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 shopped. She wasn't much of a shopper. When she was younger (a loaded statement--when she was younger, Decima Town wasn't a morgue), she'd enjoyed visiting the big Hespera City, strolling from boutique to boutique. The irony was that Neo couldn't afford much of anything back then. Now, she could, but she didn't care.
She made a curious picture. A tiny girl, four months pregnant, wandering aimlessly through a mega mall, with the Anvil's greatsword slung over her back, its blade a foot taller than she was herself. The shining blaziken that followed her, whose only duty seemed to be carrying her bags, was just the icing on the weird cake.
Her latest purchases included essentially a whole new wardrobe of maternity clothes and boxes upon boxes of chocolate. And a few tins of anchovies, because Neo had decided recently that anchovies were delicious. It was a lot of stuff for the blaziken to carry, but that was what fighting dual-typing was for, wasn't it?
She'd abandoned the clothing department and had long since gone to the sixth floor, where all the trainers liked to frequent. It wasn't as fine a selection as Vesta's over in Nerio City, but the mega mall here came with the distinct advantage of not being in Nerio City. It was nice to shop without the overwhelming weight of humanity's greed and excess bearing down on your shoulders. Shopping: guilt-free.
Neo stood in front of a evolutionary stone display: priceless moonstones and junk leaf stones (who used leaf stones for anything?) exhibited side to side under the bright department store light.
She could buy one, she knew. She wasn't restricted to window-shopping anymore, but what would she need a moon stone for? Pretty jewelry? As a trainer--she wasn't a trainer--she didn't need one for evolution. As a researcher, she researched other things, not rocks from space.
while neo was busy having rich people problems, milly was having some difficulty keeping her snorunt and eevee away from the display cases. while they were behind a wall of glass, it would be awful if one of her pokemon knocked over the casing in their enthusiasm.
the eevee had been easily distracted by a pokepuff. the snorunt was less complacent.
"no, sumi - we can't buy that, not after how high the price of vaccines have gotten-" the girl hugs the snorunt to her chest. "do you really want to be a froslass that badly?"
milly had a difficult time understanding how others could decide their futures so easily on something so permanent. she had been groomed for the breeder life, so it came much easier. this snorunt is practically a child.
...albeit she was still mature enough to be used for breeding. milly sighs.
Neo hadn't noticed the other windowshoppers, but the blaziken sure had. Apollo circled around, opposite the eevee and snorunt, ready to... catch the display case? Or something. He was going to do something, if something went horribly wrong. (This blaziken lived with Athena, Phoebe, and Icarus. Things regularly went wrong in his presence.)
"No need to rush evolution," Neo said, finally noticing that she wasn't alone. Her reverie was all consuming sometimes. "It's a big decision for a pokemon, even if you don't have multiple evolutionary paths."
She realized she'd spoken out of turn. Whatever. Neo shrugged, made to look away. "Ah, sorry to intrude. Just voicing my thoughts."
She didn't look away though, or at least not for long. The colorations on the girl's pokemon were too obvious to disregard. "Eos? I'm glad we're still finding recruits. Thank you for your service."
neo should probably give apollo some vacation days tbh. or at least more pokepuffs.
"thats - that's right" milly somehow catches the snorunt again in some miracle. she can feel her face heat up a little. "and we can't really...spend so much money on a dawn stone." the kohaku economy seemed to be jacked up to something awful these days. proserpina proved to be no better than nerio. she could probably manage much easier by pulling in her family's connections, but milly had hoped to make her own stand, apart from the dealings that her family was involved in. at the same time, living by herself in practice proved to be a lot harder than the theory.
milly no longer wishes to live by standing on the shoulders of giants.
she turns to the stranger. her posture is impeccable, although her words still lack a touch of conviction. "no...it's alright. i don't mind." she was hoping not to cause a scene, but too late now. "thank you, but...i haven't actually...done much yet.are you also a part of eos?"
the eevee paws at her foot in an attempt to attain more pokepuffs. milly resists the urge to spoil her.
Apollo was very meditative and rarely stressed over the unfortunate short straw he'd drawn when it came to the life he lived. At the end of the day--or certainly at the end of a battle--it wasn't the short straw at all.
Besides, the Dream World is great for nap time vacations.
"Find a rich man and hope he'll buy it for you," Neo said, shrugging. She'd never tried it. Granted, she also didn't need a dawn stone. Less apathetically and a lot more helpfully, she added, "You'll be able to afford it when the time comes. Being a part of eos can be profitable."
Neo nodded the affirmative. "Yes. I'm a researcher."
"i...i am only seventeen." she flushes slightly. "i am fairly certain that such an arrangement would be illegal."
except that didn't really...matter as much considering what her family has been up to, does it? being caught with a man like that would be the least of her concerns, but it sounded like the right thing to say. this is proserpina city, not nerio.
"...i suppose it would be profitable." milly had seen mercedes' empire. whatever anyone had to say about her personality, her affluence had been real. being surrounded by wealth for most of her life had made milly a little more difficult to impress, but she could always appreciate the influence that the guild holds. "that sounds like a lot of work." it probably was, but again. the right thing to say.
don't leave it at that, milly could almost hear her mother whispering in her ear. ever the opportunistic woman. there are times when she wishes that she were not her mother's daughter.
"i'm sorry, but i haven't even gotten your name." she holds her hand out. hopefully this won't go as badly as it did with mercedes. "...i am milliarde mephistopheles. i am an eos breeder."
"The pokemon you breed are younger." That wasn't an entirely fair statement. Pokemon didn't age and mature in the way that humans did, except for baby pokemon that needed to evolve, but that too was based on happiness rather than the passing of time. Age was rarely an awkward obstacle for pokemon.
Neo looked at Milly skeptically. "You might have signed up for the wrong program if hard work is a problem. You could always test your luck at the casinos. Still, if you have the money to throw away there, you would also have the money to buy any stone of your choice."
Introductions were strange. She hadn't done any for a while now. After a pause--at least it wasn't a long or awkward pause--Neo extended a hand. "I'm Neo. I'm a researcher."
"please do not disparage our work." milly's encountered this attitude among non-breeders before. nevertheless, she keeps her patience. "nobody knows where eggs come from or how they are produced." for all she knew, they could be the result of a game of hopscotch. she doubted it, but the point stands. "what occurs in nature should also be allowed to occur on a breeding farm. there have been documented studies." which milly had been required to recite from a very young age.
milly ... doesn't really know what exactly she said wrong. the timing, perhaps. "i apologize, i was merely attempting to acknowledge the efforts of researchers. i did not mean to say that i planned to dawdle."
she shakes neo's hand and politely decides not to mention that neo told her that she was a researcher last post lmao. hook ¿
Dispassionately, Neo shrugged. Breeders were wealthy. Those with wealth could pay for the results of any study they wanted to see. She would know. Still, it was true that salamences did not normally breed with magikarps.
...She hoped Milly did know where eggs came from, in the abstract.
"It is fine. The efforts of researchers haven't gotten Eos very far. It is to my comfort that breeders, rangers, and trainers haven't gotten Eos very far either." As a token, or perhaps as an olive branch, Neo added, "Perhaps you will get further."
i can't believe i put off writing this post because of the zoophilia implications. "better than dying months ago." she says quietly. milly is a nerio girl. she was home when the invasion of nerio city happened in the summer. "we've - you all have bought us this much time at least, haven't you?"
and really, milly can't do anything for eos without time.
"Yes. We've bought time. Now we need to do something with it, or we've wasted everything we spent to get it. If Pal Park is all we can claim, then it was bought at an exceptionally high price."
Neo shopped. She wasn't much of a shopper. When she was younger (a loaded statement--when she was younger, Decima Town wasn't a morgue), she'd enjoyed visiting the big Hespera City, strolling from boutique to boutique. The irony was that Neo couldn't afford much of anything back then. Now, she could, but she didn't care.
while neo was busy having rich people problems, milly was having some difficulty keeping her snorunt and eevee away from the display cases. while they were behind a wall of glass, it would be awful if one of her pokemon knocked over the casing in their enthusiasm. 
