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!
Ariel rushed over to Cura as soon as he got the call. Being in the hospital sucked. The most recent one was after he was stupid and decided to fight scourge pokemon with some ranger dude in Ceres. Safe to say he passed out, and so did all of his Pokemon. That's probably when he realized just how weak he actually was. He justified it by repeatedly telling himself he was a researcher, not a trainer. He just - well, he just couldn't get the mental images of his Pokemon suffering out of his head. So he locked himself away, and in solitude, he trained his Pokemon.
This call though, it brought him out of his solitude. Magikarp had gotten herself hurt, and Ariel felt as though he somehow owed it to her to be there. "Hey Magikarp, you awake?" He called as he walked into the hospital room.
Magikarp was in fact awake. Cura didn't have quite the stock of morphine that say, Prosperina would have had, and Thalia had been staring at the ceiling for the past fifteen minutes and gritting her teeth against the pain. When Ariel came into the room she struggled to raise herself up on her elbows, smiling at him.
"I'm thoughtful enough." When he bought flowers downstairs, he half expected her to rub them in his face. Who knows, maybe she will. He bought pink... what the hell were they called? Gerber? Gerbera? Yeah, gerbera diasies. They were pink, like her hair. He figured they could match.
"You have a water pitcher I could put them in?" He placed them on the small side table. "How you feeling, Magikarp? No one would tell me what's up with you."
"I can have the nurse send a pitcher in," she said. This was good. This was easy. "They'll probably prattle on about how the hint of nature will be good for me and blink very coyly at you."
She knotted her hands in the white coverlet of her bed as he spoke, but her smile didn't flag. "Eos is a dangerous job, we knew it from the start. I had a misstep. Nothing permanent. What have you been doing?"
Her demeanor made him relax. He took a seat in an empty chair to the left of her bed. He smirked. "I get to see you and have nurses flirt with me? Go send for the pitcher." He joked, though that didn't seem like a bad idea at all.
"Yeah, we did." The smile was gone. "It's good that you don't have any permanent damage." Ariel nodded. "Training, collecting data, and a bit of surfing. I had a run in with the scourge in Ceres. I helped some ranger out, got my ass kicked, but we did beat them. I was stuck in the hospital for a few days, really got me thinking. After that, I kinda just, stayed by myself."
"I actually just stopped eternal quest of solitude to see you. You're the first person I've talked to in person for a good, maybe, three weeks."
Thalia buried her face in her hands dramatically. "Oh, Ariel," she cooed. "Don't say things like that. You'll give a girl ideas. The thought of you breaking your vow of silence to rush across the countryside to see me--" She clutched at her heart with one hand, and smiled at him through her fingers with the other. "It's just too romantic."
Ariel winked at her. He stood up, walked over to her, and gentle guided her to look up with his fingers, "Baby, I'll break every vow to see you. I'll cross any mountain, any lake, any region, just to see your face." He played along.
"Or I could just turn on my c-gear, your contact has your picture." He laughed. It was nice talking to someone for the first time in a long time. "Page the nurse, last thing I want is for these flowers to die."
"Also," he shrugged off his backpack, and unzipped it. He pulled a few things out - mostly clothes - before he reached a container. "Brought you some food." He placed his clothes back in his bag. "I know hospital food sucks. So I brought you some of my mother's cooking, she made spanish rice and beans. Got a bunch of other ingredients too, pretty fresh considering she made it last night. If I knew what you liked to eat I would have bought it."
"They do however, have cake downstairs, I can buy it if you'd like." Ah yes, Ariel catered to the injured. Also, he knew how shitty hospital stays were. He didn't really want Magikarp pulling out her hair.
Ariel had no idea of what he had unleashed. Thalia's hand dropped from the call button and she lasered in on the tub of rice. Her mouth watered.
"Ariel, dear," she ground out. "Look away while you still can. You are about to witness something horrific."
And with that, Thalia began inhaling rice and beans at an astonishing rate. Within thirty seconds, half the tupperware was gone, and she put down her fork momentarily. "Your mother is a goddess," she said. "Forget you, I'm going to court her."
The nurse entered the room, took one look at her creepily ecstatic patient, and dropped off the water pitcher quickly before excusing herself.
Ariel smiled. He placed his hand in front of his eyes, and spread his fingers so he could peek through them. "As you wish." He did intend on watching her eat his mother's cooking. No one ever turned down her food. He watched her wolf down the food, and his smile widened.
His hand dropped. "My mother? I think I would cry if you became my step-mother, mother Magikarp does have a certain ring to it though." He laughed - just the idea, it amused him.
"Aw, here I thought you and I were going to get married and have three white and pink haired children." He sounded mock disappointed. He moved, picked up the flowers, and placed them in the pitcher. "There we go."
"If we had children though, what if they inherited both of our hair color. Can you imagine? Pink and white stripes in their hair. Or worse, pink and white spots!" She shuddered. "No, no. It's simply too great a risk."
She reached a hand out to touch one of the petals.
"Thank you for the flowers, though," she said. "It's nice to have a visitor. And a gift. My lucky day."
Ariel frowned. "That would be horrid. We'd have to dye their hair from birth." Spotted hair? That would suck. "You're right." It really was too much of a risk.
He mentally crossed off having children with Magikarp on his to-do list. "No problem, anytime you need me, man. I'll, probably, come within a reasonable time." He was after all, a traveling researcher. "I'll hang around Cura until you get out."
"That's very kind of you," Thalia said. "I would worry about you growing bored and running off with a nurse, but you know that there's really quite a lot to do here! There's the dojo, and the vineyard, and Mt. Aurae is right there; I want to go hiking when I can walk again. Which shouldn't be more than a few days, the doctor says. And I can probably badger him down to less than that."
"Drinking yourself to death isn't much of a better option, you know. But I'll forgive you if you pick up a bottle of wine while you're there for our camping trip."
"I can assure by the fact that I'm still here I have never once drunk myself to death." He grinned. "Nearly to death, maybe once or twice. I will however pick us up a bottle or two for our camping trip, that's a promise."