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!
It had taken less than three days for bagon to rocket from a bagon to a salamence. That was peak trainer privilege, and Thalia had no intention of checking it.
And since she had somehow started collecting pseudo-legendaries, salamence was now tormenting a larvitar in the hopes of raising it to be a big strong scary tyranitar one day. Whether the method was useful or not was debatable--there were certainly no high quality clinical studies out there on the matter, but on the other hand it had worked in the past for almost all of her pokemon. Except for the ones where she had woken up one day and they were all magically level 90. That had been weird.
I remember when I was a kid I saw this happen in an episode of the anime.
Even though Thalia wasn't a researcher, her pokemon were training in adverse type conditions. The salamence flew in a room that simulated a blizzard, buffeted about by icy gusts. The larvitar and the eevee dodged fighting blows from a series of crash dummies, trying to navigate their way around an obstacle course. They wouldn't get a researcher's type resisting regiments of course, but it was...building character? Making them stronger? Teaching them pain resistance?
Yes, something like all of that, Thalia assured herself.
It had occurred to Thalia that maybe it would suit her larvitar and eevee better to try sharpening their minds as well as their bodies. Not that they were dumb really, but she wouldn't have called them smart either.
"The mind is sharper than any blade," she told them.
They stared back dully, which kind of proved her point.
Thalia conjured up a set of battle scenarios in the form of standardized middle school tests--thanks Dream World--and placed a packet in front of both of them.
"You'll be focusing on critical problem solving today," she said. "We're going to review the battle against the axew and mienfoo first. I want three alternative routes the battle could have taken to lead to your victory on my desk by 4 pm sharp."
The salamence whuffed silently in the corner behind them, amused, before Thalia called him over as well, handing him a sheaf of papers as well.
"You'll be doing the same," she told him. "Only on how you could have beaten that gengar."
Today was "new friend day" in the Dream World Training center. A mysterious benefactor, because I'm not sure which of Vert's characters it actually came from, had given Thalia a venusaur. But this venusaur had been burned in the past. Venusaur was a sad, shy big hulking brute of a pokemon.
"Say hi to Venusaur you two," Thalia told pupitar and eevee. Pupitar didn't actually have a mouth, but she was a friendly creature. She tried to float reassuringly in Venusaur's direction. Eevee licked his paw and looked bored.
Sup, he finally said, after thoroughly matting down every inch of fur on his body with his tongue.
"We're going to play a game today. A nice friendly game. Everyone will be friends and get along to make venusaur feel at home, okay?"
The last training session had ended in disaster. The eevee was naturally vain and competitive, and when it had become clear that the center of attention was not going to shift off the venusaur as long as they were dreaming and in the training center--things had gotten ugly.
The details were rather too gory, and so PG13 Kohaku shall be spared, but a general overview would point out that it had ended in a murder-suicide (as much as one could be successfully executed in the Dream World, anyway) as the eevee had attempted to take out both his competition and himself in one final blaze of glory.
Which was why they were back here today. The venusaur refused to come out of the corner, her eyes downcast. Eevee sulked at the opposite side of the room, and pupitar drifted worriedly in between the two of them, trying and failing to play peacemaker.
Thalia glared at the eevee.
"Today," she growled in her best imitation of J. "No one is waking up until eevee has successfully willed an entire "I'm sorry Venusaur" banquet into existence. Complete with matching banner. And has verbally apologized. Sincerely."
The eevee rolled his eyes as Thalia's gaze flickered away, and she whipped around at him.
"Do not." she said calmly. Her fist clenched involuntarily and she shattered her hand bones.
Super strength was very inconvenient at times. But at least eevee suddenly decided that he was going to work very, very hard on getting that banner up.
Thalia had come up with a new plan for her trip to the training center this go-round. It was called the plan where i stop neglecting my mid-100s level pokemon in order to waste a week on boosting brand new eggs from level 1 to 100 and then leaving them there in order to do it all over again on another batch of eggs.
Her umbreon sat happily in the middle of the training floor, tail thumping against the floor. Salamence spiraled lazily overhead--the Dream World was convenient for improbably high ceilings, and greninja clung to the north wall a few feet above the ground.
Thalia stared at them. They stared back. Now that they were actually here she really wasn't sure what to do with them. They were pretty self sufficient.
"Do whatever you want," she said. Greninja closed his eyes to inception nap while he napped. Umbreon curled up on the floor and begged for pets.
Salamence burst through the roof with a roar and a clatter of ceiling chunks, and started hunting in the dream world for hapless dreaming wild pokemon.
It was water type training time, if you pretended the salamence could swim worth a damn. He could probably do a fair approximation of the doggy paddle, actually, with the current sea badge. Whether he'd retain that ability had yet to be seen.
As it was, vaporeon and greninja frolicked about in the ocean Thalia had conjured up for them, splashing each other happily. They seemed glad to be back in their natural element, even if it was just a dream. Thalia really didn't hit up the coast that much. Not a lot of scourge at the coast. And you could swim at Lake Pax but it wasn't really advisable.
Salamence bobbed in the air, swooping low enough from time to time for the spray from the waves to mist his wings. Thalia sipped a mojito in the style of Atlanta and lowered her sunglasses as she lay out on her giant kyogre floatie and watched the three of them.
"Laps," she said. "Five laps of the entire ocean."