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!
"between my relicanth and tropius, i might have all hms save flash and strength covered," said J, "but hitching a ride sounds good if i can carry more battle-ready pokémon."
est barked at mneme again. the splashing never got old. thorpe joined it and barked as well.
"Or you could make your HM pokemon battle for their lives. I'd love to see your relicanth battle a scourge sea monster. In fact, I'd like to see your relicanth before you throw it into a death match. For science." She had no idea he had a fossil fish. Then again, she supposed he'd naturally want one for his fossil collection. It figured.
To punctuate the point, she pointed her pokedex at the zorua.
J did not like the idea of sending his fossils out to fight. he did not want to lose them, either. the one he was willing to throw aside willingly was probably the dead donphan he caught with thalia. he passed neo the pokéball alongside the virus ball that held the dead creature.
She took the virus ball without really glancing at it, but on second take--"This is... but my lab's not here!"
All the same, there was a second--a flash of teeth, a grin, a bit of cackling glee quickly covered up. "Thank you."
She gestured Mneme and her splash audience aside, making space for a scourge... donphan.
...Well, that took up quite a bit of space.
She used the same pocket knife she cooked with--she'd boil it, or better yet, get a new one--to cleanly slice the donphan open along its stomach. Peeling back the skin, the blood had already clotted into a gooey black stuff, she worked quickly, ignoring parts that seemed normal, inspecting others that had mutated. Occasionally, she stopped to stab various organs with more vengeful joy than genuine curiosity.
Neo circled to the donphan's back, grabbing onto the edge of its shell and pulled. It gave, but not by that much. She gestured to J. "Help?"
for good measure (nd also because he had no idea what he was supposed to do), J put on a pair of rubber gloves he had gotten at the mart before leaving nerio. he gave neo a pair if she wanted them, and went to help her with the exoskeleton.
a closer look at the donphan revealed more details than J had remembered. the battle had been crazy and somewhat lopsided especially towards the end, and he figured the elephant might have started rotting as soon as it died at the hands of heir pokémon.
est and thorpe called to mneme as they made way for the donphan, wanting more oscars-worthy splashes.
She took the gloves, gratefully, and put them on before reaching elbow-deep (the gloves didn't extent that far, but she appreciated what they covered none the less) to grasp a single muscle. Through bones and a great deal of other stuff Neo wasn't thinking about, she pulled it out.
"Hm." She was pretty this was the thyroid, the primary hormonal gland. Studying the jynx's heart and brain earlier had been inconclusive. The secrets to the scourge weren't there, but perhaps it was merely metabolic?
...It didn't look particularly different. And as far dead as the donphan was, she wasn't sure she could tell anything. Results: still inconclusive. Still, that wasn't nothing.
The gouged, sliced, and torn open donphan was... not emitting the most pleasant of smells. Mneme was splashing in self-defense at this point.
"You don't need the carcass, right? Because we might want to burn it."
J wordlessly retrieved a pokéball and held it out to neo. he didn't know what neo had been seeing in the carcass, or what was important about the goo. but if neo wanted to set fire to the dead body, he knew what to do.
it was a treecko with dragonbreath. surely it would be more effective than real fire.
With her clean hand, she took his pokeball and released the treecko. "Catch," she warned, before tossing the pokeball back to him so that she could grab her pokedex for the treecko itself. (She was not touching anything with her scourge goop hand until after she'd decontaminated her entire arm.)
"Could you put that out for us?" she asked the treecko.
the gecko pokémon nodded and inhaled. a bright burst of blue flames exploded from its throat, and the donphan was soon engulfed in those flames. the treecko continued to breathe those flames until the ground was charred and J returned it into its pokéball.
"not bad," he said, surprised at the ability of the treecko. "neo, the relicanth." recently she seemed to need some reminding about scanning pokémon.
She stared blankly at him for a moment, not understanding--then she realized there was still the relicanth. You know, the one she'd demanded to see just a moment earlier, before the rotting remains of a donphan distracted her.
In her defense, recently, she seemed to have a lot on her mind. It was easier to remember to scan pokemon when in Proserpina, where there wasn't much else for her to do. Harder in Bacchus, where she had a million and one other things worth doing, starting with taking the fight to the scourge. ...Which she wasn't doing.
She released the relicanth, who didn't look too comfortable on land, took its entry, and returned it, also returning the pokeball itself to J. "Thanks."
corall had looked rather tired and confused when it was placed on land. it wasn't even like a magikarp. it couldn't splash about; all it did was stay there, a part of the rock furnishing that adorned the tunnel system.
its eyes were thankful when neo recalled it.
"you're welcome," said the trainer, and returned his -- no way. did the scourge somehow wipe neo's memory clean every time she saw a specimen? unbelievable. "uh."
est and thorpe barked in unison, each of them bumping mneme happily. more splashes, please.
Uh was enough to prompt her memory. "Battle. Yes. Mneme--Mneme?"
The splash master paused her splashing. She stood to attention, saluted, and said, <Wobbuffet!>
"How about a battle?"
With another sharp salute, the wobbuffet agreed and puffed up her chest in preparation for an attack, but Athena sidled over herself, shoved the wobbuffet aside, and cracked her knuckles. <Me first.>
( jesus i forgot about athena wtf has she been doing this whole time )
the zorua stared at the wobbuffet. what in the world happened to those splashes? why'd they just stop after a while? it puzzled the dark-type. it glanced towards thorpe, who shrugged. the canine didn't know either, but athena cracking her knuckles said as much.
the riolu barked at mneme. est joined in for a chorus of barking.
over the din, J tried to speak. "sure?" he said, "you think it's a good idea with them like that?" est was being a rather bad influence on thorpe; whatever the mischievous zorua did, thorpe tried to emulate.
"You're the trainer. You tell me," she replied. Neo was a researcher; if she were ever called to battle on a playdate, she could always just run away. She wouldn't, because she had her pride, but it wasn't like she'd chosen battling as her calling.
<I think it's a good idea,> Athena said, just in case anyone wasn't aware of her opinion.
"alright then," J said to both neo and athena, and whistled to est and thorpe. it was a different sort of whistle; sort of low, vastly different from the one he used to summon wing from the skies. the canines turned to him, est more readily frowning than thorpe did.
"both of you vs athena and mneme."
est seemed vaguely disappointed. it wasn't one to fight. it preferred messing around with other pokémon instead of active combat. thorpe, on the other hand, wasn't affected by est this time.
go easy on us, the riolu said, hoping that both pokémon would at least let them land a few blows before taking them down. unlike est, it knew that it wasn't strong enough to handle a good fight yet.
