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 were standing on the street where Zahir and Neo had first met, outside of her house. It was no longer a poisoned ruin. It looked as it must have when she lived there as child.
Batin stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled.
He couldn't stop himself from looking down the street at his mother's house.
y_oxPe5V > 50 decima is populated > 50 their families are both there
A pokemon could be heard barking over the otherwise silent town. It was empty, as though maybe there were an event in the town square (although you'd be able to hear the noise coming from there).
Shaking, she wiped the tears from her eyes, and she ventured to her house. The door was locked, but the spare key was still stowed away, hidden in a niche on the bottom of the door frame. When the door opened, the growlithe ran circles around her, yapping like a dog half its size. "Hi, Gatsby," she said, petting him gently, but vaguely, as if some part of her mind was lost or absent.
Her mother yells something about picking up more eggs and milk. "Okay," Neo said, soft and crackling. She took a deep breath. She yelled back, "I will!"
She turned back to the road, unsteady on her feet--but she knew the way. She knew the way around this town in her sleep. "Batin! Mr. Brand!" she called, expecting him to reply. "I need help getting groceries."
His mother was standing on the edge of the block. His father wasn't. Batin wasn't sure if that was because this was it had never been his hometown, or because the scourge hadn't killed him.
She smiled at him, walked toward him. She'd been gardening; she was wearing gloves, her shirt sleeves pushed up, and there was dirt on her elbows.
"You visited," she said. "You said you would, but I wasn't sure. You're so busy, these days."
Batin's mouth was dry. He tried to swallow.
"Mother," he said. She gazed over his shoulder and her eyes lit up.
"Ms. Neo," she called out, waving. Batin turned around to follow her gaze and she pushed him forward gently. "Help the young lady up, and carry her groceries for her."
Batin moved away from her as quickly as he could, and not break the--vision, or whatever it was. He knelt beside Neo.
"You know this isn't right," he said to her. "This will only make it worse."
"No. No, this is right. You should've visited. You said--" The world seemed to spin as she tried to sit up. She shook her head and that made it worse. "Zahir said that he should've visited. This is right; this should've been. Doesn't mean it's real, but it's right."
TorhnQGN < 50 neo gets up < 50 neo really doesnt feel too good
She smiled, wanely, at Mrs. Brand and waved.
She licked her lips, which were suddenly dry. "Make what worse?"
"It might be right," Batin said. "No. You're right. It is right. But it doesn't change anything. She's not really here, and neither are they--" he nodded toward her house, "--and nothing we say to them will change anything. It won't bring them peace, or give them the answers they deserve."
He looked over his shoulder at his mother, and then back at Neo.
"Attachment to the past can't be helped," he said gently. "But indulging it, wallowing in it, will only make it harder to accept what has happened to you."
Neo started heading for the grocery store, taking Batin by the arm with her. She had to make sure he followed--she didn't what he'd do here, not after what he did the Decima in reality--and also because standing was too difficult for her to manage alone.
"What matters more than what is in your mind?" she asked, without fervor. It's a genuine question, open for answers, although she hardly needed one for herself. "What you see, what you perceive--it could be real. Or it might not be. Maybe nothing's real, nothing at all! But I can choose what I believe, and if I think this is right, that this is what should be, what's to stop me? Truth is not as important as what puts our minds at ease. A broken body is only death. A broken soul undoes all that we are or will be."
Softly, to herself, she says, "I could stay forever. Why shouldn't I?"
"If you choose to live with these dolls made out of your memory, it will break your soul worse than the truth ever could. Do you think the Land will let you play in peace and quiet here forever? It would change this place, distort it, day by day, until it was all you could recall, and all you ever believed existed, and were by some miracle the world restored to you and those you loved returned, you would not recognize them. And if that miracle should not occur, they would still be lost to you in a way more final than death."
He shrugged as best he could when Neo had one arm entwined with hers.
"Do you have no one in the real world worth more to you than this? You will not find them here, not even as the pale shades we saw earlier. The living do not belong here."
She proceeded down the street, tugging Batin to the left when they neared an intersection. The grocery store Softboiled was down the other street.
He's not wrong. She's not so blind that she'd accuse him of lying. "Everyone dies. Everyone's lost eventually. If you had to die, why not die at home among family? It's easier for you, Batin, you're on the winning side of the battle. Eventually, the world will be scourge, and you can be happy, and I--I get to spend my time nursing my failure, if I'm still alive. There is no peace and quiet for me anywhere, except maybe here. For a while."
< 50 she doesnt remember anyone
"Yes," she says without a moment's thought. The moment's thought followed. It was blank. "Well, no. Not really. I can't think of anybody."
"They're not your family," Batin said softly. "And that's not my mother. If you die with your memory intact, that's dying with them. Not dying surrounded by the Land wearing their faces like twisted puppets. That's just dying alone."
He looked down at her. Way down. He literally had over a foot of height on her. It was a miracle they could walk arm in arm.
"The scourge isn't going to win," Batin said. Talking was easier here, even if it just the past propped up like a piece of cheap cardboard scenery. "I don't want the scourge to win anymore than you do."
They entered the grocery store. He held the door open for her. He remembered this place, from childhood. His mother had sent him here with a ten to pick up eggs and cheese on the days he visited, so she could bake him lasagna. She had always slipped him an extra two dollars so he could get a popsicle for the walk home.
"Even I can think of people, Neo. The researcher you sent me to get the vaccine from seemed to care about you. Your pokemon." He tried to think of anyone else he might know. "The girl you were at Pax Institute with, Thalia."
Neo was stubborn, or the infection had taken a great toll on her memory already. "Who?" she asked.
"I don't believe you. I've fought you more than any other agent. You live here--not here, here is for me, clearly--but on the land. Castle Forlorn, you called it. You can't just say you're not with the scourge. You're even less convincing than Delta. So suspicious. All of you. And all the lies. You reflect your land. Even Physis thinks you're full of lies, and you think she is too."
< 50 pokemon
They reached softboiled, and Neo had a hard time getting through the front door. There wasn't strength left in her to push the heavy duty doors open. "I do worry about my pokemon though."
"I want the scourge to purify humanity," Batin answered. "Not destroy it. It's just a tool. And like all tools, when its purpose has been fulfilled, it will be put aside. Myself included. I'm not interested in whether you believe me or not, just that it happens."
He drifted down the aisles.
"What groceries did you need? I don't think Physis is full of lies, merely that she lies to herself. And that she's wasteful. She tried to kill the girl in Decima, Thalia, after we asked her just a handful of questions. I assumed she would do the same to you, should she find you. I can't say I'm sorry I was wrong."
He turned a packet of cake mix over in his hands, read the ingredients list, and shoved it back on the shelf. He didn't react to her mention of Delta purposefully.
"Physis thinks I'm full of lies because she doesn't like the truth I believe in. And because she hates me for stealing Zahir. I am Zahir. Zahir burnt down to nothing but his purpose."
"Eggs. Milk. Maybe some oranges too. Papa always liked fresh orange juice in the winter."
"Your tools are flawed then. The scourge have no purpose but to destroy. You can't use white phosphorous to clean a wound." She smiles. "You're either madman or a fool with that plan. It can't work. If it could, why doesn't the land treat you as a threat? This is where the scourge originates, isn't it? I'm sure they will not go gently when their purpose is served."
jdl2W1yq < 50 she wants to leave
"It's not Zahir, if nothing else of his soul remains. I wouldn't be Leonida if all that was left of me was girl that made vaccines."
"They won't go gently, but they'll go. As for the Land, for the time my purposes align with it. We desire the same end, or believe we do. When that changes, when the scourge have burnt away all the rot--I'm sure I'll be no more welcome here than you were. Or less welcome, perhaps. It did give you a rather lively reception."
He selected organic grain-fed vegetarian eggs and the 5.99 carton of milk. Because he was Batin. As well as a few oranges.
"Zahir is still here. Buried beneath the layers and layers of distance and subterfuge he put between himself and what he had to do. He watches the body, but no longer moves it. He speaks, from time to time. And I am not completely separate from what he loved. I still cook. Seeing mother was hard. Sophia is as well at times."