime enough.
The waitress came by, and Griff asked for a bowl of that famous stew but refrained from a third beer. He was still downright sober--or a little tipsy maybe--but last he checked, Mikael didn't drink. Honestly, last he checked, Mikael didn't even come to places like this.
"Didn't expect to find you here," said Griff, casual-like in front of the waitress. He left it unspoken that neither of them really belonged here. A year ago, Griff would only have been found in the sky rise casinos in Nerio City, and Mikael wouldn't be found at all. "What brings you to Proserpina?"
Mikael is not surprised by the fact that Griff was detained; if he were the one to press even further, he'd be curious to know how Griff had been caught. "... oh," he says, which is an accurate portrayal of how he actually feels about Griff's statement. People got jailed. It happened (almost happened to him).
"I haven't seen him," he replies, but then again, he hasn't really seen anyone after Griff disappeared and Maria died. No one really saw him either after that, save for someone who wouldn't leave him alone if he asked her to. "Actually, I haven't... really seen anyone recently." He all but vanished without a word after Maria died, abandoning the rickety warehouse that the two of them had made their home. It was never good for his "business" when he stuck around one area for too long anyways.
Mikael lets the waitress know that he'll have what Griff is having. No beer, considering he'd never particularly acquired a taste for it. Never got a chance to have it frequently enough and didn't enjoy having his senses dulled would make him a dead man.
"Didn't expect myself to be here either," Mikael responds with a cryptic answer. "Force of habit, I guess." Casinos meant money, and while Mikael was never any good at cards, most people were far too engaged in a game to even realize that they were missing a buck or two (or five, or ten).
The waitress returns with a tray and rests a bowl of piping hot stew on the table for each of them. She gives both of them a polite nod to go with it before taking her leave.
Mikael lifts his spoon, hesitates, then places it back on the table. It's strange to have hot food again. "I joined Eos' Ranger program," he replies, not that Mikael would have been able to tell. His Ralts partner and the Magnemite that's been following him all over Proserpina went exploring on their own. He isn't particularly worried about them.
"... I'm done sitting around."
Done sitting around and being sad about his losses, really.
"Yeah, well," he said, on the topic of his brother, "I haven't seen him either. Been free all of two days though, and I haven't gotten a C-Gear yet, so... that's my fault."
Griff knew a thing or two about Mikael, and and one of those things was that the other boy was about as social as as a rock--and often about as entertaining at parties. It wasn't as bad before Maria died, but a lot of things weren't as bad back then. Too many, honestly.
He sighed, but it was only part exasperation, the other part was fondness. "You gotta spend some time with people, Mika. Leave your mark on the world. There's nothing to lose when you've got nothing anyway." That was an old argument, one they'd had late at night when stealing a fortune had seemed like a pipe dream. If the world doesn't want people like you, is it better to spite it or to fade away? Or is there no hope at all for the unwanted to find happiness--to find meaning?
Griff raised a hand, lazily drawing a fairy sign in the air. It glittered and glowed, a reassuring light, before fizzling out. "Hey, look, me too! Cool place, that Ranger Union, nice lady in charge. Redhead, I like," he said, completely unnecessarily. "Wait, wait, I get to ask first. Why did you join?"
His tone was flippant, but there was a lot behind that question. Things had changed, but he hadn't thought he'd ever see the day where Mikael would, arceus forbid, submit an application to an organized program, with his name on it and everything. What happened to no paper trail? What happened to existing out of sight, and out of mind?
Griff grinned, and it hid his doubts. He wasn't sure he knew the person across the table anymore. He looked down, dropping eye contact at last. Softly, he asked, "Have you been alright?"
Griff is right. When it gets down to it, neither of them have anything to lose. His father lost everything after getting caught in crossfire of a pair of rival gangs, his mother lost her dignity when she stooped to illegal means to support the three of them, and Mikael lost everything after Maria had died. Everyone told him it was dangerous to pin his all on a person, but he never listened to what they had to say (he didn't think that he had a choice).
"There was another Scourge raid on Nerio while you were gone," he says and stares straight at Griff, even if the pink-haired Ranger won't look at him. "This is how I'm going to leave my mark." What he doesn't say is that this is how he's going to form his new identity. He's an Eos member now, not "Maria's brother". That was a title that died a long time ago, and quite frankly, it feels kind of nice to have some sort of purpose again.
And now it's his turn to break eye contact, choosing to stare quietly at his stew instead of answering Griff's question. He'd like to say yes. At least he isn't back in Nerio not doing anything. That would be worse, he thinks to himself. Maria wouldn't have tolerated him sitting around without doing anything useful.
"... Adel moved on. You moved on." He doesn't say that he's moved on, because, quite frankly, he doesn't really know. "... I need to move on." He doessn't want to get left behind, and everyone had been leaving Nerio City anyways. It wasn't as if he was going to get anything else done if he'd stayed behind.
Part of him thinks that Maria would be immensely unhappy if she knew her older brother was still sitting around feeling lost. Mikael isn't sure if actually being useful while still feeling lost is any better.
"I'm not going to lie and say yes."
"... you seem all right though."
It's weird seeing Griff so solemn. Mikael's almost sorry he even turned up.
"They mentioned something about the scourge," Griff said. He didn't specify who they were.
He'd been deep underground, hidden away with no way out--and no way for the scourge to enter. Him, about a hundred other criminals, and those few that guarded them. When the scourge descended, it became a bunker, one that spent two months closed to the world. They would've run out of food within a month, but an attempted prison break left too many corpses and far fewer mouths to feed. (They were fools. Shortsighted. There would be no way out of the city, even if you'd found a way out of the jail.)
There was a heaviness to the silence when stalled his answer. It felt like a leaden weight, a burden on his shoulders, and it didn't lift even after Mikael had finally replied. Griff pulled himself out of a lazy slouch, leaned forward over the table. He reached a hand halfway across the table before he changed his mind.
"Then leave the past where it is," Griff advised. He'd meant to speak gently, but it was laced with anger, an old frustration that overstayed its welcome. They'd had this argument before too. "Leave it behind."
He leaned back again, nonchalant as ever. He shrugged. "Yeah, well. I made a deal with the devil--or a deal with god on high. Can't really say which one of the two yet," Griff said, and those were more akin to pretty words than an explanation. "They figured they'd let me out if I'd fight the scourge."
He smiled. It was a natural one, the rarest of treasures when it came to dealing with Griff. It looked like grim satisfaction and vengeance served ice cold. "Their mistake."
The Dancing Ducklett was a fine establishment, the usual sort of its kind. It was a dockside pub and casino, the sort that served food and had a few pachinko slots and tables for card games. There was a widescreen tv on the wall, broadcasting pokemon tournaments in far off regions. The place smelled like salt and sea. It was meant for locals. Nothing shiny about it, although the beef stew made by the owner's wife sure smelled like heaven.
Mikael has little to no idea how he ended up at the Dancing Ducklett. He's never been able to wrap his head around cards, save for a quick game of Go Fish. Playing cards had been one of Maria's favorite items to pluck off unwary passerbys. She beat him each time and tried to teach him blackjack, but he never did pick it up, never understood why it was so important for him to learn how to play poker.
