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!
The library was beautiful. It easily dwarfed Decima Town's humble affair, and Bacchus Town's marginally less humble affair. It was a proper research sort of place, and instead of stacks and stacks of children's books (which Neo had enjoyed immensely when she was younger--but she swept that thought out of her mind), it had genuine tomes of scholarly study.
She'd claimed an entire table for herself, a hundred and one books rifled through and bookmarked around her. For her part, Phoebe sat on the table with a book propped up in front of her, flipping pages telekinetically when it was required.
She'd been quiet since she'd first arrived in the morning, and now it was nearing dawn of the next day. A cup of coffee had sustained her in lieu of genuine sustenance. Out of the silence, she suddenly she lept up from her seat and cried, loud enough to be heard on the other end of the library most likely, "Fantastic! I've got it, Phoe, I've got it!"
Then a pause.
"No. No, nevermind."
Scowling, she sat back down. "Nothing," she declared, at the end of the day after over twelve hours at the table. "Nothing on the scourge--nothing at all! An interesting study on the prolonged use of X Attack and the rock-type psyche though. Fascinating, but ultimately useless."
libraries, on the other hand, were never J's forte. stepping into a highly-literate place made him self-conscious: he never could read well, nor could he write at an acceptable level for an adult. his talent lay in music, and if there were books that were written solely in notes, he could read it just fine.
alas, there were none that he knew of, and J held no high hopes as he stepped into the library. he shuddered; the cultured atmosphere of the library hardly fit him. he settled into a seat after finding no children's book to his interest, but finding the atmosphere good for a nap.
he leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs, did it a second time, then on his third, he lost balance. the chair slipped; J found himself, face-up on the ground a second later and wondered if it was him being clumsy, or he had been sleepy enough for a shrill cry from the other end of the library to jolt him wide awake.
She heard a clatter for a ways off--turned to see someone on the ground. Her face blanched, and Neo . "That wasn't my fault, was it?" she said, theoretically to the solosis, but Phoebe had already bounced off the table and was halfway to the fallen man. Phobe paid Neo no mind as she proceeded to the man's side, her telepathic thoughts emanated worry, concern, and a tiny bit of apology.
Neo's lips thinned to an impatient line. "I am certain the dangerous fall of a mere few feet has not hurt him unduly, Phoebe," she stated before following her pokemon. To the man, she said, "Nevertheless--I trust you are unharmed, Mr... ?"
by the time phoebe bounced over to J, he had already got into a sitting position, and was attempting to orient his drowsy mind to the situation. despite the surprise, he hadn't quite awoken.
he shrugged, picking himself up and looking at the girl. "J," he said. he had expected a harried scholar to be at the other end of the library, and what he saw was a girl, not harried, but still demure-looking enough to fit in.
J? he looked, no, felt out of place. "... and you?"
"J... I apologize, I didn't quite catch the rest of that. J, what?" Neo asked after she had strained to hear follow-up syllables that never existed. "Are you sure you didn't hurt yourself? Head trauma may cause vocal disability. "
The solosis flushed purple with second-hand embarrassment. Phoebe nudged the researcher physically, and offered a correction telepathically.
"Oh. J is your name. I should've known." Unfazed, Neo shrugged. "I'm Neo, pokemon researcher--aspiring."
it wasn't anything new to have people question more about his name, but he knew his answer, and knew it well. J said nothing, and glanced from the solosis to the researcher.
"it's fine," he said, giving neo a nod. he could see why she would be in the library at this time of day: researchers saw no rest, or at least, they couldn't -- not with the scourge around. unsure what to say, J offered after a pause, "i'm a trainer.
"... is your research okay?"
J had nary a clue on how research worked, besides a lot of books and probably some lab work.
Neo pursed her lips, a restrained expression of discontent. Discontent summed up her feelings on her research fairly well. "It is okay insofar that I see no reason to give up. In all other regards, it is... fruitless. This library holds little knowledge applicable to combating the scourge."
She glanced around, wondering what a trainer would be doing at a library besides for battling the gym leader. She spotted no books lying around, just an upset chair and a clean table. "Are you lost? You are quite astray from the gym."
if kohaku had any idea on how to combat the scourge without seeking help from other regions, J was certain they would have done so. but they had the eos program, and researchers were everywhere attempting to distill vaccines to curb their problem -- he figured that whatever research there was on the scourge, it was still in the process of being completed.
"no," came the one word response from the man, before he quickly added another sentence to his statement. "i wasn't here for the gym."
She glanced at the table again, then around at the nearby bookshelves. Nothing was much out of place--hardly touched and honestly a bit dustier than Neo would expect from such a famed library.
"Then if you don't mind me asking," she said, in a neutral tone but with the words that were prologue to a question that was none too polite, "what are you doing here?"
She stepped forward to the bookshelves, saw that they were mostly technical illustrations of pokemon anatomy. "Unless you have a great interest in pokemon vivisections?"
what was he doing here? J decided that answering it wasn't a good choice, especially after disrupting what seemed like important research, even if it had ended in nothing for neo. he glanced at the researcher, and summoned whatever knowledge he knew.
"i'm interested in how pokémon hear. their hearing, to be exact."
Neo accepted that for fact--albeit a rather strange fact. The study of pokemon auditory perception was a worthy one if very specific. Perhaps he had adopted a new zubat or woobat.
She nodded her approval. Trainers seeking further enlightenment were a good sign of things to come for Kohaku, in her opinion. "I see. You may have more luck in physiology rather than anatomy. It's only a few aisles down."
J found himself standing amidst confusion; what was the difference between physiology and anatomy? weren't they the same thing? didn't they both relate to body parts? how could they be different?
he decided to ask, even if it meant making a fool out of himself. people who asked, learned -- or at least, that was what J told himself as his gaze shifted down the aisle. "could you show me?
"... and what's the difference between physiology and anatomy?"
Neo was no librarian, but she didn't see a librarian around either. She shrugged; if she wouldn't find anything useful here, perhaps she could at least help someone else with their research.
"This way," she said, heading back the way she came by several aisles. "Anatomy is the study of the body itself. Physiology is the study of how they function."
She spotted paleontology at the head of the aisle, and she kept walking forward until she found physiology. "Hereabouts. The highest shelf consists of general studies. Otherwise, they're sorted alphabetically by region. The 0-digits study a general genus, and thereafter it goes by regional pokedex number for specific pokemon."
"wouldn't learning how it looks like be useful for how it works? i mean, structures are built the way they're meant to function ... sometimes."
J wasn't sure why he was sustaining the conversation, much less with someone who clearly knew more than he did. he felt incredibly lost when neo started on the sorting of books; he read slowly, and to peruse just the labels would be a task, he felt.
"come again? uh, if i'm looking for skarmory, what would that be?"
"Very often, yes, and certainly for humans. But have you ever seen a vanillite? Sometimes form is not function--merely confusion."
She stared at him, only a short step away from being judgmental as she wondered why a trainer would need to know how a skarmory's ears worked.
"Johto is its native region, it's numbered--" she checked her pokedex, "--two-oh-three, so... here." There were several books on breeding skarmory, but only one book on the general physiology of the skarmory. She suspected it wouldn't have much to say about its hearing capabilities, not when most researchers would be more interested in its ability to fly with such speed despite its (admittedly hollow) steel frame.
The library was beautiful. It easily dwarfed Decima Town's humble affair, and Bacchus Town's marginally less humble affair. It was a proper research sort of place, and instead of stacks and stacks of children's books (which Neo had enjoyed immensely when she was younger--but she swept that thought out of her mind), it had genuine tomes of scholarly study.
