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!
Maybe the end result of defeating the scourge would cause the Pokemon League to decide measures had to be put in place against such a catastrophe ever happening again. They would form an organization called Lux, with the purpose of uniting and protecting all the regions under one common government.
except sophia she didn't want safety to be random. she wanted to believed that safety could be individually earned. that if she grew strong enough, nothing could dream of touching her. she wanted a promise, an assurance of what the future will bring, no matter how great or terrible it was.
she wanted to be stronger. she wanted be alone without being lonely.
The happiny scurried back over, exhausted from a ten minute long work day of waving at people. She tugged at Thalia's leg to be carried, and she obliged her, stooping down for a moment to pick up the baby pokemon.
"You're heavy," she grumbled, but they were empty words. Not like it would have mattered to Thalia if the happiny was fifty pounds or one fifty, anymore.
"i grew up alone in nerio." daniel wasn't really home often enough for her to say otherwise. "between the scourge and nerio, i have lost equally to both."
if there was a toll for becoming a hades agent, then she thinks that she has paid it, no matter how unwillingly. if there was a toll for being human, then she thinks that she has paid that too. "even if the region were to be saved tomorrow... i am not sure if i am capable of hoping anymore."
re: thalia picked the most depressing person to ever have a morning latte conversation with.
"she'll be double her weight, given enough time." she smiles a little, remembering the blisseys that had been managing the restorative machines at pax institute. some of them are now scourge, and even heavier than the norm.
"The world is a cruel place," Thalia said. "The scourge undoubtedly make it crueler. I hope that when it is gone, people can turn their strength to rebuilding a better world than the one we knew before."
The happiny squirmed in her arms and Thalia shifted her weight to her back leg.
"She'll expect me to carry her even then, probably."
her brother had been like that. zahir had been like that. in the end, what did it bring them? possibly one string of failures after another.
(physis cannot say that she cares much for zahir's methods - winning by giving up. it is the most ludicrous thing that she has ever had the misfortune of witnessing).
she allows a passing server to take her cup away. the scourge are only a way for people to channel what they already are. monsters scraping at the ribs of other monsters.
"you have a lot of faith in people."
it must hurt like the worst betrayal when they break that trust. sophia finds herself feeling something akin to pity.
sophia tries to imagine thalia (tiny, five-foot thalia) carrying a blissey on her back. she laughs a little.
"What other option is there? To face the world and not believe in people? No, I think most people are good. Most people only want to do good, and would only do good, if they saw that they had a choice. No matter how far people go down another path, they always have the choice to turn back, up until the very last moment. No one is inherently monstrous."
Except you, a voice in the back of her head hissed, but Thalia ignored it, focused on the warm weight of the happiny in her arms.
if physis cared to, she would have laughed back at thalia's words. no one is inherently monstrous? then what are you? who was the woman that she had met at decima town?
physis can vanquish them too. perhaps she had been a vampire in another life, keeping the ambitious from toeing the line by making sure that they hit the ground before they ever make it.
she shrugs. "some manage fine."
(they are all monsters. move along, nothing to see here.)
"most people? that's ... a lot." her eyes flicker to the crowds around them. sophia isn't so naive as to take her words at face value, not after her experiences with zahir. she is not listening to truth, she is not listening to gospel. she is only listening to one story of what the world may be. "what would you consider to be the last moment?" death, maybe, but there were always the cardinal sins.
sophia jerks a little when she realizes how long she's been sitting here without a drink. surely thirty minutes have passed already. as if on cue, a passing server asks her if he could help her. sophia decides on a hot chocolate this time - anything to warm her hands, really.
"Do they manage? If you wake up in a world with no hope in other people, is that managing? Is that even living, or just surviving?"
Thalia cocked her head quizzically; she seemed genuinely interested in the answer.
"The last moment is the moment they decide there's no other path for them but the path that hurts other people. But even once you've started walking, you can always get off. If you remember how. You can always atone." Thalia thought of her own sins, weighed on her back like a black stone she couldn't set aside. "But yes, most people is what I believe. I've never seen proof that lead me to believe otherwise."
that's a little too blunt for even sophia to ignore.
"by your definition, i lived once. in hindsight, i fail to see the difference."
(you did not want to deny sophia any longer)
her cold hands recieve her drink graciously, and sophia passes the freckled server a few more bills. does she even remember what those years felt like? do her bones remember?
"it didn't last. i improvised." or rather, she made the choice that she should have chosen from the beginning.
no, it didn't matter if cruelty and distrust weren't righteous. they have weight in the world that she knows, and they will continue to matter to sophia and physis both.
"i value a world that endures. survival only adds to the value of what it stands for."
she thinks back to her days in castle folorn, how much she hated the place. not so much as the regular dream world, though. she would take the molding walls of her family estate, the chilly drafts of the west wing over the land on any good day.
sophia shifts a little in her seat for reasons other than being a hades agent who is speaking to an eos trainer. this part is becoming uncomfortably like courting zahir back when he was probably less crazy than he is now.
she might have even blushed a little as her mind shifts a little too far away from proserpina and a little too far into nerio city, several years prior.
but this is not nerio city, and the calendar has been changed.
"then i suppose that you are lucky for living in such a world."
perhaps she will be different in a few years time. 2tsunz
"nothing in it?" sophia is genuinely confused for a second before realizing that she probably wouldn't be too amiss in using zahir as a reference frame. "just because a person doesn't see anything beyond what they want to see does not mean that nothing else exists."
just because her brother tells her that her parents are on vacation does not mean that they do not cool in their graves. just because she tells herself that her heart is dead does not mean that she won't take a bullet for a shell of a man.
"the 'point' will be defined by whatever is strong enough to survive."
that's how it's always been, and how things will be. whether eos wins or the scourge wins - the result should be conclusive. whatever happens, she thinks that she can accept it.