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!
ATHENA - LUCARIO - TRAINING TO REMOVE FIRE WEAKNESS.
The fire room was not a friendly training room. Neo stood very, very safely beyond the room in a glass enclosure. She wasn't entirely sure what the glass was made of, but she'd been assured that even an Inferno would not melt it. Neo wasn't so sure about that.
<Okay! Turn it on!> Athena called from beyond the class. The lucario stood before dozens of flamethrowers, each of them pointed at her. <It's gonna be like the summer sun!>
"Like standing in a sun, maybe."
<Stop worrying! What doesn't kill me makes me stronger!>
"Yes, but what about what does kill you? That would make you dead."
Athena shrugged. <I'll just wake up if I die. No biggie--you can keep training with Phoebe. I'll make you all breakfast while I wait for everyone else to get out of bed.>
Neo sighed. "Flame on in three, two--"
<WAIT!>
"What?"
<What do you want for breakfast? I should know before I die.>
"Pancakes."
<Okay.> Before Neo had even put her hand on the ON button, Athena piped up again. <What kind?>
"Berry. Cherrim, I think. It doesn't really matter."
<Okay.> Athena nodded. She stared at the inert flamethrowers, squared her shoulders. <Okay. Cherrim pancakes. I'll make oran pancakes if we don't have cherrim berries. Okay. Okay, I'm good. I can do this.>
There was a pause. <I'm gonna die.>
Neo turned on the machine, and the room came alight with gushing fire.
Shyvana chased her own shadow, a holographic video of herself. It was a replay of her last battle, and Griff didn't really see any point to studying it over and over again.
The charmander tittered over her own mistakes. The way she dodged, the way she aimed her embers, none of it seemed satisfactory to her. For the last hour, she's steadfastly battled a simulacra of her last opponents.
"You did fine," Griff said, apparently because he had much lower standards. He shrugged. "You're not going to win every fight. Don't have to either."
Shyvana shook her head, disagreeing. She started chattering, and he'd already this spiel before. It was about how she came up short in her first battle.
"Doesn't matter," he replied, finally tired of the charmander's worrying. "I mean, we're not here to learn how to win battles in an arena. We're here to fight the scourge. It's different. There won't be any rules. I'll be helping. It's never going to be a one on one."
Shyvana was quiet for a second, then she strode over to the hologram machine, punched its keys with more force than Griff would've liked to see--it was just a dream though. She couldn't really break anything.
A sableye with skin like night and and abyssal eyes flickered into existence. The holographic display probably didn't do a real one justice, but this one was still eerie.
Shyvana squared off her shoulders, stood in front of the fake scourge, and she went to battle. True to his word, Griff stood up from the sidelines where he'd waited before, and drew a sign behind her.
REUNICLUS, GYARADOS, AND HYDREIGON, LEVELS - Phoebe and Tiresias were awkward training partners at best. It was better than back when Tiresias was blind, but even now, Phoebe was a tiny target, and Tiresias was a very big one.
Neo wasn't entirely sure how she thought throwing Icarus into the fray would solve that problem. It made Phoebe's life difficult. She ran across the field, not terribly fast, trying to dodge as many attacks as she could. Tiresias seemed to have expected Icarus to help him take out the little bugger, but instead Icarus spent half his time splashing uselessly.
Honestly, Icarus spent half his time splashing uselessly in real combat too. The rest of his time was spent surfing, and the training room soon became a kiddie pool. Neither of the other two appreciated it much (although Neo thought they complained too much, neither the reuniclus nor the hydreigon ever stepped foot into the water below where they flew/floated).
Eventually, the hydreigon offered a dark bargain: we team up to kill that damned gyarados. Then we go back to our usual.
CHARMANDER, LEVELS - Shyvana was far more gung-ho about training than Griff was. She insisted that all this practice mattered. Griff was pretty sure it didn't actually amount to much in the real world--as in, a real world situation.
Shyvana had done all the usual exercise routines. She'd jumped through rings of fire (which Griff considered a pretty lame challenge for a fire pokemon), shot at targets, ran obstacle courses, and beat up a million target dummies. Seriously. A million target dummies.
Now, they sat down for a game of checkers. Griff had insisted. He hadn't explained that it was because Shyvana had a charge in and die theory of battle, and he'd really like to see her with better decision-making skills.
Unsurprisingly, her little checkers had all marched into their deaths. He sighed.
REUNICLUS, HYDREIGON, HAUNTER, LEVELS - So, this was strange.
Neo wasn't around. Athena wasn't around either, not that any of them really listened to Athena. (They were more than happy to let Athena deal with all the humans in day-to-day activity though. No one else on Neo's team was really all that willing to physically walk from town to town, route by route, dealing with all the random battles along the way.)
Still, they trained, because it was habit now. They'd usually blown of practice, never taking it too seriously, but now they were quiet, disciplined.
There was something wrong about being at a training center without your trainer.
leave my corpse to rotI PLAY grayson lumina
alex faysal
addi monet
luke hopeTRAINER fossil, dust, ebon, venomBREEDER 307 eggsRANGER 4 signsAGENT 12 battles
REUNICLUS, LUCARIO, ICARUS, LEVELS - Neo was unconscious. She was, well, she was elsewhere. She showed up in the training center occasionally, a shadow or a wisp. They all figured she wasn't paying that much attention to them, and that was for the best. She needed her rest.
Her pokemon, on the other hand, had hell and a half to prepare for.
They dueled, in a fashion. It was an awkward three-man brawl, sometimes clumsy, and sometimes they forgot to watch their back for the third combatant.
It was important though. Butterfly Knife was a third faction, if he could be believed. The Deoxys and the Giratina seemed at odds, if that could potentially be utilized to their advantage. Perhaps their battles in the future would always be simple, eos against hades, and that was what they hoped.
You don't train for the enemies you hope to battle. You hope to battle infant durants. You train for your worst nightmare.
They'd had their first scourge battle, one against a froslass that they should never had stood a chance against. They did fine. This didn't really help Shyvana's ego any. The roserade, the poke assist fighting at her side, had succumbed to the virus.
It was a bit of a grisly sight.
Griff was mostly uneffected. Friends turn on you. The getaway driver you ran with might put a gun to your head at any moment if they thought they deserved more than their fair share of the haul. This wasn't much different, only that it didn't involve as much free will and poor decision-making.
So Shyvana trained alone, Griff absent (enjoying a good night's sleep, she assumed, and it was well-deserved).
She wouldn't let another ally turn scourge, and she wouldn't watch them burn at the Amberwell--and if she did, it wouldn't be because she lacked the strength to protect them.
REUNICLUS, BLAZIKEN, HAUNTER - Neo was back. This should've been a cause for celebration. Instead (and unsurprisingly, really), it was more just a cause for training. More training. Neverending training.
Phoebe and Leto were old sparring partners, ever since they'd met in Di Manes, but now the young blaziken watched over them, a referee to their combat. It made for a new variety of sparring, one without cheating, dirty tricks, or any attempts to pull a fast one. It was, for lack of better word, boring--but also honorable.
None of them, not even the blaziken, were quite sure when they'd ever find an opportunity for honorable combat.
CHARMELEON, levels - Shyvana indulged him another game of chess. This was only their second game in the history of ever, but the charmeleon wasn't only humoring him anymore, was rialthough Griff suspected that still played a great part.
This time, she double-checked the rules before each move. She questioned him about wise maneuvers, and she lingered over her decisions. Shyvana couldn't seem to remember how valuable each of the pieces were, besides that the king meant game over, and pawns were cheap (but even a cheap loss was still a loss, Griff had explained).
He already knew she couldn't win this game. She'd lost it at least half an hour ago.
ATHENA - LUCARIO - TRAINING TO REMOVE FIRE WEAKNESS.
Shyvana chased her own shadow, a holographic video of herself. It was a replay of her last battle, and Griff didn't really see any point to studying it over and over again.
