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!
They each had their own office at Kohaku University, but by "office," Neo didn't really mean much. It wasn't even a cubicle. There was an office suite reserved for the Eos researchers. It was really only a mail room and then a few backrooms with tables, desks, and computers. The real treat was open access to the laboratory space. The office space was just a place to put things.
It was also a place to leave messages for the other researchers. You know, all two of them. (Neo knew Ariel was in Sol City too, but he wasn't really active with Eos anymore.)
There were ten mailboxes, but only two of them had been claimed. One was labeled Karimi, and the other was Neo's. The Eos office at Kohaku University was a pretty lonely place.
Neo wasn't here to leave a message though. She was here waiting for Alia. (It Karimi now, she suspected for the same reasons that Neo didn't call herself Leonida anymore.)
She just wanted someone to talk to, really. The trainers were all very nice people, and the breeders and rangers too, but Neo didn't know them like she knew Karimi. There was no one else from Eos that Neo knew from before the scourge, none that'd been there when Decima fell. Also, everyone else was kinda dumb.
karimi didn't really mind having all this space when there wasn't much to spare in the first place. she pushes past the doors to the mailroom and smiles brightly when she realizes that she is not alone (never actually alone, no matter how she may feel during her days of weakness). "heeey, lighten up, neo. i don't know about you, but this place beats camping out at pax lakefront any day."
she never thought that she would ever say that a place was a tad too exciting for her, but the scourge takeover has proven her wrong on a lot of things. karimi heaps her duffel bag on top of some unused desk. nothing in there was too breakable, anyway. if they were, then they certainly wouldn't have survived the trip to hesperia. "here to take a break? or did you need me for something?"
"Pax is nice," Neo replies, without a shred of sarcasm. "It makes me feel sad. Sad is happy for deep people."
Karimi is upbeat, and Neo doesn't know quite how she manages it. They were both upbeat, back in the day, back when their hometown wasn't a toxic wasteland. These days, Karimi still manages to be the same--well, different in that she's harder, stronger, made of steel now, but still the same at the core. Neo only gets by when she leaves her emotional core behind. It's easier to keep your head up when you don't need to worry about where your heart goes.
"...Both?" That's a question, because she's not quite sure. Her opinion of Kohaku University grows lower and lower every time she visits. Half a year of searching for a cure, and still no results. A farce--a waste of tax money. "I never come to the uni for fun, but Sol City... is nice? It's sort of relaxing. I'm not used to all the sunshine."
Uncomfortably, she sits down on the desk, ankles knocking lightly against the table. "No, I have a," she either struggles to find a word or she's just buying time before she admits the truth, "a question. I wanted an opinion."
Talking's like pulling teeth at this point. "I met a guy."
karimi actually tries to wrap her head around neo's words before concluding that she's probably referring to the sense of fulfillment that came with putting scourge pokemon in virus balls. yeah, that was pretty fulfilling. "yeah, kinda reminds you that you have something to fight against, huh? don't forget what you have to fight for, though. that's my motto."
really, it was the only reason why she hasn't quit civilization to spend all her time chasing scourge. finding things to fight for -- maybe that was a kind of a strength too.
"anywhere that isn't crawling with scourge seems good enough to me." karimi shrugs. "i just got back from meeting a bunch of trainers at sol, and i dunno. not sure how long i'd last in a bikini in the middle of winter. anyway, what's up, neo--"
...so neo's met a guy, but the relevance fails to catch on. karimi's met lots of guys too, from really morose guys to really excitable guys to guys who didn't know how a comb worked. "yeah? was he interesting?"
...In hindsight, maybe Karimi belongs in the everyone else is kinda dumb category too. Neo sighs, toys with a strand of hair while she tries to pick out some words. She could still back out of this conversation--maybe she should. Maybe that'd be wise.
No. Stewing over her thoughts by herself would be the worst possible decision.
"No, I mean I met a guy," Neo tries again. She knows those are the exact same words, but somehow she hopes that the extra emphasis would help a little. "A while ago. About... eight months ago?"
Has it really been that long? And she's only mentioned Delta in passing once to J. Why had she been so secretive about him for so long?
"He's nice. Also, kind of suspicious. Or very suspicious. Let's go with very suspicious." She let's go of that strand of hair, because it's starting to curl now. "But I like him."
karimi didn't think that she would get to play matchmaker again. not after friends and acquaintances were separated and most everyone was dead. maybe it was only natural that she took up the mantle within her group of friends; karimi never could stand it when people would dance around what they want.
she's changed, though. changed enough to see that there's a world outside of a girl's immediate wants. so she melted herself down and molded karimi into someone who could be tethered to a ball and chain. but she didn't need to say anything about that to neo. neo, who always had her priorities straight from the beginning. neo, who wouldn't sacrifice the cause for anything.
"well, i'm happy for you, then!" she smiles, but her mind is a little more cautious than back when neo was a high schooler dating high schoolers. they didn't exactly live in the best times for romance. neo probably knew that too. "what's his name? and what do you mean, 'suspicious'? like, does he have some funny eyebrows or something? involved in some gambling den maybe?"
"His name... I didn't think it was his name, but his butler failed to correct me, so I guess his name really is Delta."
Neo as a high schooler did date other high schoolers. It tended to be disastrous, or--looking back--hilarious. She had been a different person back then though. She had fewer burdens weighing her down. Also, everyone she knew and loved was still alive back then. Such details made a difference.
Neo took a moment, trying to figure out a way to frame the next few sentences in a positive light. She was pretty sure there was no way.
"Well...
"One: I met him at Lake Pax, he was alone... fishing. In scourge territory. As if it were a normal thing to do.
"Two: he's on first name terms with at least one hades agent. He's the one that told me what agents are. He knows too much.
"Three: he has a sixth sense for scourge battles and has shown up--completely without notice or warning--after several of my battles against other agents.
"Four: he's survived scourge infested areas with no pokemon, completely defenseless, and as far as I have witnessed, he has no survival instinct either.
"Five: he's evasive. Sometimes, his personality seems contradictory--slippery, like a puzzle with ever-changing pieces."
"a butler?" she pauses. "a butler??? you're quite the gold-digger, neo" karimi laughs, and it fills the empty mailroom. "think he has a hot cousin that you could introduce me to?"
neo explains delta. karimi stops laughing.
karimi's scientific reasoning was rather straightforward, but effective. whatever it looked like, it probably was.
"...neo, i'm kinda sorry to say this" she bites her lip, but her words take no pause. "but are you sure this guy isn't a hades agent? you know, one of the dudes that we've sworn to put into the ground?"
well. this situation does sound a lot more awkward once she said it like that. unless neo was mistaken, karimi had already decided that neo was most likely taken with a man who was a hades agent. just when she had thought that the war was looking up, things start to get really complicated.
"I'm not sure," she says softly. "I thought he was for certain, when I first met him. Now... I don't know."
It sounds bad when you line up all the initial facts. "It looks bad," she acknowledges with a wince, "but I'm not dead yet. I thought I was playing with fire. I should've been burned. Instead, I've been wined and dined."
She looks Karimi in the eye. "I don't know why he keeps talking to me. I don't know why I keep talking to him."
One more hurdle to go. She hated using a friend like Karimi as a substitute shrink, but this was about coming clean. She'd kept Delta secret for far too long.
"And regarding that hot cousin, have you met J? Because I should mention: Delta looks like J. He looks exactly like J, except better dressed." And slightly slimmer, slightly younger. She can tell the difference between the two now.
If telling the truth felt like pulling teeth before, this one feels like pulling out a lung. "Sometimes, I worry that all I see in Delta is a more obtainable version of J."
karimi tries taking a few extra breaths. that usually seemed to be a good technique to saying better things, making better decisions. she admits that she doesn't quite understand neo's infatuation. she's experimented before, back in her teenage years. she experimented and decided that she enjoyed it, but nothing like the way that neo describes it.
"look, do you just...want me to look out for you for awhile? i mean i know that you're a damn capable researcher, but i'd rather not lose you to this... fascination?" that seemed to be the right word to describe neo. "you've dragged me out of enough scrapes where i lost my head, and i'm willing to do the same for you. hell, if you do get burned by this guy, you know i throw better punches than you do." not that neo's punches were anything worth writing home about. "hey, that's not a bad thing. it just means that you gotta shift gears to this j guy, right? unless..." she winces. "...please don't tell me that this j reeks of hades too?" hook ¿
Neo is impassive, but then she buries her face in her hands. She takes a deep breath there, a second passes, and she resurfaces to the rest of the world. "I don't know. I know what I should do. I should visit him again, stay the night, and stab him twenty times in his sleep."
She spreads her hands, useless. "I just don't want to. I guess that's why I wanted to talk. I don't know what to do anymore."
Neo looks at Karimi, incredulous, and unable to even process the thought of J as a hades agent.
"J's one of ours," Neo says quickly. She might be wrong, but only if J just so happened to be running the dupe of the century. Then they'd all be screwed. "I don't think he's interested. And we're already friends. Just friends. I'm not even sure I want to be more than friends."
"...or you could introduce me to delta, i could stay the night and stab him twenty times in his sleep." karimi sincerely wishes that neo was wrong about the signs, but she doubted it. she's much better at sifting through the truth like gold dust than karimi was. "if he's up to something, then we're all screwed in the long run. he's your problem for now, but who knows when he'll become the region's problem? if he isn't already?"
she's just repeating things that neo already knows. that's how it always seemed to be with leonida. maybe she's being pushy, but karimi has an idea of how much a single agent can accomplish. her name is a reminder.
"hey, if it saves you from linking arms and skipping through bellona hills with a hades agent, then i'm all for whatever you've got with this j. if he's a friend, then can you talk to him? i mean, just imagine if he is the hot estranged cousin. that would help us figure out a lot of things." hook ¿
"I thought I could get information out of him at first. That was so long ago, back when we knew nothing about the agents. He hasn't told me anything new since then, but... I haven't tried asking either. The way he acts, it's almost convincing that he's already told me all he knows, but... that can't be so if he's actually an agent."
That's the point though. There was a huge risk in spending time with Delta, but there was also a potential gain. "And if he is an agent, then shouldn't I keep visiting? Keep talking to him? We don't have any other point of contact. I just need to be careful--and not be emotionally compromised."
It was a different subject, but Neo doesn't mind. "Me and J don't actually talk much to each other. It's just business, but I trust him. Being around him is comfortable, like going home."
"...neo, you said it yourself. this probably isn't like analyzing gastro acid in a lab. i'm really sorry, but i want to put my foot down on this." karimi smiles, as if that would make it better somehow. it usually did. still, it felt a bit unnatural. like she should be making some other face at neo right now. maybe she would be, if this wasn't her last childhood friend.
"it sounds like you knew it was a terribad path from the start, and i feel like you're asking for the iffy approval that i can't give. no qualms on that j guy, though. what kind of information can delta give that we can't get from the other agents, anyway? cracking the rest of them might be much more productive than this one dude."
anyway, who was a better judge of neo's companions than neo herself? hook ¿
She knows Karimi is right. She's here because she knew Karimi would be right.
Neo just doesn't want to see Delta hurt. She feels like she owes him that much, although she's not sure what exactly she owes him for--for old times' sake, or something.
"What to do then? If he's an agent, I shouldn't just let him... exist."
They each had their own office at Kohaku University, but by "office," Neo didn't really mean much. It wasn't even a cubicle. There was an office suite reserved for the Eos researchers. It was really only a mail room and then a few backrooms with tables, desks, and computers. The real treat was open access to the laboratory space. The office space was just a place to put things.
karimi didn't really mind having all this space when there wasn't much to spare in the first place. she pushes past the doors to the mailroom and smiles brightly when she realizes that she is not alone (never actually alone, no matter how she may feel during her days of weakness). "heeey, lighten up, neo. i don't know about you, but this place beats camping out at pax lakefront any day."
...In hindsight, maybe Karimi belongs in the everyone else is kinda dumb category too. Neo sighs, toys with a strand of hair while she tries to pick out some words. She could still back out of this conversation--maybe she should. Maybe that'd be wise.
