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 nice thing about being in a university elevator was that there's no repetitive music going in and out of his ears like the hotel variety. only facts swam in the reporter's head like a constant stream.
cyril doesn't bother formulating concrete theories just yet, not when he doesn't have the hard data to back it up. he never did like backtracking in an investigation, no matter how essential it may have been.
that being said, he's eager to get some headway into this case. the researchers that he will need to persuade might not necessarily be so sympathetic when there's a war going on. that, and he needed someone who wouldn't be too nosy about the legalities of his ... personal investigation.
he can only pray that he'll be lucky, and cyril is pretty good at being lucky.
he steps off at the fifth floor and heads off to the office of one of his contacts, the plant samples tucked safely away in a compartmentalized case. the door is closed. he knocks.
She visited the university sometimes, although a part of her loathed it. The Nerio campus was better than the Sol City one, she'd found. People here were more practical. Intellectuals and academics, as could be expected, but those that had a more hands-on, goal-oriented approach to, well, more or less everything. People in Nerio knew about the scourge first-hand. They didn't dilly dally like the professors at the main campus.
In any case, it was nice to have fully functioning laboratories in the city. There was Finnian's offices, but it was makeshift and more to his interests than a scientist's, not all that much use to an M.D.
Neo could synthesize a cure in her own kitchen if she really wanted to. She's gotten better at it, simplified the processes. Still, she preferred working in a proper research laboratory.
So she was around when Cyril knocked, and she was the one that answered the door, five months pregnant and out of contact for over a year now.
"You," she said, not sounding surprised. She was, but there'd been enough surprises in her life thus far that this was minor. Neo glanced at the case he carried. "For the lab?"
"...huh." that wasn't who he was expecting. that wasn't to say that cyril was completely taken aback by this turn of events. if there was anyone who had a real chance of surviving the events of decima city, it would be her.
"seems like kohaku's been treating you alright, leonida." as alright as the region is to anybody these days. cyril takes a good look at her. no missing limbs or eyeballs as far as he could see. that was always good. if she felt secure enough in her current situation to end up five months pregnant, then that's doubly good. cyril didn't think that his sister was into making rushed decisions. "who's the lucky man?" he didn't particularly mind if she didn't answer. cyril didn't exactly spend the past year obsessively tracking her down. leonida didn't owe him answers.
"yeah. the man who usually sits here said that i could give him a yell if i found anything interesting." he walks past neo to set the case on a desk. it wasn't as heavy as it could have been, but that didn't mean that he enjoyed lugging it around when he didn't have to. "i figured that eight hundred mysterious deaths was right up his alley."
he inclines his head slightly. "actually, forget him if he's not around. do you have clearance around here for a decent lab? the usual guy might thank you later. actually, a lot of people might be thanking you later."
They were clearly related, not just in their appearance but also in their reaction to each other. Not even worth an apathetic shrug.
...She wouldn't say that Kohaku had treated her well, beyond leaving her alive. She supposed that was worth something. In comparison to many others, it was worth a lot.
"Either fate or on my side, or I've been beating the odds on my own," Neo replied.
The lucky man was worth an apathetic shrug. At first she didn't intend to reply, but she didn't want to just ignore it. Her brother deserved an answer. "Someone I met. Don't worry. You'll never have to meet him."
Neo wasn't sure what the etiquette was here about taking someone else's work. On one hand, it was someone else's work. On the other hand, you were going to do it for them.
She turned the case to face her and popped it open. Neo stared blankly at some plants. They looked like plants. They were kinda dying.
"you should give yourself a little more credit" cyril gestures vaguely at the office. even if they happened to meet on some random nerio street, cyril thinks that he would have believed that leonida found a good place for herself. spending a childhood together was enough for him to see that much.
it doesn't look like his sister is about to divulge much more on the topic of the mystery man, and cyril isn't about to press. he hasn't earned the right to. while he could certainly be persistent with his work, this isn't work. this is family business. "hope he's contributing to child support, at least." and he leaves it at that.
forget 'kinda dying' and think more along the lines of 'broken, dried old husks'.
"i went to the juno memorial hospital last week to pick some flowers...and a few other things that the police didn't seem to find very interesting." other estranged families reminisced over dinner. the neo family bonded over terrorism cases and forensics, apparently. "i'm no scientist, leonida. all i've got are theories in a jar, and i don't intend to pick one blindly. that's why i'm here."
there could be gold at the pot of the rainbow, or there could be nothing. cyril is prepared to take the chance for both. "how much do you know about the collapse of the juno memorial hospital?"
"Haven't told him yet. Might never." It had occurred to her before that child support would be handy though, although it'd mostly just occurred to her that her life would be a lot easier if she left the child with Delta altogether. He'd be less lonely, and she'd have more free time. Win-win scenario.
She frowned at the specimens, and it only deepened at mention of the hospital. "Next to nothing. I was in the city at the time, but I was unconscious."
Neo picked up one of the plants, or she thought to before putting it back down again. They were nearly dust, and the husks threatened to fall apart upon her touch.
"I didn't mean why philosophically, I meant what tests do you want me to run."
She visited the university sometimes, although a part of her loathed it. The Nerio campus was better than the Sol City one, she'd found. People here were more practical. Intellectuals and academics, as could be expected, but those that had a more hands-on, goal-oriented approach to, well, more or less everything. People in Nerio knew about the scourge first-hand. They didn't dilly dally like the professors at the main campus.
