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 !
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So scary was the story that Felizia almost didn’t hear Thalia explain that the Palkia hadn’t been real. She just stared for a moment, her brain late in processing that it hadn’t been real and that they weren’t all doomed.
Well, they were still pretty doomed, really, but without the legendaries involved it was a slower doom.
“Oh. Oh, okay. That’s… that’s good…” She exhaled slowly and most of her shock left with her breath since Felizia made a face at the trainer and complained. “You should’ve said that first! That really—that was really scary, y’know.”
At least Thalia finally delivered on the gory details, and as gory as it was, it was a little amusing to imagine a great and powerful legendary exploding into goo. It was like a scene from a kid’s video game. Felizia almost did a snort of amusement.
Felizia was about to say a “Don’t worry about it” or something, because she had been shocked more than enough for today, but the trainer beat her to speaking.
When she said it, Felizia probably should have reacted more sensitively. But she didn’t. The amused snort escaped, followed by a laugh.
“And people thought breeders were the kinky ones.”
She didn’t think that Thalia was serious. Not until… wait for it…
Wow. That would’ve been the wedding of the decade, maybe even the wedding of the century. No one could top a human/scourge marriage. “That’s… the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. How the hell did that happen?”
"I don't really know," Thalia said. "It--he?--wanted to make me scourge. I don't know why me. I'd fought it before, once, but I hadn't won. I ran away screaming, actually. So it wasn't that it was terribly impressed with me."
Damn, there were no words to describe what Felizia thought of that story. It actually sounded rather silly on the Sudowoodo’s part. “Scourge marry humans in order to convert them..?”
Well, now that was an idea. Time to look at agents in a whole new light.
She thought about the incident, perhaps more closely than she would have liked to.
"I think it was the other way around," she finally decided. "He didn't want to marry me to make me scourge. He wanted to marry me, and he couldn't unless I was scourge. It was just kind of a by-product of his love. Like when someone wants you to convert to their religion to date them."
“It was a love never meant to be.” Felizia shrugged. It was kinda like the story of Romeo and Juliet except it really wasn’t. “Oh well, I’m sure there’s plenty more eligible humans for him to try and woo instead.” That was supposed to be a joke, but was it okay to joke about this stuff? If scourge Pokemon trying to marry humans became a more regular thing, then…
“At least it was a one off thing.” Hmm. “Did you kill it?”
"I don't know," she protested weakly. "I think I killed it for good. Or at least disappeared it. But I didn't have any of my pokemon out. They'd been beaten. I had to like--will it away."
“How do you even will a scourge Pokemon away?” Could you even do that with a normal wild Pokemon? This was sounding fishy. Felizia’s money was on the Sudowoodo being alive and possibly still out for Thalia. If the whole ‘will away’ thing worked then the scourge wouldn’t still be here.
Thalia thought of trying to explain the world she had seen in her dreams to Felizia, a world that was like a bittersweet promise of what the real world would become; the sky red and twisted and stretching on forever, the trees like black skeletons standing lonely on the horizon. How even she--especially she--had been warped to fit that future, her skin grey and her teeth like fangs. The scourge rolling over her like a tide, a power that she had wanted with the catch of a promise she hadn't wanted to keep. Answering Darwin in his own guttural tongue, not sure if she was trying to kill him or herself.
The way it had felt not real (it was a dream, she knew, it was a dream) but true.
She decided there was nothing she could say.
"It was complicated," Thalia answered slowly. "I don't know if it would work if I tried again."
She wasn't even sure it had worked the first time. She stared at her hands, clenching and then un-clenching her fists. They weren't a sick gray pallor. Her fingers ended in neatly trimmed nails, not jagged claws stained with blood. It would have to be enough for now.
Felizia raised an eyebrow. She didn’t really understand Thalia’s story, and had no chance of doing so until she had a similar encounter – which was something she was planning on avoiding for as long as she could.
What she did understand, though, was that calling something complicated was sometimes code for ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ so she didn’t ask anymore. Honestly, it was surprising that Thalia had talked about it in the first place.
Nnot knowing what to say, she offered a non-committal, “Guess not.”