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!
Neo carried a soda pop in a lunchbox cooler, as well as lunch--for two, just in case. She'd been advised that bringing an offering of soda pop would be wise. She'd only bothered bringing lunch because it felt silly carrying a cooler around for just a soda pop. If the lunch wasn't needed, she could just feed it to Athena anyway.
She'd flown to a decent landing point in the tower, which had been a high window that most people wouldn't have been able to fit through. There were some benefits to being tiny, in the end. From there, Neo started walking up the stairs.
After a while, she looked up, which was a pointless exercise. There was some more stairs. Looking down, there was also some more stairs.
This could be a long walk.
@staff (vertigo?) --timeline notes: this is before her trip to LoN
neo could have picked either way and it wouldn't have mattered. bosch was seated off in an alcove on the same floor neo had landed upon. he had an uncanny way of appearing wherever he knew people would appear; such was the curse of the anvil. he knew, but could not intervene. not even when people came here for the prism could he do something to prevent it from happening.
"i'm here," he said, "if you were looking for me, anyway. been getting a lot of traffic recently. lots of people coming here to hunt for treasure and then maybe try to meet me along the way." he smiled, but it wasn't visible behind his iron mask.
bosch rose to his full height, and he easily towered over neo.
Neo looked up at Bosch. She looked up at most people, including Thalia, which really just said a lot about Neo's stature (or lack thereof).
"Hi. Yes. Definitely looking for you," she said. Bosch was hard to mistake. "If you're tired of visitors, I can come back another time. I don't want to be any trouble."
She lifted the cooler up to him though. "This is for you either way though."
"an offering?" bosch said in a booming voice -- but only jokingly. he returned to a comfortable height, and stabbed his sword into the ground as he took the cooler box from neo. "well, that's nice of you to bring me some food," he said, "you're one of the first to do so. the rest just disposed of me once they were done."
bosch sighed. "it's rather saddening. also somewhat maddening," he added as an afterthought. "what's inside?" he fumbled with the clasp. "they make these boxes very difficult to open these days. back in my time, it was just a simple lift of the cover."
"A gift," she insisted, like it was an important point. Neo tried to smile though, and it came out half-formed and shy.
"It's for the insulation. Very finnicky, but effective if there's no leaks. If you had a simple box, the soda would be warm." And who wants warm soda? Not Neo. Granted, Neo didn't really drink that much soda anyway. "Sandwiches and salad. Fresh from Sol Café--I didn't make it. You wouldn't want to eat anything I made."
There was a soda pop too, but she figured that was a given.
at long last, the box opened. bosch was pleased with himself -- and also at the contents within. caprese sandwiches and greek salad. not bad. but what attracted bosch wasn't the food, but the bottle of soda pop -- its eyes lit up.
"soda pop," bosch whispered, and then leaned down to look neo in the eye. "how in the world did you know?"
"People talk, especially at the university" Neo said. She'd asked around for experts on ancient things, specifically the stone she'd picked up at Tellumo Ruins. "I get a few tips and tricks."
Neo sat down on the steps next to Bosch (or rather, several steps higher up so that she didn't have to crane her neck to look up at him). She pulled the keystone out of her pocket and toyed with it. "I found this. It only worked once, in Tellumo Ruins, and then I took apart the bracelet it was on. I thought I could fix it. Didn't work out."
vertigo --I realize now that it's set for BEFORE lon, idk how she got the bring a soda pop memo. oops.
bosch cracked open the bottle of soda pop with surprising dexterity for someone who had earlier fumbled with opening a cooler. he lifted his mask slightly, and took a sip from it. he instantly felt refreshed and revitalized. nothing beat soda pop on a warm day at the tower of janus.
he screwed the cap back onto the bottle and hummed lightly at neo's words. "you took it apart because it didn't work?" he chuckled. "you scientific people tend to do that. take it apart if it doesn't work! put it back and it doesn't work! and then you come to people like me, who doesn't really employ science to do his bidding."
A little guilty, like a child with their hand in the cookie jar, Neo offered her best excuse: "I thought there'd be wires. A simple malfunction."
Obviously, there were no wires. There was, in fact, nothing. It was just a bracelet, now in pieces in her lab, and the key stone. The bracelet had turned out just to be bits of rock under the microscope, but the key stone had properties Neo couldn't identify. On the upside, she hadn't destroyed the item's core. On the downside, the bracelet had probably been priceless historical artifact. Oops.
"A lucario, although it didn't look like one. It was long dead. I'm not sure who or what it really was. It gave another stone to my lucario, and with the bracelet, I managed to trigger another evolution for her with it. Once. I couldn't get it to happen again."
bosch stared at neo for a moment, and started laughing. his laughter rumbled the tower; he was very much amused by neo's misadventures in the tellumo ruins. "wires. wires in a bracelet that obviously invokes the supernatural," he said, shaking his head, "what would you scientists think of next? plasma lighting in the sun? but i digress.
"well, it's obvious (to me) why you couldn't make it happen again. it's not the fact that you haven't a strong memory to cling onto with her -- it's simply something wrong with the bracelet, or the keystone. you can't start a car if you've got the wrong key to start with. now come on."
bosch chuckled. he didn't mean to make neo feel bad about herself, but if she came away from the experience a little less keen on tinkering with things beyond her level ... all the better.
he inspected the stone, before chuckling to himself.
eW5ci|HD <50 it's an evolutionary stone
bosch whistled, and a misdreavus came floating out of the walls. "observe," said the man, and touched the 'keystone' to the creature. it started to morph and change amidst light, and once the light dissipated, a mismagius remained.
"do you now see your problem?"
the mismagius floated away, confused as to its sudden evolution.
Neo watched, impassive--or idly curious, blinking once or twice--as the misdreavus became a mismagius and wandered away. She looked up, as if there was a god on high, then she covered her face with her hands. Her face stayed covered for a while.
She hadn't felt this mortified since sophomore year of high school.
"But it worked once," Neo finally said. "It really did."
there were gods in kohaku. they were the dice gods and they favored bosch with rolls that trumped even iskander and batin's.
bosch placed a reassuring hand on neo's shoulder. "i'm sure it wasn't a trick of the light," he said in a fatherly voice, "perhaps it had been switched on the way out. the spirits at the tellumo ruins could be terrible pranksters at times. but don't worry, child. tell me your name and i'll see if i can't help you with this dilemma."
Still a particular shade of pink trending into tomato red, Neo's soul floundered around in search of her ego. It was absent. Neo would be absent too, if she had a choice. That'd sure be nice.
"I'm Neo," she answered, voice small in her humiliation. "What if you can't? What am I going to tell Athena?"
Sorry, the rock was an evo stone. I guess you'll never look badass again.
Neo carried a soda pop in a lunchbox cooler, as well as lunch--for two, just in case. She'd been advised that bringing an offering of soda pop would be wise. She'd only bothered bringing lunch because it felt silly carrying a cooler around for just a soda pop. If the lunch wasn't needed, she could just feed it to Athena anyway.
