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!
Titanic concrete buildings and horde of people surrounded him, probably more than he had ever noticed in his life before. He was a little out of his element here, hair shyly falling over his eyes as he walked through the city streets. His Krabby, Ambrose, sat atop his head like some kind of helmet. The pugnacious Pokemon tried his best to look tough and intimidating, putting on a brave face to hide the fact that he was just as nervous.
"Well, we finally made it," Dan assured the crab. "All our hard work an effort paid off, and now we're rangers!" His enthusiasm covered his slight unease like frosting on a cake, an attempt at reminding him and Ambrose that they were in the big leagues now. So many reasons to be nervous: a bigger base of operations, a new responsibility placed on their shoulders, the constant looming threat of Scourge . . . all of that had to be put aside. It was time to be strong.
Ambrose simply rolled his eyes, giving Dan a light thwack to the head. "Right, I guess I should calm down a bit," he sheepishly responded. "Thanks.
We've got a whole big city to explore before, right? I bet there's a ton of stuff for us to do here. Anywhere you want to go?" The Krabby simply shrugged. The city was big and grey and it all looked the same to him, so he didn't really give a crap where Dan wanted to go. So long as the two got to some water eventually, everything was okay.
While Dan was apprehensive, he was a lot more impressed by Proserpina than his surly Pokemon was. He walked at a leisurely pace, making sure to take in all of the city's sights while he still had the chance. Hopefully he'd still be paying attention as he wandered.
milly was also quite taken to proserpina, but for different reasons than the ranger and his partner. she had spent her entire childhood in nerio city, the den of corruption and dirty money. she understood that no city was spared from common villany, but proserpina did a much better job of hiding it.
(she suspects that if she ventured down to grimer's court, that would no longer be the case).
she walks down the street with a ditto wrapped around her neck as a rather fashionable yellow neck wrap. bonding with a ditto was the best thing that any breeder could do for themselves. a happy ditto meant better breeding pairs. admittedly, milly didn't know much about keeping a ditto happy, but it was content to look pretty for its trainer's sake. she was lucky enough to get one of the agreeable ones, it seems.
that didn't mean that the ditto didn't reach up to wave at the passerby when the opportunity presented itself. milly does her best to seem nonchalant about the fact that her scarf is waving at every person who moved past.
maybe this wasn't..such a good idea after all. Crash
The dynamic duo continued walking down the street, each constantly fixated on something. Dan's continued zooming from sight to sight, moving at an uneven pace as he kept taking in everything the city had to offer. Ambrose, meanwhile, took much more interest in any Pokemon he saw. Every time he passed one he stared intently, as if challenging them to a territorial staredown. Of course, much like everyone else in the city, most Pokemon were too busy to play Ambrose's games. He sighed somewhat sadly, as if irritated by rejection.
Of course, eventually something else caught the crab's eye. A scarf billowed in the wind, changing directions constantly as if waving to something. It actually looked pretty cool! He stared intently at the scarf as he and Dan approached, occasionally checking Dan's hair to see if the wind would do the same to him.
It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't moving at all. Something seemed strange here.
As Dan stopped to marvel some buildings Ambrose turned toward the odd, windy scarf, eyes narrowing somewhat suspiciously. He may not have been a smart crab, but he sure as heck knew how wind worked.
Ambrose tilted its head curiously for a second. It saw Dittos around back at Dan's home from time to time, but a scarf Ditto? Must've been a pretty imaginative one. He peered around, looking for some eyes: just because it was a scarf didn't mean it was spared from an Ambrose staredown!
"Sorry about Ambrose here," Dan sheepishly added, finally noticing the person his Krabby was looking at. "He's been a bit on-edge since we got here a few days back.
milly smiles courteously as she removes the cloth from her mouth. "i would imagine, after what's happened in ceres forest. i think the entire city has been a bit on edge." code red had been lifted, but the peoples' spirits were different.
hades agents this far west. it was almost unimaginable, if not for all the reports. "hello, dan. my name is milliarde mesphistopheles." she pauses for a second. "you may call me milly." it was always a mouthful for new acquaintences.
"...is your krabby vaccinated?" the color wasn't...as orange as it could be, but she could be mistaken. the hues were relatively close. Crash
"Nice to meet you, Milly," Dan said. "No need to worry about Ambrose. Got him vaccinated before I signed up for the Corps." The crab stood up as tall as possible, spreading his arms and proudly showing off his near-golden color. If there was a spotlight on Dan's head, Ambrose would definitely be mugging for it with all his might.
"Anyway, you said you're a breeder?" he asked. "How've you been enjoying it?" To a degree he was a bit curious about the Scourge's impact on the industry, and maybe a bit worried about how it was impacting his parents. Maybe a nice chat with a breeder would give him a bit of an eye into that . . .
actually, it's a little hard to miss the capture styler on his arm. the one on every ranger's arm.
"...the corps?" she hasn't really heard of the ranger's union being referred to as such. "i imagine that there must be a lot of unity among the rangers."
there were societies for the breeders, certainly, but sometimes it felt more like a status thing to milly than an actual support group. rivalry is common, and camaderie seemed to only be found when faced with another society.
"for eos, yes." it was less lucrative than freelancing, certainly, but milly didn't mind so much. that isn't why she signed up to begin with. "it's...more work than it would have been a few years back, but i will manage." there were plenty of variables back then, and vaccination only throws a wrench in the works.
"Seems like it so far," Dan remarked, "Although as a newcomer I still have yet to meet many of the others. I'm sure I'll end up finding a few other soon, though. How about between breeders?"
Right, vaccines. Between moving recently and buying Pokemon vaccinations, Dan figured his family must have taken a pretty harsh financial hit. He knew once he started scrounging up some cash of his own he'd be forwarding it to them. It wouldn't be much, but it'd help.
"What kind of Pokemon do you raise?" he asked, a little bit curious. Some specialized, some bred pretty much anything . . . and judging by that ditto-Scarf, whichever types Milly bred must've been pretty talented!
"...i met a few at the gala" she remembers the evening with luke, masami, and grayson. grayson. to her credit, milly doesn't make a face at the memory. "some were pleasant. others less so." she doesn't care to specify. they were making small talk, and an outsider probably didn't care too much to know the exact details.
milly braces herself for whatever comes next. not many people were too impressed by the fact that she specialized in some...less than popular groups. "mineral, field, humanlike egg groups mostly." her expression is serene, but she practically expects criticism at this point. not that it would deter her from her usual work.
the ditto flutters proudly. milly wouldn't be getting anywhere with the genderless mineral pokemon without its help. Crash
Certainly not the most well-known egg groups, but Dan certainly thought they were interesting ones! Mineral breeders in particular his family thought rather highly of: they certainly weren't the easiest Pokemon to work with unless a Ditto was on hand, leaving the Mineral group an untapped but very valuable niche. "Cool choices!" he commented. "My parents were in the field too, but they preferred the Water groups and birds. Not like there was much else to work with in our town, though."
Ambrose couldn't help but grin cockily at Dan's mention. He was trained to be a ranger partner, not breeding stock, but that didn't stop him from taking pride in his heritage.
"What brings you to the city?" Dan asked. She seemed too collected to be a newcomer like him, after all. Maybe she was a local?
milly looks at him curiously. "and you decided not to become a breeder yourself?" it seemed to be the natural choice, to follow in the career choices of one's parent. she supposes that he must have more resolve than she does.
"...i like proserpina. it is a much safer city than nerio." actually, that was a big simplification. it is likely that proserpina is no better than nerio, but there were clear distinct divisions between the black and the white, districts to seperate the good from the rotten. that isn't the case in nerio, where black and white bleed all over to form a putrid grey that contradicts everything that it touches. "i don't need to be bound to any particular place for my work." Crash
"Maybe in better times, I would have," Dan admitted. He hadn't even considered training a Pokemon until word of the Scourge hit. Maybe if the virus had never hit he would still be in the family business, and maybe he'd even take the reigns when his parents were too old to. "It's just . . .
It was my suggestion that they moved here, and now that all of this is happening I feel a bit guilty about it. So I decided to join the rangers in order to try and keep the region safe. And maybe, if something bad happens in Sol, I'll be able to help keep them safe too . . ."
The comment about being bound to a specific place piqued Dan's curiosity. He was used to breeders remaining on ranches, their customers usually coming to them rather than vice-versa. Of course, the Hades Virus probably changed everything, didn't it?
"sol city is a long way away from the scourge. i think they should be alright." she smiles a little. indeed, they were farther away from the scourge than anyone else in the region.
the scourge had been considerably less kind to her city. neighborhoods had been uprooted. businesses ransacked as people scrambled for the necessities of barracading themselves in. records lost in the ensuing chaos. Crash
Dan smiled back, very relieved by the breeder's words. At least if he was going to bring his parents to a zombie-infested hellhole, they would be in one of the few known safe zones.
Okay, that was a little harsh. The Kohaku region was beautiful and one of the technological capitals of the world. It seemed like a perfect idea moving there . . . and it wasn't his fault all of this was about to happen.
"Have you been there recently?" he asked. The journey from Sol City easily took a few weeks, mainly due to him not knowing the way very well. Who knows how much could have changed while he was gone?
