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!
"you won't. you won't be able to make it count." physis stops walking when she reaches neo's side, but she does not turn around to face her. "why not live instead?"
it is an inquiry, not an offer to help.
EW|ZelkX <50 the ceiling seems to close in on them 50> the two walls on their side begin to close in on them
physis does not even flinch. "are you truly so desperate to justify your own continued existence? do you need a reason to fight for every waking breath?"
these are not questions that physis really expects an answer for. she has forged her own conclusions long ago, in the ruins of decima. that's right, sophia rosenburg had also believed.
the scourge do not think so hard about trifling matters. their sole responsibility is to survive.
she wonders how long it would take for the virus to take root in neo.
"i did not lie to you. i have little desire to see him again." especially not after that disasterous...night in the dream-bar. "i did not have any intention of staying, but you will find no safety with me. i think you already know where the exit leads to."
especially considering that physis had fought to the end to prevent neo ad co. from finding out about it.
"Everyone I knew or loved is dead. Now, I live for strangers. It's not as satisfying." That was false. There were survivors, who dwindled by day. Besides those lucky few, strangers didn't stay strangers--but those were people she would die for. Neo wasn't sure she'd live for them.
"Yes, I am. I do," Neo answered. There wasn't much more to say than that.
The ceiling pressing in on her bother Neo too much. If anything, it just meant she had to get out of here as quickly as she could. "Then if you don't mind, I'm going to try finding an exit."
SMDM0biu < 50 land puts her in a cage < 10 infection check 2tsunz
"...then there is truly no difference between fighting for eos or the scourge, is there?" she had fondness for neo, certainly, but it was also an advantageous thing to say.
then a cage descends upon them. batin teleports into his room. tepigs begin to fly.
fuck.
physis goes rigid for a moment, and she hopes that he doesn't remember anything about their last encounter. especially since batin never seemed to be able to shut up.
"...i was just leaving" she says, as if nothing had transpired.
she attempts to slip past the bars, which are only a couple of inches apart or so, but the land's rules are rather different here.
"This isn't fun," Neo said to Batin, evenly, coolly, like she were saying that the weather was too poor for a picnic. She didn't look at him. There were more corpse versions of herself in his direction, she knew.
CJb12LyE < 50 gets out of the cage
Physis slipped through the bars. Looked like Neo wouldn't be so lucky, which didn't strike her as very fair, considering that she was smaller.
She chewed her lip and made a decision. To the ground, although she supposed she may as well speak to the ceiling or just to the air, to whatever omnipresence the land had. "Let me go. Please? I'll stay. I promise I won't try to leave," she lied.
< 50 cage disappears < 50 hallway goes back to normal < 10 infection check
business. agent business. that, physis can look batin in the eye for, so she does.
"you knew exactly what kind of a threat she was. that's the reason why you let her go, isn't it?" physis might have reconciled herself with this fact much sooner if the incident at pax lake had not occured. "i daresay that my intentions were more in line with our goals than yours were."
that, and he had made her out to sound like some kind of crazed axe-murderer. which was decidedly inaccurate. "it's not flattering to make caricatures out of people"
the froslass floats in batin's direction. her eyes were black, but there was a certain sterness in her poise. <what...happened to him?>
Neo left Batin and Physis to have their own conversation.
In her cage, she looked at the sudden appearance of all the lab equipment. Empty promises hadn't worked (did the land know she was lying or was it just clingy?). Batin's reasoning hadn't set her free either.
Neo kicked the jail bars, choked down a cry of pain as she probably broke something in her foot. The pain was a good distraction, she decided. There was work to be done here. Taking a deep breath, and she tried to remember how to throw a temper tantrum. "Let me go! What is wrong with you? You're mean! And ugly."
She flipped a table covered with flasks and beakers and a microscope. The shattering of glass instruments was a pleasant sound.
UzjPncQ_ < 50 neo goes free < 50 the table un-flips and the stuff on it un-breaks
The clinking of un-shattered glass instruments was a far less pleasant sound. Neo kicked the jail again, which was quite frankly a bad idea. "Ow," she said, and sank down to the ground.
Okay.
There was another card yet to play.
It was not expressing true love, that's just you, Thalia.
Neo took a shaky breath, sniffled, had to take a few seconds to remember just how this was done.
god, what a trainwreck this all was. physis no longer bothers correcting him on the name, for it was a lost cause. she is not as weak as batin presumes, so she tries to pay the insult no mind. as in, she's probably going to take it out on a few eos trainers later.
physis looks in neo's direction. "i apologize for my colleague, although i can imagine that it does not mean much." whatever the girl's constitution, she cannot imagine that she would leave castle forlorn in the same state in which she entered. the land's conjurings should be apt proof of that. "it would be much easier on all of us if you would consider retiring after this."
either by her own will or the land's, it did not matter.
<i can only hope that he did not die for the sake of your narrative.> the froslass turns around and returns to physis' side.
It was harder to stop crying than she'd thought it'd be. Neo tried taking deep, steady breaths, but they all ended up shallow and gasping.
"No. I wanna go home," she said to Batin. "I'm hungry, and I'm tired, and I am seeing things and the voices won't shut up!" She hurled a beaker at a shambling corpse, and then she hurled another at Batin for good measure. For the offense of existing, apparently. She doesn't throw anything at Physis.
With tears still streaming down her face, Neo wiped them away with her sleeve. She hiccupped, and bit down on her lip. She didn't like crying in front of strangers.
She grabbed another beaker and smashed it. Because she liked the sound.
Still caught between sobbing and doing her best not to sob, she gestures to Batin. "Just give me the fucking vaccine."
"There will come a time when you're forced to stop blaming absolutely everything on me, " Batin remarked to the froslass. "Heron made his own choices. Often they aligned with mine. Sometimes they didn't."
The beaker shattered against Batin's chest. He brushed a few stray shards of glass off his shirt.
He handed Neo the vaccine.
"I do think you're still missing something."
xBkl9LuN < 50 the land provides Heron's body on the spot. > 50 they actually have to walk and get it.
"i am sure that neo had walked into the land of nightmares all on her own." it wasn't a criticism. physis supposes that he could have done a lot worse than holding an eos researcher hostage when there was a 10% chance that neo would be infected by the virus. then maybe physis wouldn't have to be losing to the same trainers over and over again. "you flatter yourself. i don't know how i ever survived half a year without such a reliable scapegoat"
to be fair, she wasn't exactly in peak condition for the first few weeks. not that he had to know that.
in hindsight, replying to him at all was probably a bad idea. batin likely had stock rebuttals for everything that she had to say. that is, if physis was even around to hear it. "fantine, we're leaving."
the froslass takes a last look at batin. she does not yet realize just how final it is. <i have no reason to dispute you on the matter, but you have a very distorted idea of what a choice is, batin. >
the agent allows fantine her parting words, then she draws the psychic sign and teleports to ceres forest.
She sniffled, blanket still pulled tight over her shoulders. It was a struggle, but she got back onto her feet.
Neo cut right betweem Batin and Physis, not minding their conversation (it was stupid anyway), to re-enter Batin's room. Back in the lab, she ingloriously pulled off the lucario's foot. It dripped black goop like venom, and she dragged it behind her as she returned to the hallway lab, the limb trailing her like a security blanket.
She showed up back in the hallway just to get the fifth vaccine. She'd forgotten about it. She also threw another beaker at Batin and tried clubbing him with Heron's leg.
"Hungry," she reminded him before going back into the real laboratory.
In her lab, alone for the moment, she discarded Heron's leg. Taking a single blue hair that she'd found, potentially too bright to be Heron's, Neo started the cloning process.
The beaker shattered harmlessly against the wall. Heron's leg didn't.
Batin held it, ignoring the black goop dripping from his shoulder.
"Sorry," he said. "You shouldn't have come down. Don't worry, though, I'm fixing this."
The leg had no answer.
"But I suppose she'll want to be fed first."
The leg still had no answer.
Batin re-entered his bathroom/laboratory minus the leg, but now carrying a pepper jack and avocado grilled cheese sandwich on a plate he offered to Neo. Don't ask where it had come from.
"How is it going?"
WN_gtdj9 < 50 the grilled cheese is divine. > tastes like scourge.