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!
this is her city. what is she afraid of? she's already been home, already been scuffling through the ashes of everything that she once was. she can't run away anymore.
she pulls her hat lower on her head. old habits died hard. nevertheless, as long as she looked straight, as long as she looked straight ahead - who would look at her twice?
look as if she had someplace to go. that was really the best defense.
her feet line up with the streets that she had once treaded upon with such familiarity. she hardly remembered the pleasure that she took in making these walks. maybe it's because it's been so long since she's been in nerio, but even the weather seems a lot clearer today.
sophia had been stopped by mylene, and she had mistaken her for another eos trainer. before she could say a word, she was handed a few wads of bills with the advice to 'find yourself a new outfit for the coming spring'.
it's an errand, of sorts. she could do that. she had known mylene once as sophia rosenburg. sophia would never have been mistaken for a fighting trainer.
something had changed over the passing year. that much was for certain.
sophia gazes into the windows of the passing boutiques. they certainly weren't anything that she was wearing last year. if an entire city could change, then maybe she could too.
Nerio was never Helvetica's first choice when it came to cities. The first time she came here she was conned out of five hundred dollars by some man pretending to be homeless! But, Nerio was closest in terms to where she came from, which was Juno City (reliving some memories.) This place was the closest to the scourge, which is what she decided she wanted to spend the next few weeks fighting.
She decided before she could be conned out of any more money by her bleeding heart, she'd spend some of it on herself. Helvetica knew that she couldn't resist helping the helpless, and even if she was being conned, she wouldn't take the chance the person might actually in fact be helpless.
She also... needed some friends. Heal traveled to Nerio on her own, and she had to admit, it was rather lonely. Her pool of friends wasn't actually that big... regrettably.
So she decided to talk to the next person she saw, which happened to be a dark haired woman with short hair. She tapped her on the shoulder, closed her eyes and smiled. "Hi I'm Helvatica, would you like to be friends? Maybe we can go shopping together?" toska
if she were to interact with the people in this city, then she would have to do so without being watched by a lumbering scourge mamoswine. sophia knew this when she entered city limits.
having to actually go through with it is another matter. interacting with normal people instead of bleeding them - she can do it. probably. no, she has to be able to do it.
she turns around rather sharply. "i -"
she freezes. the girl is a cute, happy little thing with long blonde hair and a carefree smile. it's like looking into the mirror of erised. a mockery of what she had tried so hard to be.
she is physis now, and there's nothing that can be done to change that. even if she let her hair grow out and re-dyed her hair, it would change nothing about who she is. even if she tried to smile, there is no one but the scourge to see.
(nobody likes a girl who cries. smile, sophia. smile so that someone may care for you)
"i don't mind." her presence makes little difference. if anything, it is also a good cover. two weekender girls on vesta city square. that's all that it is. "i am sophia."
Heal opens her eyes, but her smile never fades. She extended her hand to shake. "Hi Sophia, that's a pretty name." It was. "You can call me Heal, and before you ask, I don't really know how you get Heal from Helvetica. Maybe it was the closest things my parents could think of to Hel?" She wondered for a minute how bad her life would be if her nickname was Hell, rather than Heal. That'd be terrible.
"Were you about to go into this shop?" She gestures, but before Sophia can really say anything, Heal's so excited to have someone to talk to that she grabs Sophia's hand and gently guides her into the store. "Let's go!" toska
her parents had named her sophia after 'wisdom'. she had been an infant back then, and daniel had called it a leap of faith. faith, as if sophia would be anything but a disappointment to everyone who knows her. she supposes that is why faith is so worthy of reverence and scorn, all at once.
physis thinks that the alternative name would have been accurate. after all, hell is a teenage girl. her own years seem faraway, like some dream that may or may not have existed.
she allows herself to be dragged into the store since she had no real other destination. she is bombarded by new spring colors that she has not laid eyes on in a long time, save for the cooling corpses of eos trainers. sophia blinks. the new styles were indeed nothing like last year's. the designs would have clashed terribly with the closet that she had been forced to leave behind.
she finds a pair of khaki shorts and wonders if her butt has gotten any smaller. probably, if the nights that she had spent hungry and half-frozen at pal park were of any indication. at the same time, she can't say that she hasn't stolen anything from batin's fridge when she lived in castle forlorn.
Heal looked at dresses, but is more than disappointed when all she finds are ones short enough to make her butt look bigger, and the only long ones were the ones that constricted running ability.
She did however find a light purple coat dress, that wasn't too short, and didn't do that weird leg thing, not to mention the fabric seemed durable.
It was so nice to have a friend along. She remembered trying to drag Jayden shopping all those years ago, he was never into it. She had time to wonder though, about what life would be if her name was Hell rather than Heal. She figured she would have turned out a lot more like Jayden, a sourpuss. She should call that sourpuss though.
"Hey Sophia, do you like this?" She took the dress of the rack and held it up high. toska
at first, sophia isn't really sure why the girl is asking for her opinion when she's not the one who is going to wear the dress. except this is something that shopping friends do, isn't it? these are the things that she has not had to remember in a very, very long time.
"you should buy what you like." these mundane things seem like a luxury to sophia. she checks the wad of cash that mylene had given her and puts the following into her pile. she always did favor pale pinks and pastels.
the store sells clothes for both men and women, and a blue jacket from the men's section catches her eye. he...he did give her his jacket, didn't he? sophia had kept it neatly folded among her belongings. physis' practicality and sophia's sentimentality had kept her from throwing it away.
she starts to feel a little embarrassed. maybe she should drop off a new jacket at his floor in castle forlorn sometime. passing it off to minerva while he wasn't around is a possibility, but that lucario couldn't keep a secret to save her life.
sophia walks over to that side picks out one in his size.
"I know, I know. It's just nice to hear someone else's opinion sometimes." She counters. She wasn't insulted or anything, Sophia was right. Shee should wear what made her feel comfortable, and with that, she put the dress into her basket.
She did get a glance over at some of Sophia's picks, and smiled. They were really cute! Sometimes Helvetica wished they had stores like this one in Cura. "Hey Sophia! Wait up." She called out to her new friend. They were friends, right? She hoped so. Sophia seemed really nice, actually.
"That's a nice jacket, a bit oversized though. Is it for you or someone else?" A boy perhaps? Was Heal inquiring more than she should have? "Scratch that, you don't have to answer that Sophia! I don't mean to pry." toska
despite her better judgement, sophia rather likes heal. maybe she would have been one of her nerio friends in another life.
it's too bad that the only life that they get is this one.
"sorry." she didn't mean to leave her behind. it's a little difficult to remember that there is someone to leave behind at all when one was on the run for a little over a year. "it's okay ... i only wanted to return a favor."
she wouldn't have bothered otherwise. maybe she shouldn't bother. she's not even human, he's not even human, and between the things that they have done to each other, a jacket means nothing.
sophia checks the tag. at least it wouldn't be an expensive kind of nothing. she adds it to her pile. GMOT ?
"No no don't be sorry!" She reassured. Being sorry wouldn't help anyone, especially considering there was nothing to be sorry about. "Just remember that we're hanging out, Sophia..." Heal was a clingy girl. It was really nice to have a friend along, even if she didn't know her for very long.
She looked at the jackets, and debated if she should bake Jayden something - and try not to light anything on fire - or buy him something. Buying him something seemed like the more logical choice. She didn't know what he'd like though, he had changed so much since when they were children. They both had, she supposed. "What do you wanna do after shopping? Wanna get a smoothie? I hear girl friends do that a lot, you know, female friends not like I'm dating you or anything! Not that I'd be opposed or anything!" This is why Helvetica made few friends in Cura. toska
"a date?" it wasn't often that sophia had a chance to show it, but she is definately a 100% born and bred nerio city girl. she allows herself to show an ironic smile. "only if you're buying."
admittedly, a young sophia did take advantage of quite a few admirers who desired the company of a pretty girl with an old fashioned sort of poise. actually, the entire situation is slightly hilarious when one considers that heal is like seventeen years old and sophia is like twenty-six. heal's thirst for older women is too strong.
she's only teasing, but to someone who didn't know her very well, it might have been a little difficult to tell.
this is her city. what is she afraid of? she's already been home, already been scuffling through the ashes of everything that she once was. she can't run away anymore.
Nerio was never Helvetica's first choice when it came to cities. The first time she came here she was conned out of five hundred dollars by some man pretending to be homeless! But, Nerio was closest in terms to where she came from, which was Juno City (reliving some memories.) This place was the closest to the scourge, which is what she decided she wanted to spend the next few weeks fighting. 
