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!
mostly out of boredom, sabina was trying to draw up an equation to win every time she played poker. sketching the numbers out on a napkin, she kept drifting in and out of attention. it wasn't really her area of expertise. it wasn't even an area of interest. it was just something to pass the time until ignatius arrived.
a few untouched drinks that men had bought her sat on the table in front of her. either they hadn't known she was under eighteen, or they didn't care--she supposed it was likely the latter, in a city like nerio. she didn't want them, but she had been too shy to send them back. maybe ignatius would want them.
her eyes drifted to the closest entrance again, waiting.
ignatius wasn't sure what to make of the casino, in all honesty. it wasn't a place he liked to be in, but it was an easy place to recognize and go to. the tallest, sleekest building in nerio city with too many floors to count -- that was casino aurora, and sabina had promised to meet him on the twentieth floor.
he noted that the higher he went, the higher the stakes were. there was more to lose. winning was never in the customer's favor. occasionally, someone hit the jackpot, but at the poker tables, the house always won. the bets started at a minimum of twenty-five-hundred dollars, and ignatius found the odds heavily skewed towards winning things other than money.
yet, it hadn't stopped him from exchanging money for chips.
"you're early," he noted as he hovered a few steps behind sabina. he reached out and deposited the chips by her paper napkin. (the untouched drinks were amusing to him.) "i hope you haven't figured out a way to beat the house yet," he said in reference to her equations, "it takes away the spirit and soul of gambling."
sabina pushed one of the cosmos towards him beseechingly, head still down as she examined her results. she hadn't made that much progress.
"i wasn't aware there was soul and spirit to be found in losing a rigged game," she said, but her tone was more curious than cutting, as if she felt she might be genuinely overlooking something. "as for my earliness--i lead a less important life than you, i fear. i set the pcr reactions to cycle 25 times in the lab and found myself with nothing to do but make my way here."
ignatius pushed one of his chips towards the center. "gambling teaches a lesson neither one of us would ever learn," said the researcher, "but i assure you that many people see something in it. this casino wouldn't have flourished to this extent otherwise."
the cards were shuffled and dealt. ignatius gestured for her to take a look.
"alas, my life is worth little to world. death is in abundance," he said, "you may have found yourself a new pursuit while you were early, though. i look forward to seeing you winning against a rigged game."
ignatius swept his gaze around the table before taking a seat next to sabina. the game of poker had only just started.
"i suppose i could say the same to you," ignatius chuckled, "did you ever encounter scourge with those unvaccinated pokémon of yours?" he wondered if she had a sample for them to dissect at a later date, but that was mere hope and not fact.
sabina tried to remember what she knew about poker as she examined her hand of cards. it wasn't much, honestly. winning hands based on combinations, a game as rooted in nerve and daring as it was in skill. perhaps she should have asked him if they could play blackjack instead. she could have just counted the cards in that case.
still, she tried to work off her half-formed plan.
LC9IYR9u < 50 it's working
talking about the scourge in ceres, however--that was interesting.
"i did!" she said, eyes lighting up. "i met the most peculiar ranger after i encountered you. he said his name was raza karimi. he looked awful. i don't know what medical professional let him out of a hospital and sent him on his way to fight scourge, but they ought to have their license stripped. it was exciting though. he let me watch him fight some."
ignatius noted how sabina was currently winning. it wasn't a very good hand, but at the very least it wasn't losing them massive amounts of money. he returned to the topic they were discussing and hoped that sabina would be able to keep her momentum going while multitasking.
"did you read his mind?" the researcher asked, half-chuckling. there was no way someone would have willingly told everything to sabina, who spoke of nothing but science and discussing nothing but methods of defeating scourge. "never mind, though. you seem to have gotten what you wished for." he wondered if any of her pokémon happened to be infected, in which case it would have been nothing but a good day for her.
he also noted the name; it was a similar last name to alia's, whom he had met in proserpina. the possibility that they were related wasn't exactly zero, considering the scourge and its tendency to wipe out whole families in one shot. he made no mention of it to sabina, however.
she didn't seem to be doing terribly so far. sabina was quietly pleased with herself. hopefully pride didn't goeth before the fall.
ar5|gK0x < 50 it's still working
"of course," she said. "he wasn't the hardest read in the world. just a focused ball of anger and hatred. i'm not sure he could survive in a world without the scourge. he'd either have to channel all that emotion into something else--serial killing, maybe?--or he'd just fade away and die straight out. hopefully i get the chance to find out which. i should have microchipped him for gps tracking. didn't get the chance though. how was your trip? eventful?"
the dealer swept a stack of chips in sabina's direction. they had unexpectedly won something out of a poor hand, which meant that sabina was obviously doing something right -- or perhaps it was beginner's luck. ignatius hadn't intended on putting her down, but he couldn't help but remain sceptical of how long this train of progress would continue to hold out for.
"i suppose i'll recognize this fellow the moment i see him. seems like everything is an aftereffect from the scourge. did you see any blazed hometowns or dead family members?" he said almost nonchalantly. "you should have taken down his phone number. text him and ask him out for tea, slip your arm around his and chip him while you're close." he regarded her with a curious sort of gaze; would she do as he suggested, or would she not? all fascinating possibilities.
"as for my trip -- it depends on your definition of eventful." ignatius recalled: there hadn't been much of note, unless one factored in the dream involving cresselia and the breeder, or the anvil that had provided him a weapon to kill no one but himself. try not to probe my mind, sabina. "i had fought some scourge along the way, which should be of interest to you. apparently it was the great dragon guardian of the grove, not so much a guardian now as it is a dead scourge sample." don't try.
sabina collected her chips without fanfare, focusing on the next hand. the deeper into the game she got, the more complicated it seemed to become. she felt like she'd gotten the hang of it, but then again, maybe she hadn't.
elVcpNz7 < 50 it's still working
"if i asked him out for tea, he'd probably ignore me," sabina said. "at best, if i managed to get him out to a cafe, he'd probably see scourge in the shadows and throw his cup at them. i'd never get close enough to chip him. just a a subtle telekinesis nudge would work better, i think. one little jab. he'd barely even notice and i'd be yards and yards away. i think i'll try it next time."
she frowned.
"don't think at me and talk out loud at the same time. i get confused on which is which, even though your voices are different."
impressive. she had kept her streak going despite the odds. perhaps she had chanced upon something, after all. the game continued.
"if there is a next time," ignatius pointed out. he suspected that she would meet him again, though. wherever scourge was, this male karimi would be -- and then sabina would be there as well, waiting. he figured she'd go to great lengths for science, and this wasn't exactly a great length. it felt like a normal day out in the park.
the researcher chuckled, glancing at sabina. "my apologies," he said. he did enjoy testing out her psychic abilities at time, but he was careful not to push it too far. it wasn't becoming of him to do so, and he didn't wish to annoy her as well. "i prefer talking. shall we keep it verbal?"
was it like riding a bike--once you got pedaling, you couldn't stop?
7dphE|_8 < 50 it's still working
"verbal it is," she agreed. she supposed a curious, interested reaction to her psychic ability was better than most of the reactions she'd had. she could respect such an interest, admire it even. "how did your encounter with the scourge dragon go? did you discover a latent talent as a battler?"
gaining momentum was slow, but losing it was fast -- in the blink of an eye, sabina's calculations had failed her. all the mathematics in the world didn't seem to be able to tame the art of gambling. perhaps the next round would favor her again, but ignatius wasn't getting his hopes up just yet. but his gaze towards her was almost encouraging.
"well," he said, his eyes still on the cards before shifting back to her, "the scourge dragon was remarkably tame for a scourge pokémon. it wasn't exactly rampaging, though i suspect it was because there was someone else with me. he is a breeder -- but they're competent fighters. much more so than i was."
he didn't think that he had contributed much, if at all. most of his time had been spent on scanning the hadean pokémon. the pokédex didn't exactly boast the fastest processor in the region. "oh," he added, almost as a realization, "the breeder caught both samples. i could have caught one for you, but alas. i felt that he should have them, considering how he did most of the heavy lifting."
sabina kept a blank face as she tumbled back down the hill like sisyphus, all her hard work for naught, but her mind was racing. she refused to believe some random game of luck and chance could defeat her.
lRXl9k4N < 50 it's working again
sabina had no real opinions on breeders either way. they were less likely to earn her scorn than researchers, if only because she couldn't belittle them for having bad opinions about science, but she also couldn't say she thought of them as anything more than lumps of meat that produced pokemon eggs from time to time. but speaking of scourge samples--
"i managed to get my leafeon infected, actually. i brought him to the amberwell and ran a series of experiments. it was most informative."
sabina's descent into losing all that she had earned seemed imminent after yet another failed round. ignatius half-wished he could do something about it, but the other half of him wished to see her learn something about luck and perhaps come back with a vengeance some day. it was far more interesting than a day poring over petri dishes, studying agar and goo.
"i don't suppose it's still intact," said ignatius, remembering the state of the amberwell when he last visited it. it had frozen over, presumably from a combination of the virus and bad weather. also perhaps some meddling on the part of scourge -- what exactly, he wasn't sure. perhaps thalia could enlighten him; trainers seemed to be in the loop more than the rest of eos was.
"that would likely be the last you have seen of the amberwell. it is currently frozen over and the water isn't quite the same. the red bark trees are still there, but those close to the pond are starting to discolour. it's hideous, from an artistic point of view -- fascinating, if you're looking at it through science-tinted glasses."
the pile of chips in front of her was dwindling, a look of relief spread across the dealer's face.
i refuse, sabina thought angrily, and the psychic pulse reverberated through the room. across the table, a man flinched in confused shock at the adamant voice of a stranger in his head.
Vb7Aoi6q < 50 it's working again
"perhaps it will be my last. if we lost it, it might be for the better. developing a vaccine that doesn't rely solely on one very tenuous source should have always been a priority for eos. maybe having their amberwell stolen away will remind them that they need to invest in science, not convenient fairy tales."
