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!
he wasn't here when he should have been. raph thinks that the chill in his heart that is the same as what he feels in his fingers, even in the dying days of winter, suits him. he owes it to the amberwell for all it's done for eos - and all it would do for eos, a pessimistic part of him sneers, if it wasn't corrupted - and so he's here, trying to figure out what he can do to help.
it's when he's lingering around at a patch of broken ice, stepping carefully around patches of black goo that are scourge remains, that he spots it. a dead pokemon, apparently from the amberwell waters, is lying on the shore, and as he kneels beside it, he can hear movement behind him. his absol shifts from his side, looking up to see who, or what, it is. raph doesn't have eyes for the disturbance; he's too busy gathering samples to notice.
the dead pokemon just so happens to be one of the heracross that iker had been beating the shit out of last night. or what was left of it, anyway. it seems that it had regenerated after the fight, only to be taken out by the amberwell. typical scourge.
iker had only been curious as to what the situation was like during the day. so he figured that he'd stop by.
he discovers ralph instead.
"hey. i'm guessing that you're one of the researchers that juturna's been calling out here lately." as long as ralph wasn't wearing a capture styler, iker figured that it was a safe bet. there wasn't much that the breeders or the trainers could do for the amberwell now. "if you're looking for something a little more fresh, i've got a couple of scourge for you here."
he takes out two virus balls. one contained a scyther, while the other held a heracross.
"think they might still be alive, though. haven't checked" he glances at them dubiously. "won't be a problem if they are, would it?"
iker is pretty sure that he can handle himself. he's less familiar with the abilities of this man.
nette + other researchers who want scourge entries
raph doesn't look up from the too-mutilated heracross, but the absol peers at the guy in the wheelchair. "yeah. got called out through my advisor, told me that they needed researchers out here asap." the offer of scourge, he does glance up at, and stands up completely, dusting himself off in the process.
"it's okay if they're alive; i can still get entries that way." to be on the safe side, though, he lets vektor and venice out. the larvesta looks around before settling on raph's shoulder while the kirlia drifts by his side, and the researcher takes the offered virus balls. giving one to elysia to safekeep, he lets the first one release.
phboDAK6 <50 scyther >50 heracross <60 it's still alive
it's still alive and kicking, although it is battered. it looks around, panicked, while raph takes an entry.
"think you can put it down without damaging it too badly? i'd like to do a field dissection here if it's possible."
"...too badly?" there was a reason that he was only able to bring two corpses back, and it wasn't just because he was only carrying two virus balls. the other corpses had been burned and stone edged to pieces.
oops, jax doesn't know thunder wave anymore, does he?
he charges his styler and draws kyurem sign - glaciate. the scyther takes supereffective damage and becomes coated in a thin layer of ice - just enough to slow it. "uh. you want it in one piece or two?"
he really doesn't remember how to be gentle with these things anymore.
the scyther is already starting to break out of its thin case - as expected of a scourge pokemon, really. iker glances at his salamence. he's not sure if the body would quite survive a flamethrower.
the voice of another researcher saves him from having to make any rash decisions.
"hey! allow me!" a blue haired girl dashes onto the scene with ... what looks like a gardevoir. funny, iker doesn't remember them having such poofy dresses. "mary, dark void" 5WcuopCE <80 sleep
huh. that seemed to do the trick. iker gives her a glance. "... that was a move from the darkrai sign."
"yup! researcher privilege! i'm karimi! nice to meet y'all!"
"two pieces is fine." raph is about to add more when a blue-haired woman arrives with a mega gardevoir, and he is peering at the duo as they put the scourge scyther down. he does give a grin and a greeting to the researcher, though. "i'm raph, and it's nice to meet you too."
he does glance at the sleeping scyther, though. "you're a researcher, i'm guessing? can you help with the dissection, then? maybe we can find out what's up with the amberwell."
"...guess i won't be needed, then." the ranger draws a psychic sign - teleport back to juturna village. "huh. guess he was in a hurry." karimi crouches down to the sleeping scyther, motioning for mary to keep him asleep in case he wakes up. she monitors his brain waves carefully for any disruption. being a scourge pokemon, there were plenty. gardevoir fixes those relatively quickly. "yooo dude, never settle for two pieces whenever you can have one! i'm karimi, from the nerio branch!" she did spend a lot of time at the sol city branch, but not anymore. not since she finished her doctorate and research on the scourge populations became more important than ever. "leave it to me!"
she gives the scyther a scan before she readies her bag of supplies to take out a scapel. within seconds, she pins the wings carefully to the ground and serrates the pieces of chitin armor from the body to reveal black goop. nette
"i... am not sure what branch i belong to. but i work with the one at juno city the closest." for now, anyways. raph fully intends to make his way to sol city for a doctorate, the first chance he gets. but for now, he settles with kneeling on the other side of the researcher with supplies from his own bag.
plastic containers for samples appear from his bag, and he passes two over to karimi. "i guess i'll just be helping, then. you probably know what to do better than me." he's done dissections before, of course, but they had never been on scourge pokemon. with his own scalpel and tweezers in hand he waits for karimi to start.
toska aka nette has no idea how to do a dissection ok
"waaait a minute." she takes a good look at the guy. "juno city? wait, i know you! you're the guy that i met at cypress labs." to be fair, she had been so distracted by her task that all the other details of that day were a bit blurred. "didn't think that i'd see you here! well...actually no it's not that surprising, with all the researchers coming here lately."
oops, she should also be putting on some rubber gloves before she starts. karimi remedies that and gives a disposable pair to raph as well. "alright, scourge may be tough and hardy on the outside, but they're much less so on the inside! like um, we're gonna have to work fast since fresh cadeavers start decomposing really quickly once the scourge is no longer maintaining its usual bodily functions."
she navigates the scyther's body quickly. bug pokemon tended to have similar body structures. she works until most of the chitin armor is off, and she starts putting them into the containers.
literally it's all just... a lot of black goop. the original anatomy is recognizable, but barely. it's strange, since even hollowed bodies like shedinja tended to hold the liquid. a common characteristic among all scourge.
"hm..." karimi starts poking around in an informed sort of way. "nothing seems...too out of place here. not for scourge, anyway."
IkNz|t26 <50 OR IS THERE...DUN DUN DUUUUN...
"oh haha just kidding"
1-20 black goo squirts at them from the corpse as an organ ruptures 21-40 something is...MOVING INSIDE 41-100 dude i literally dunno make something up nette
raph honestly doesn't remember the woman from the lab - too many things have passed since that day for him to be coherent about these things - so he ignores that fact in favor of the rubber gloves she hands him.
"that's interesting," he comments while helping her put away the armor into the containers, trying not to become too fascinated with the black goo. "i wonder what's keeping them from degenerating while they're alive, then. and if it's death that triggers the decomposition, and the halt of the body functions, or if it's something else entirely." frankly, he doesn't know a lot about the subject, and it's a good enough place to start his research.
"...really," he says flatly when she contradicts herself. and then he has to hurry and stagger back, because the corpse starts hissing and falls in towards itself. the grass beneath is leaking an acrid smell, and raph has to lift a sleeve to cover his nose.
"what the fuck?" he asks to himself, and looks to the older researcher. "is this normal?"
the sight of the scourge corpse dissolving into black acid that is beginning to eat away at the ground around it has him hoping it's not.
"yeah, there's a lot about the scourge that we don't really know." she thinks back to all the anatomy charts that she had studied back at the sol city branch of the university. karimi's pretty sure that she knows what she's doing. "so i'm guessing that most of your work isn't really in the scourge? guess you're in for a treat, then." she says grimly. having fresh scourge corpses so close by would be convenient for those sitting in juno. too bad that it came at the cost of the amberwell. "well most people would consider death and organ malfunction to be in a single package. not here, though. scourge pokemon tend to have fully functional organs, despite all the goo. water pokemon tend to have water diluting the black stuff, though."
karimi remains calm - it's nothing that really scares her after all the stuff that she's been going through. "huh. not for a scyther, i don't think so."
she gives it another prod.
"man, i wish that ranger was still here. he might be able to tell us a thing or two about what he used to kill this thing. maybe he used acid spray on it. or we could be onto something."
actually, that's not even necessary.
"hey, could you release the other scourge pokemon? i want to use it for comparison." nette
"no. i usually work with regular pokemon; the scourge is a new field of study for me." although it's a field that he can't wait to dive into, as morbid as that is to some. "although if it's a treat or not is still up for debate."
he'd like to have a notebook and pencil to jot down the differences in types, but he makes do with his mind. "that's interesting. how they function like that is something we'll need to figure out, i suppose." the researchers, and the different branches of the university combined; to figure out what, exactly, the scientists at pax had done.
(the fact that his father had been one of those scientists is a fact that goes unheard in the back of his head.)
he's about to comment about how it'd be smart to get the samples back to the lab for further analysis when she asks for the ball. surprised, he snaps off a glove and fishes it out of the pocket he'd stuffed it into when he'd first been handed it, enlarging it before pressing down on the small button.
KXMA|qU5 <50 still alive
the heracross is still alive and kicking, but his larvesta quickly puts it down with a string shot. "there you go. it's also a bug type, though, so i'm not sure how much of a comparison it'll make."
he wasn't here when he should have been. raph thinks that the chill in his heart that is the same as what he feels in his fingers, even in the dying days of winter, suits him. he owes it to the amberwell for all it's done for eos - and all it would do for eos, a pessimistic part of him sneers, if it wasn't corrupted - and so he's here, trying to figure out what he can do to help.
