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!
once a trainer, always a trainer. old habits were hard to shake; a new pokémon often prompted trainers to reach out for a pokéball to capture it, to study it, but in kohaku, job divisions were extremely well-defined.
it was probably due to the scourge; trainers no longer studied pokémon, but instead focused on training. research was the domain of researchers. breeders worked hard to spread vaccinated pokémon. rangers fought on the front lines, their services required urgently.
he watched a pokémon dart off into the distance, and released the grasp on an empty pokéball in his pocket.
These caverns were creepy, man. She felt a little bit like a baby, carrying a togepi in her arms as she picked her way down the winding paths, but hey, he hadn't seemed keen on the idea of staying in his pokeball. And she didn't want to be alone. Not in a place like this.
When she took a sharp curve and stepped into a slightly open area, Thalia nearly squeaked at the sight of another person.
"Hello," she blurted out on instinct. "How are you?"vertigo
J nearly jumped; he whirled around, hand on his pokéball and skarmory by his side. a caw rumbled in wing's throat, and the trainer raised a hand to silence it. the pink-haired woman carried a togepi, seemingly harmless but any person who traversed the caverns, he thought, was surely of certain strength and ability.
"hello, who are you?" he echoed, in an almost similar fashion to thalia's words.
She felt a little comforted by the fact that she wasn't the only one obviously on edge down here.
"My name is Thalia," she answered. "I'm an EOS trainer, making my way to Bacchus." She tucked the togepi under one arm and dug for her trainer card in her jacket pocket with the other, holding the small plastic strip up beside her face and grinning cheesily. "Potential hero right here. And yourself?"vertigo
J approached thalia, reading the details on the trainer card before fishing for his own. unlike her, he had no need of tucking his pokémon under his arm to do so. "J," he read off the card, "eos as well." he returned the card to his pocket.
"so, potential hero." he let the sentence hang, then watched her and the egg.
"Just J?" She shrugged and slipped her card away, returning the togepi to his original position. The pokemon watched J and the skarmory with the lazy half-lidded eyes of an apex predator.
"Aren't we both potential heros," she continued. "I mean it's in the job description. Fight the scourge, rescue damsels, liberate glorious Kohaku from the vile oppression of man's hubris."vertigo
J nodded at thalia. people usually had doubts about his name, but he had none. the togepi seemed vaguely content with being held by its trainer, but J had a suspicion that the egg pokémon wasn't quite what it seemed to be.
"perhaps," he said slowly, "or maybe they just want to televise this as reality tv in hoenn."
Thalia tapped a thoughtful finger against her chin as she considered the idea.
"They did seem awfully fond of their contests in Hoenn," she said. "I wouldn't put it past them to stage something this elaborate. It just seems very...grisly for a reality show. Maybe a documentary or a horror film?"vertigo
J turned, and started to walk deeper into the caverns. who knew how far they stretched, or how long it would take to reach the next city. as he walked, he stopped and turned to inspect a nook of the cave at thalia's words.
"gore is the new romance, apparently," he said, "a documentary sounds interesting, but how much sales can they make off marketing the adventures of rabid pokémon, zombies and trainers gradually descending into madness?"
"I would not just watch that show," Thalia said, drifting after him, "I would regularly blog about it and post in depth theories about what happened next, which trainer was going to go crazy first and which would save the world, and how the cgi effects for the scourge pokemon were unreal."
A heartbeat.
"Have you checked any of your stuff for hidden microphones then? Recording devices? I'm still not entirely sure this is an actual togepi rather than an elaborate monitoring video camera broadcasting my every move."vertigo
J nodded. he had no liking for watching televised programs, and preferred music over videos. they walked on in silence, J listening to her speak, and thought: no, he hadn't checked anything for hidden microphones or cameras.
Her grip tightened imperceptibly on the togepi's shell, almost as if in fear. "You first. That skarmory could be one hundred percent robot, you know. All that metal."
Thalia bit her lip for a moment, then continued speaking. She wasn't really the kind of person who could say silent for long in a situation like this. "Are you from Kohaku?"vertigo
