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!
After Rattata almost drowns trying to catch a particularly stubborn fish, Lacey decides that it's time to go somewhere else. After all, they don't have much time to dawdle in Proserpina, and she wants to get all of the big, tourist stuff out of the way before she has to get down to business, move on to bigger, better, more diverse habitats. Pokemon aren't going to record themselves, and the pokedex happily reminds her of that fact, clicking away in her pocket like its displeased at how miniscule the amount of data she's managed to record is.
Rattata recoils at the sight of water - it will stay that way for a good hour or so, if Lacey's past experience is anything to go by - but Proserpina is a city surrounded by water, and the best Lacey can do is to walk as far away from the water's edge as she can. Rattata, though she offers it a place on top of her head, stubbornly trots beside her, its yellow fur gleaming off the sunlight in flickers and bursts of light. The air smells vaguely of sea salt, and the sun sinks lower in the sky. "Want to go to the docks to watch the sunset again?" Lacey comments idly, sing-songing the words in sync with her steps.
There's a sneeze, the sound of paws scrabbling on concrete, and squeaks of protest. When she looks down, Rattata has its front paws folded over one another and is rubbing at its nose with its tail. When Lacey laughs, covering her mouth with a hand, it sneezes again, thoroughly indignant.
now that she's gotten a fairly decent idea of what the researcher situation in proserpina is like, karimi thinks that she should probably return to kohaku university. or perhaps pax lake. vaccines will synthesize themselves without a lab environment, after all.
the best researchers are like that, and it's true to some extent. at the same time, karimi knows that it's not staying here in proserpina until the scourge ended wasn't what propelled her to places such as pax lake. wasn't what sent her to kohaku university. she has no intention of coddling anyone who truly wanted to fight the scourge.
karimi looks out to the sea with her swampert. she had ridden the swampert here during a warmer reprieve in the middle of january, but it was brief. "what do you think, isadora? no good?"
the swampert seems vagely offended.
"what if you catch a cold? sneezing against the scourge won't do much good against them, you know. maybe we can take a liner instead. leon doesn't like flying in the cold very much."
they hear the sound of a sneezing rattata and the both of them turn around. "well. maybe there is a sneeze that can defeat the scourge." she laughs.
Rattata is quick to retaliate at Karimi - it gets to its hind paws and chatters at the researcher, sounding all the more like a moody, disgruntled teenager. Lacey, on the other hand, lifts her hand to her mouth and laughs again, a little bit louder as it sneezes again, wiping at its face with both paws. Rattata doesn't look happy - then again, it hardly ever does. It'll thank her when things get more exciting, Lacey thinks.
She picks Rattata up with one, practiced motion, ignoring the creature's complaints as she sets him on her head, walking towards the woman. She has blue hair, Lacey notices it right away, bluer than the sea pokemon she bought and hatched and her pokemon is the most curious shade of purple(or is it magenta? she can't tell). She's fascinated by both of them, not just the pokemon, its trainer tacked on as a necessity, and that, in itself, is rare enough to warrant her attention.
"He fell in the water awhile ago. I think he may have caught a cold." Rattata squeaks again, most likely startled that Lacey has revealed something so embarrassing to a complete stranger. "I haven't seen you around here before. Have you come from far away, miss?" The only reason Lacey doesn't ask if Karimi is a new trainer or not is because of her swampert. A strong pokemon is not difficult to recognize.
"don't worry, i'm sure that you'll have other means of beating the scourge!" hopefully before the scourge are able to reach proserpina. karimi inclines her head to one side. "i'm pretty sure that the pokemon center could probably do something for him. they've dealt with worse." well, maybe in the more scourge-ridden areas. karimi can't imagine being in the employ of the center in nerio city or hesperia. the overtime must be a nightmare. "...i've come here from kohaku university." a pause. "the one in sol city." whenever she mentions the institution, it's not uncommon for some of the folk to think of nerio city, the site of the original university before it fell to the scourge.
the rattata is easy to identify as a vaccinated pokemon.
"are you a new trainer?" she can't imagine if she wasn't. being able to keep pokemon unevolved was a luxury these days, even for breeders.
It's not a bad suggestion. If Lacey was more self-conscious she might've set Rattata back on the ground, for fear of catching the cold and holding herself back from wherever she's headed. Unfortunately for her, she's not, so she doesn't set the pokemon down, despite its protests otherwise. "I'm positive they have! He thinks he's fine, though." Lacey shrugs, rolling her shoulders back and laughs again. "Personally? I think he's just scared." Rattata makes another noise, and she shushes it with her finger.
Kohaku university rings a bell. Actually, it rings many bells, she's heard of it both from her time as a researcher and back home, mentioned time and again by the survivors that poured into the restaurant in its final few days of business. "That's pretty far away." Lacey tilts her head to the side. "Why come travel so far for a place like this? I bet the university has everything it needs to carry on its research." Maybe that was before the fall. She's heard about that from the restaurant customers too, in more detail than she would've liked.
"Not really. Oh, I'm making plans to leave this place soon, though! It's just that there are so many nice people around here. They're always willing to give me entries, and I fell behind." Lacey digs in the pocket of her dress and shows her pokedex, half certain that the other girl is a seasoned trainer at her peak of strength.
better to be scared of needles than the scourge, karimi thinks. it's a luxury of peacetime. a peacetime that doesn't last, not for eos recruits. there was a time when she was this carefree, wasn't there? a time when the scourge had only seemed like a sidequest until she hit nerio city. now she knows better. even in proserpina, the scourge are never the sidequest.
"yeah, it does!" karimi had been so excited on her first visit. those days aren't behind her. even now, she feels a surge of renewed energy whenever she returns to the campus. her dream, all concrete and glass. "not enough scourge samples though. that's where i usually come in. i mean being holed up in a nice safe cubicle is productive and all, but" she snorts. "no point if you're not willing to get up close and personal. not just with the scourge, but with the people too. i mean, trainers have all these gym leaders and elite fours to look up to, and all we got are a bunch of dead dudes from pax institute. figures that i should probably stop by proserpina and see some of our new recruits! i like to think that i'm plenty cool." she puffs her cheeks a little.
she brightens up considerably at the pokedex. "hey! that's not too shabby of a start! being able to distill vaccines is honestly the most important thing for beginning researchers." she takes out five other pokeballs almost instaneously like some sort of magic trick performer. "so i'm guessing that you'll be wanting to see these!"
the pokeball flashes dissapate, and five other pokemon join the swampert. they are eelecktross, meganium, braviary, gardevoir, and arcanine.
"god, i wish you met me at a pokemon center or near a pc. i can usually give a patient researcher around fifty entries or so." her eyes gleam in a very shonen animesque fashion. "unless you'd be willing to walk?"
Lacey listens to the other girl's words with an interest she hasn't felt in a long time. Halfway through, she's nodding her head along, and by the end of the description she feels like she's learned more about the university and researchers themselves than she has in her entire research career, disregarding the fact that she's been wandering around Proserpina for months she's long since bothered to count.
"The world needs more people like you, miss!" She claps her hands together, rocking back and forth on her heels. "Especially with getting up close to the scourge, like you mentioned. If everybody else thought like that, we would have a much better understanding of them. They're different, but they're still pokemon under the virus, right? We should put more effort into learning a lot about them." Some part of her believes that certain scourge are, perhaps, worth saving. It is the same part that thinks the rumors that humans spout are hype, speculation, nothing is concrete until she finds the evidence to support it.
Something in her heart swells a little at the pride - being praised by such a strong trainer(researcher?) is no small feat, after all. The second the new pokemon show themselves her instincts kick in again, and Lacey scans each of the six while waving at them, uttering some sort of ambiguous greeting in the process. She'd shake hands with them, but some of them don't have hands to shake with, so she doesn't.
"Thank you very much!" Lacey's pupils gleam in the weak, fading sunlight of the city, and she nods her head before Karimi's even finished, starting to head in the direction of where she remembers the pokecenter to be. "Are you kidding? Of course I'd be willing to! Besides," Rattata sneezes again, covering its nose with its tail while muttering something under its breath. "he needs to visit anyways, right? Kill two birds with one stone."
lacey's admiration feels like something familiar to karimi, as if she had been privy to it not too long ago. that's right. decima town, a place that needed protectors, yet a place that had been without monsters.
(she thinks that melchior maintains the old dream. the town has a protector. now all it needed was to be rid of the monsters.)
her excitement is contagious, yet...kind of depressing at the same time. karimi had been like that too, once. that was before everyone died. she feels some of the old protective instinct return to her. the want to protect her from reality. that's why she's smiling and shit right now, isn't it? protecting her and giving her the tools to go on... those aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
except...that's the opposite of what she's supposed to be doing, isn't it? her job is to arm her colleagues, give them the tools to win, to survive. it's her job to uniform them until they're suitable to be thrown into the war machine (and pray that they come out in one piece). yeah... she watches lacey scan her pokemon. that's what she's supposed to be doing right now.
shit, she's making her thinking face for a really long time, isn't she?
"yeah!" except her affirmation lacks some of her usual pep. "there's just a lot about the scourge that you don't learn from just reading about 'em. i mean, if it were that simple, then the dudes who invented the pokedex could probably just copy all the data from one pokedex to another, right? then you might as well send one dude out on a heroic journey, pump all the funding into 'em." obviously, that's not how the eos researcher program worked.
"let's go!" she puts her pokemon back into their balls when lacey is finished scanning and bounds towards the pokemon center. karimi finds the pc as quickly as she can and starts typing in her login information at the speed of light. she shoves the pokeballs of her party pokemon into the transporter. a few quick taps brings up her boxes.
If Karimi's been making a certain face for longer than what's considered normal, Lacey doesn't notice. When she scans pokemon, the spotlight shines of them, not humans, and she focuses in on each and every one of them until the surroundings blur into something unrecognizable. By the time she turns her head back around, it's to listen to Karimi's words and consider them with a tilt of her head.
The pokedex beeps happily as she pockets it, and the trip to the pokemon center is too quick for words. While the new pokemon are being taken out of the PC, Lacey turns Rattata over to the nurse at the counter and nods her head as she's told it'll take a few minutes, no more. "The data's kind of a bonus for the experience itself, isn't it? We can analyze their bodies as much as we want to later on, but some things just can't be replicated." Not perfectly, at least. She claps her hands together as her pokedex makes a noise that is as close to ecstatic as a machine can get. "Have you met scourge before, miss? What's it like?"
They are all unique in their own ways, ranging from strong to barely hatchlings, and the smile that Lacey gives to them is equal as the pokedex stirs to life in pursuit of this new information. "Do any of them have names?" She asks, mainly out of curiosity.
to an extent, she misses having lacey's inexperience and naivete. she really does. no matter what karimi sees or hears, she can't forget. she can't afford to forget, not when so much is hanging in the balance. it's a sad day for kohaku when 'progress' takes the form of a whole lot of killing and trying not to be killed.
(she doesn't think that she would ever fully get used to it. the peaceful days are immortalized in her mind, in her very bones.)
this young girl is to become a protector. but that didn't mean that karimi couldn't protect her.
"data's just a bunch of numbers and observations that don't mean anything by themselves." karimi looks away from the pc. "you're the researcher! the facts are only about as valuable as you make them. you're the missing link." they're words that karimi would have said last year too, which is what makes them so easy to her.
she laughs airily at her last question. "do i meet a lot of scourge? hoo boy. some days, it feels like i meet more scourge than people. i don't remember the last time that i saw a pokemon that wasn't vaccinated or scourge. not before coming back to proserpina, i mean." so maybe her social life doesn't feel like it's at an all time high, but what can she really do when the eos researchers were so understaffed for a million and a half tasks? proserpina is nice. she'd almost forgotten what a normal pikachu looks like.
"as i said, the data's kinda what you make of it. people are gonna tell you what meeting the scourge is like, but it's different for everyone. you can bring two different people to fight the same pokemon and they'll see two different things." that didn't sound like a cop-out, did it? karimi hopes that it didn't. she hadn't meant for it to be. at the same time, she didn't want to leave the girl with nothing. "... i guess if i'm going to say anything about the scourge though, it's that the scourge are unafraid. i thought that was the scariest thing about them. they'll shrug off an attack every round, but they just keep coming unless they're pushed back by force. doesn't matter what you do to them. i mean attacks like glare and scary face work on 'em fine, but those are minor setbacks that they'll get over quickly. they're not...it's not a evolutionary sound reaction."
karimi doesn't look at lacey for this part. her voice is quieter. parched. "they're not afraid to be destroyed."
she's grateful when the conversation turns back onto her pokemon.
"funny that you're asking about my pokemon's names when i don't even know yours! i'm karimi! and um. only some of these pokemon have names."
she points to the abomasnow. "freud"
magmortar. "margaret"
samurott. "hypatia"
the rest? well. karimi lets her silence speak for itself. the other pokemon don't seem too bothered, however. they weren't the ones who had been sent out repeatedly to fight the scourge. not all of them were even vaccinated.
karimi decides to digress. "some people say that vaccinated pokemon are the sign that kohaku has a future. i'd say the same for the unvaccinated. the unvaccinated pokemon are the sign that we believe that there's a future without the scourge. that there's a living city that doesn't have to be afraid of the scourge."
the unvaccinated noibat chirps happily.
she puts them back into their pokeballs when lacey's pokedex is finished with scanning. she opens a new pc box.
"I understand!" At least, Lacey thinks that she does. Karimi's words give her motivation to leave this quiet, altogether too peaceful city in favor of land that may attract these scourge that peak her curiosity to unhealthy levels. "Strength is important for them, too, isn't it? I'd like to get strong enough to approach them without any danger to my own pokemon." They mean everything to her. The trust that they put into their trainers deserves to be returned two-fold, that much should go without saying. Should being the key word.
Privately, she files the information away for safekeeping. If there's anything that she's learned from past experience, it's that any and all information is useful, not only in manipulation but also towards the path to truly understanding. "It's things like that that make them all the more fascinating, though. Why are they unafraid? What gives them that sort of feeling? The thing to remember is that they were once normal pokemon." Normal, unvaccinated pokemon that changed because of a disease. It's quite the complicated story they have here. "I'd like to know what makes them the way they are now." Part of her isn't sure whether Karimi's research has found the answer or not, but wasn't it the other researcher that said data's what they make of it, never the same between two people? With understanding, they can minimize the destruction. At least, that's what Lacey believes.
"Karimi." She lets it rest on her tongue, laughing slightly at the noibat. "...Okay! I'm Lacey. Thank you for all of the information so far, it's very helpful." Regardless of how much data varies from people to people, the knowledge of what to expect has always been invaluable in itself. She doesn't necessarily fear the scourge themselves, but the idea of how dangerous they are is starting to take shape is starting to take shape in her head, and it would be foolish to heed such obvious warnings.
The names sound nice. Lacey nods her head along and repeats them for her own records. "They should certainly be sheltered from harm, for the time being. But the fact that a city like this still exists is motivation for us to make sure this is the future for all cities." Like Hespera town, for example. "We'll get there eventually. Then, even unvaccinated pokemon will be able to go wherever they please."
Six new pokemon come out. Lacey watches the pokedex's pages fill up in record time, beaming.
"yeah. i mean, i know that the kohaku culture has always been pouring in everything to promote trainers and all, but..." she says her bit with conviction. "you gotta be stronger for your own sake too! especially in times like these! i mean, i don't usually force anyone to fight if they don't want to, but you're here because you want to fight, right?" or at least, karimi hopes so.
"trainers got their own enemies to fight, so a good researcher should be plenty self-sufficient!" if trainers didn't have to protect them, then they could be protecting the truly powerless. the wild pokemon and the people.
"not that you shouldn't accept help when it's offered! i remeber my starting days were pretty rough. some mystery trainer helped me out though. he sent me a shitton of pokemon that he didn't need. or maybe he didn't want them, since his entire battle team ran dark. actually, us researchers are in a pretty good position for making friends since everyone needs vaccines. you should take advantage of that after all your own pokemon are vaccinized!"
karimi isn't about to shoot lacey's hopes down. not when she struggles so much with trying to picture the scourge as nothing more than mindless killers. there are times when she thinks that she can manage it, but the feeling never lasts. she can't help but feel as if the scourge have attained victory the moment that she is able to divide their image from what she knows about traditional pokemon. "not everyone is able - or wants to think of it like that" she admits. "i'm...i'm relieved that you still do. i mean, believing that they're still to some extent normal pokemon is how we know that they're beatable! i'll be rooting for you, lacey!"
lacey finished speaking, and karimi amends her statement. "i'll be rooting for all of us!"
>yamask >aipom >starly >whismur >vullaby >wailor--oh shit no, not in the pokemon center -- gastly
Lacey considers that question, but only briefly. "Of course I do!" She nods her head and briefly touches a pocket of her dress. "They do to, which I'm glad for. I don't want to force them into anything, but at the same time, I can't get stronger without them by my side." She's grateful, too, but that much goes without saying, and everybody on her team understands that, one way or the other.
"Somebody did that for you?" Her eyes widen and then crinkle at the edges, like she's trying to hold in a laugh. Lacey doesn't know about Karimi, but she's never pegged humans as the sort to do something without an ulterior motive - to gain a name and ally, if nothing else. "That's great! We've gotta take and give back though, right? Return the favor when we're able to by giving out vaccines." In a way, it reminds her of an exchange system - what goes in determines what comes out of the deal. She's never thought about it that way before, but there's no denying that it will be plenty useful to her in the future. "I'll keep that in mind for the future, promise!"
Half of Lacey expects Karimi to reprimand her for that statement - no matter how understanding she seems of pokemon's feelings she remains eos, and not many eos join for a goal that strays very far from eliminating scourge -, so when she's proven wrong, she doesn't bother hiding her excitement. "I'm glad that you think the same way, miss Karimi! Not many people think about them that way anymore, but if we persevere in these beliefs, there's hope that they'll change their way of thinking, too. Don't you think so?"
She doesn't think she's capable of rooting for every human - eos or not - out there, but Karimi is most definitely an exception. "Thanks a lot! I'll be rooting for you, too! Although I'm not sure if you need it or not, you're very strong." She hopes that her admiration for the other researcher isn't palpable, at this point. There's quite a lot of it.
The new pokemon are considerably smaller than before. She has to squat to be at the same level, smiling while her pokedex does its thing.
"see, that's the great thing about pokemon! i think they're like, naturally inclined towards humans. like there's been studies done and everything. maybe they start off scared or grumpy or whatever, but after fighting for awhile, i think most of them really want to help their trainer!"
she thinks back to what things were like last year. certainly more disorganized, less centralized. "yeah, i did end up giving him a few vaccines! he doesn't have much use for them now, being a hotshot gym leader and all, but he still keeps me in the loop." mostly in the form of private grants that karimi used to feed herself and travel. "i could probably give you his info, but i'm not sure if he'd like that." karimi scrunches her eyebrows a bit. "kinda a weird guy. super private and stuff."
her unease doesn't dissapate completely. "i'm not blaming them for thinking that way. a lot of those people are pretty traumatized. i was actually lucky enough to be knocked out for most of the invasion. that's why...that's why i think it's a luxury to be able to think these kinds of thoughts. and if we're the lucky ones, then we gotta do what we can with our beliefs! i'm not here to change anyone's mind. i'm just here to save them." she's met too many with ptsd to say otherwise.
"haha, moral support is important too! battle strength isn't everything out there." there's plenty of weak people who manage to survive. the weak who manage to stay alive by running away. karimi doesn't begrudge them that. if they can't stand their ground on the battlefield, then they're probably of more use to the war effort elsewhere.
