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!
to put it simply, stefan no longer worked for eos. he worked for a loan shark named J.
the gym trainers had learnt by now to not get in the way of a man who, on the surface, looked malnourished. that man could quite easily knock them unconscious and at the same time, the gym leader himself didn't exactly treat this person like the others.
it was a good relationship, one where both sides benefited.
it was also that time of the month.
J reached the back of the gym, list in hand. the names scribbled there were debtors; pokémon heads were going to be sent flying tonight.
stefan had just finished gym challenge number thirty-seven when j had walked into the gym. he figured that something was up when he started hearing less attack names and more shuffling of hurried feet. he recalls his bisharp and allows the losing trainer to recover his pokemon with dignity. it's a strange feeling, to be given consistent authority and respect, even if it is based on a title.
"i'm getting used to things. maybe we could be free of this gym operation within a year. unless you still want some jurisdiction in the 'sanctum' outside." he removes his white gloves, a clear sign of the gym's closing time. a technician walks past him to start shutting down all but the most important lights and machinery. "you?" vertigo
J cared little about how the gym was run, but he did care about the money that was going into the entire effort. victors were given money, after all. they ought to reduce costs somehow. J wasn't much of a businessman; luckily being a loan shark called for little more than brute force and loads of cash.
"i appreciate what little authority we have outside the darker side of nerio." J lit a cigarette. "nothing says you have the power to back up your words like being a gym leader.
"i want to expand this business, though. but how are the debts?"
stefan likes people who get to the point. j gets to the point. stefan likes j, and not the other eos members who took forever to dance around what they wanted to say. sometimes stefan indulges those sorts of people, depending on what they had to offer. most of the time, it wasn't much.
"nerio's taxes manage to be a suitable buffer for the rising costs of energy. it's only too bad that the city vetoed that tax on hard liquor." a hint of a smile. "i supposes that it all balances out in the end." more opportunities for gamblers to make terrible decisions with their money, stefan imagines.
"the pokeballs that the gym owes you are in the case" the gym leader gestures for one of his most trusted trainers to bring them a grey briefcase. "everything else, i have sorted through electronically. this has been a good month. you can teach old dogs new tricks, apparently." vertigo
J took a drag from his cigarette. a lack of taxes didn't really bother him. what he was after was getting more people in the casino into debt and further bolstering the pile of money he metaphorically was sitting on. "gamblers make us the most money," said J, "drunk or sober."
he took the case from the gym trainer and opened it. five pokéballs. none missing from the list, then. J glanced them over, inspecting their contents to the best of his ability. they were all weak pokémon, and looked like things the gym trainers had caught just to fill the request.
J's eyes narrowed.
"a level five bidoof," he said, "is not an adequate form of repayment."
a slight exaggeration when a level five bidoof wouldn't have survived the wilds around nerio for long enough to be captured, but stefan gets his point. at the same time, the trainers at the gym would probably start actually using level five bidoofs if stefan stripped their assets any harder.
well. stefan supposes that he could take on a few more low-level challengers who weren't discouraged by the trainers at the door. somehow, he wasn't sure if this was a long term solution.
"i'll reject those for next month. force them to get more creative." even if they pleaded with him, they have been in nerio for long enough to know how this city functioned. "i would think that actual money would be preferred to pokemon, anyway. would you care to rethink our strategy with me?" vertigo
briefly, J considered throwing them to scourge mightyena just to scare them for a bit. maybe have their fingers bitten off by a starving luxray. anything was better than a level five bidoof, to be quite honest.
"actual money is nice," said J, "but they lost enough money to want to borrow more. what makes you think they can win?" he was a simple person. things that did not work once would not work a second time for him. these people were incorrigible, but it was business for him.
"prostitution's bad. i'm not dealing with that."
J ground out his cigarette. the nicotine wasn't helping him think, despite popular opinion.
"frankly, i wouldn't trust the luck of some of them even with a rigged deck. that's why i accepted the position in the first place." he dismisses his underling from their sight, one of the few who actually kept tabs on his bill. soon, stefan and j are the only ones who are left in the gym. "ever think about getting into the underground vaccine trade? some of the trainers here are certainly intelligent enough to synthesize it with some eos training." they better be, if they stayed at the gym long enough to think that they had a chance of making something out of themselves. stefan had begun to learn that not all confidence was completely unfounded. most of them were kids who dropped out of school in pursuit of bigger dreams, anyway. "i suppose we're just lucky that intelligence doesn't offer them any resistance to greed and ego." wisdom was something that took sweat and tears to achieve. young people these days didn't believe in either of those. thankfully, stefan learned early on.
"the scourge is something that frightens the young and the old, rich and the poor, man and woman." stefan gives him a cocky smile that he was not quite capable of a year ago. "and i know something about fear"
J wasn't a researcher, and didn't really care for vaccines. the entire obsession with vaccines was how he had gotten tangled with eos in the first place. he might have listened to stefan's suggestion, but he didn't necessarily need to accept it.
he saw past the smile. it probably worked on other people, but it didn't on J.
"hm. we don't have researchers. i may not invest."
he didn't really need to care about the scourge. it was almost like a pastime for him, something to do when counting money was boring. he got to see old acquaintances (friends?) along the way, so it wasn't all bad, either.
"i want these trainers to fight scourge.
"we take bets for infection, to see how long they last. they won't. we profit from their losses."
J glanced at the empty doorway.
"if they live, they earn prize money. their prize money is used to clear their debt."
stefan turns the idea over in his head. he didn't particularly care whether his ideas were shot down or not. especially when he wasn't actually privy to most of the muscle behind their operations. lately, he has become a man who is content to simply be. if j didn't, then that was fine too.
"i feel obligated to ask where this would all be taking place. i can't imagine that it would be anywhere too public. the risk would be high if the contamination spreads." and in a city, it spreads. "i can spare a few of my own vaccinated pokemon to make sure that nothing gets out of hand." unless j was planning to haul in a scourge camerupt, stefan doubted that it would.
stefan knew better than to ask about how he obtained them.
"...the authorities do not know of underground captivity rooms that were elaborate enough to house entire labs? or do i need to start opening negotiations with the police chief?"
