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!
the rain was a different sort of rain; the raindrops were neither strong nor heavy, but instead soft and spread like mist. a thin veil of rain masked the distance.
ignatius's vision from the windows was poor. forced to seek shelter in a small laboratory, he had nothing to do but to wait it out.
zalitz curled up by one of the functional pcs in the lab, trying to seek what little warmth it could get from it. it looked downright miserable; ignatius, alas, could not help it more than that.
It wasn't sudden, the rain. It started slowly, stayed constant, gave him plenty of time to get out of the way, and he did. Although the rain wasn't anything heavy, thunder and lightning galore, anything that was as mild but also mysteriously fascinating could be counted as some sort of omen, and he didn't want to risk that.
The pokemon center was the closest building around, and Jayden ducked into it, shaking some rain drops out of his hair irritably. Once inside, he set his sights on the PC, sweeping past the nurse at the counter without so much of a glance. His pokemon were weak, but not dead or fainted, and he was worried because they were weak, unreliable. The sooner he got the strong ones back by his side, the sooner he could leave, dangerous omen or not.
He stopped in front of the flygon, reached out his hand and stretched, his fingers barely grazing the PC buttons. Bent down, narrowed his eyes at the creature and frowned, releasing litwick, who circled around and around with its weak flicker of heat. Jayden hoped that warming the pokemon up would motivate it to move, preferably somewhere far, far away from the PC.
ignatius angled his pokédex at the new arrival. an entry wouldn't hurt, and being stranded in the laboratory side of the pokémon center had made him rather irritable. fuck tact, really. he would rather get entries on his own.
a small beep sounded from the device before he approached the trainer. "zalitz," he called, and the flygon raised its head. "someone wants to use the computer," said ignatius. the creature glanced from the candle to the researcher, before muttering something only ignatius heard.
the researcher relented. "could we have your litwick for a moment? my flygon would appreciate the heat, and you would gain access to the pc."
Jayden didn't turn his head at the sound of a voice, intent on ordering litwick to try harder, get that pokemon to move, and get it to move fast. Without his stronger pokemon he felt strangely exposed, vulnerable to attacks and change. It was a feeling that he neither liked nor wished to ever experience a second time around.
When nothing happened, even with the persuasion of it's owner Jayden looked up, angling his head in the direction of ignatius, a frown creasing his features. "I guess so, sure." Litwick looked nervous, flickering out of view for a second before materializing again, but Jayden didn't give it a second glance. Only glared at it and jerked his head as a gesture to go with this other man, if only for a moment so he could get to that PC.
His eye caught on the pokedex, remembered hearing(and ignoring) a beep moments before. "You're a researcher?"
zalitz playfully nudged the litwick, unafraid of its ghostly flames. neither the color nor the heat bothered the flygon. its own flames were blue (a different shade, though), and its liking of heat was ingrained into its nature. flygon were, by nature, desert pokémon at the end of the day. zalitz cocked its head at the half-ghost curiously.
"try not to startle it," said ignatius, but knew full well that zalitz didn't give a damn about the smaller pokémon's well-being. if it was curious, it wished to satiate its curiosity by poking about things.
in response to jayden, ignatius lifted his pokédex into plain view. "indeed i am," he said.
Litwick stayed silent - whatever reaction it could've had to the other pokemon was projected through its flames, flaring up like a small firework before dying down, its existence blinking in and out like a light-bulb. After a moment, it solidified, calmer, and stared back at the flygon nervously with its single, yellow eye.
Jayden strolled up to the PC and tapped a few buttons from memory, raising an eyebrow at ignatius. "Don't expect me to know how that thing works." A pokeball dropped down below, and he picked it up and released the pokemon inside with one, fluid motion.
Xatu twisted its head around and stared at him, but he shook his head and gestured to turn back around. "Got time for a demonstration? Unless you're desperate to go out and keep the rain company." Jayden leaned forward slightly and eyed the little red device, mildly curious.
"it's a researcher gadget," said ignatius, "i don't expect anyone but us to know how it works." all the same, ignatius decided to humor the trainer. "i'll gladly demonstrate."
he tapped a button on the device, and it whirred to life once again. the pokédex accessed its current database before running a scan on the living beings in the room. it quickly singled out the litwick, flygon and and xatu, and it was readily apparent on the screen which was which. the xatu, which ignatius currently didn't have an entry of, only had its name and barebones data listed. the former two had comprehensive information on them, the flygon moreso than the litwick due to the amount of time ignatius had spent with the half-dragon.
"it scans a wide radius, and subequent upgrades allows you more range so you can scan from a distance," ignatius explained, "and also processor upgrades for quicker saving and reading. what i have here is just the basic model."
he angled the pokédex so that the on-screen cursor hovered over the xatu's image. it was a practised motion for him; he didn't even need to glance at the screen to affirm that he had the right pokémon selected. ignatius finally clicked a button on the side of the dex, and a familiar beep sounded.
"A couple." Jayden admitted, shrugging his shoulders. He understood about half of the information given to him, but the rest flew over his head, and he decided that he couldn't be bothered to ask for a repeat.
Five pokeballs had already gathered on the machine when he turned back to it, and, recalling Xatu, Jayden stuffed its pokeball in his bag and eyed the rest of them, one red light flashing after the other until the rest of his team stood there, eying him curiously. "Can it scan more than one at a time? Any limitations to what it can scan past?" At least it would be worth this guy's time. Aside from the obvious weather conditions, but considering they weren't necessarily severe enough to be a hindrance, he wasn't sure how much they mattered.
"And how about the scourge? Have you run into any yet?"
each and every question was an inquiry ignatius was only too happy to answer. he pointed his pokédex at each pokémon while he answered the questions.
"it cannot scan more than one thing at a time, but it processes decently quickly if the pokémon are in a controlled state, such as this," said the researcher, gesturing to the scene before him. "if the pokémon are calm and not moving too violently, this dex can handle it in a moment or two. anything more furious - say like, in a battle - it'll take a bit longer to process. scourge pokémon take even longer because of the lack of information on them. it doesn't know everything, alas. but to make it know everything falls under our job scope as researchers."
ignatius finished his scan of all the pokémon.
"i didn't see any on my way to juno from sol, but i suppose that things aren't alike in the air and on land. hadean pokémon seem to prefer the land and sea as opposed to the skies. what about you?"
"Sounds like quite the burden." Some of his pokemon, like xatu, turned back to look at him. Jayden shook his head slightly, then motioned for them to stay still, and they, the useful pokemon on his team, did just that. "If scourge are so hard to get information on, they must also be what eos seeks out the most. Do you know if that's the case?"
At ignatius's question, Jayden's frown turned into a scowl, but only briefly. "A long time ago, but it didn't go well. They require intense focus just to fight. I don't know how you'll be able to gather information in that mess." Something about how the pokedex worked had piqued his interest. Jayden waited until all of the pokemon had been scanned, recalled them and swapped out a new bunch.
They were significantly less controlled than the strong, useful ones. Some of them circled to hide behind Jayden while the rest ran over to Ignatius and began to crawl over him, sniffing and poking.
ignatius pointed his pokédex at each of the new creatures in turn, thinking about jayden's words and forming his response. the time was enough for him to come up with something.
"it depends on who you're talking to, if you ask me," said ignatius, recalling a few different personalities he had encountered so far. "there are the civilians who are obsessed with the scourge, and then there are those who have escaped. you have eos who are in it to see blood, and there are those wholly devoted to the cause. but at any rate, yes, i would say that the scourge benefits most of the eos recruits -- with the possible exception of breeders."
"Breeders, huh?" Jayden frowned. He'd been about to make a crass remark about them, but most of the strong pokemon on his team had started from eggs, and he thought better of it. "Workaholics, I'm sure. Keeping track of all of those pokemon."
"And what about you? Are you 'devoted to the cause'? I believe there's room to see in between the lines, in some cases." Like himself, for example. The thought made his mouth curl into a scowl. Jayden turned to the pc and withdrew six new pokemon, releasing them in separate patches of red lights that blurred into one.
ignatius chuckled. workaholics indeed. he had yet to meet one of them who chatted non-stop about their work, but he was certain that some of them were very passionate about what they did. "i've heard they imposed a new rule on them," he said, "something about only having fifty pokémon stabled at their breeding farms. it's still a lot to sort out, if you ask me."
the researcher scanned the six new pokémon. jayden had quite the collection, but it seemed that not all of them were trained. some of them seemed like they were obtained to round out a collection -- but ignatius kept his thoughts to himself.
"me? not really." the answer came easy for him. "i suppose survival is paramount for me," he said in an understatement. "as it is for most of us -- eos or otherwise."
It seemed like a high ceiling to set, not that big of a deal. Then again, he was a trainer who only knew other trainers. Who knew to what extent breeders would go to get the results they desired, whatever that may be? "Too much to sort out." He agreed, nodding his head. "At least they don't have to train all of them. It'd be a real pain."
"Not as many of us as you'd think. I met someone willing to die for the cause of fighting scourge." He had doubts about meeting her again. She could be dead, for all he knew, but he didn't really care, either way. "I like to value my life above all else. The dead are worthless."
He tapped his feet, waiting for Ignatius to finish scanning before turning back to the PC. "These are the last ones." Four red lights crystalized, one after the other to reveal the strong and the weak, the quick and slow, as different as the land and sky but all with strengths in their own ways.
