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!
Aksel lived for the thrill of stalking through the night. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. He should be continuing his journey, but he wanted to explore. Who knew what Pokemon he'd find out in the forest? At this time, a Pokemon with flash might have been useful- but Aksel just sent a flashlight beam casting through the dark.
Above him, in the trees, a fox was gracefully jumping through the branches. She watched her trainer, staying ahead of him in case he were to walk into trouble. Fujin owed this boy her life after he didn't leave her there to die after he beat her. She was ashamed she'd lost to him in the first place.
Every crack of a twig sent Aksel jumping around, spinning and waiting for a face to come out of the trees. He could have sworn he was hearing footsteps. Maybe he was delusional. "OooooOOOooooOOoo... if you're out there, ghosty, show yourself," Aksel cooed into the night. Pivoting around the large boulder he'd come across among the trees.
"ghost? i'm no ghost," said a clear, crisp voice that rang through the forest. "i'm a human, really." a shadow cast across the path that aksel and his pokémon were travelling through, and the shadow lengthened as the speaker walked farther away from their light source -- it was soon apparent that they weren't lying.
it was indeed a human, dressed in a clean, crisp suit, and holding a book in his hands. the secret garden, said the title on the book in gold lettering. he was up to the middle chapters, and it had been interesting to decipher the old english the people had used back then. it was very different, and iskander almost felt like speaking in that form of language -- but it was inappropriate to do so in haunted messor rock, alas.
"eltanin," he introduced himself, "but people call me delta."
The boy nearly jumped from his socks as he spun on his heel to face where he thought he'd heard the voice, but echoes could always play tricks on him. Aksel turned his head again, and there the speaker was. Very human, by the looks of it, unless a Zoroark were here to play tricks on him. Even then, it wasn't a ghost.
"Whew! Scared the bejeebus out of me, man!" Aksel laughed, his grubby hand rubbing on his jeans before he held it out to this Eltanin character. He looked clean and proper and he wouldn't want to dirty that with a pair of hands that had been in the dirt too long. "Aksel. Cool to meet you, Delta. Is there an Alpha and a Beta? Maybe a Gamma?"
The nickname 'Delta' just made it sound as though Eltanin were in some secret organization. Maybe they were all given codenames. That would explain the classy outfit he wore.
iskander grinned, and took aksel's hand. he gave it a good shake, which he had been taught to as a child. "aksel?" he repeated the name, and nodded. "aksel. it's great to meet you -- and no, not that i know of." his laughter came easily. "i'll let you know if there are." he figured maybe aksel could be alpha, since his name started with an A, too. zahir, or batin, could be beta, B.
"sorry to scare you," iskander apologized, remembering that aksel had been surprised by his presence. "were you looking for ghosts?" he didn't want to have disappointed aksel, if he had been.
Aksel shouldn't have been looking for ghosts when he already had approximately five of them in his personal computer. But they perked his curiosity and brought Pokemon to a whole new level. It wasn't every day that you caught Pokemon who could phase through walls and blend into the shadows.
"Nah. I was exploring. Thought I might happen upon some ghosts on the way," Aksel explained, sending out his flashlight beam into the trees, wondering where Fujin had gone off to. "I've heard many stories about Messor Rock. Ghost stories." All about evil and playful Pokemon who kidnapped children and stole precious trinkets from explorers, just like Aksel.
But no luck so far. Unless Iksander wasn't as alive as he looked.
iskander nodded. he'd heard that a few times. messor rock wasn't as haunted as it used to be, though, he wanted to say, but held his tongue. there was no point in interfering with the adventures (or lack thereof) of someone else who wanted to find out a truth for himself. had he been in aksel's shoes, iskander figured he would be a budding trainer with a starter pokémon looking to see the world and fight gym trainers.
"well, if you don't mind me asking since i really love stories, do you know a good one?" iskander asked, figuring the ghost stories were a good point to focus on, as it would set the mood for their trek about messor rock. "a really creepy one, if there is."
Shy all of a sudden, Aksel wrung out his hands and tilted his head to the side, thinking of a story. But instead he laughed and tried to wave the other off. "You see, I'm not very, uh... what's the word for it?" He paused and raked through his vocabulary for, hopefully, a big word. "Conveying the horror of the story. I ruin them! I laugh, and forget parts, and have to start over."
Were these just excuses to not tell a story? Aksel smiled though, and it was apologetic, his shoulders shrugging back. "But I heard a good one back in Proserpina. A woman was scared when she heard I wanted to come here. Told me about a Spiritomb who's keystone wasn't a stone at all. But a human being. She said something about Spiritomb walking around, possessing the long dead and rotting body of this old guy who's been around for hundreds of years."
That grin was back, and he pointed the flashlight into the trees. "But I haven't seen one Spiritomb. Or any walking corpses."
iskander nodded. good storytellers were hard to come by -- even if cameron said he was, iskander wasn't sure if she was speaking the truth, or simply said that out of inexperience with real storytellers. he did agree with aksel about the fact that sometimes the wrong method of presentation might ruin the entire story, though.
"i see, and i suppose i agree, but wouldn't you like to give it a shot?" asked the agent, "but i think you've got one now." he listened to the proserpina story, and frowned. this was a sudden turn of events. a spiritomb that possessed corpses -- that couldn't possibly be a good thing.
"that's kind of an odd occurence. you sure you haven't seen any walking dead?" just to make sure, iskander turned around. "... if this guy's been around hundreds of years, i'm pretty sure he's the reason why messor rock is considered haunted."
Aksel snorted with amusement, flashing a bright grin as she shrugged back his shoulders. "Nah, not dead humans. Unless you count the Scourge as dead. But, unless their bodies start to rot and fall to pieces, they're not even that scary to look at," he confessed. Aksel hadn't faced off against one- he wanted to keep it that way for the time being. He knew they'd be terrifying opponents in battle.
"Why? Have you? Do you got any scary stories for a traveler through these parts?" Aksel snickered.
From the trees, the Vulpix had descended, growing closer and closer to this stranger. Fujin kept low to the ground, her head snicking out to sniff at the ground. As she got closer, she was sniffing at his shoes and resting a paw on the back of his ankle. She was always wary of new humans.
:well, maybe. it depends on your taste of scary, though," iskander said, "but i think anything related to humans and scourge is pretty terrifying. apparently, some kid tried to summon the evils that plagued the amberwell, and got a whole ton of scourge on him. hearing about it was pretty scary." iskander glanced towards the forests; he could have sworn something had dashed past them just now.
he tried to ignore it, and continued speaking. "but i guess i'll tell you a ghost story i once heard. so there's this kid. he's studying on the second floor of his double-story house, and suddenly, someone walks past his window.
