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!
"... no," isaac said, unsure whether to smile or to laugh at her mistake. he opted for a carefully-blank face of a person caught unaware. "it's actually in the other direction." he pointed towards a fallen trunk.
"it's beyond that," said the ranger. he raised his styler, and drew the grass symbol. the trunk lifted and stood upright again, and he walked towards the path that had just cleared. "would you like to go first?" he offered.
the boy figured he could keep an eye on both tiffany and mo. he didn't want any more unwanted surprises -- one was enough for today, thank you very much.
“Oh…” Tiffany couldn’t say she hadn’t expected to be wrong. “Okay then! Turn around, Mo.” She waved at her Pokemon, who gave her a grumpy stare and took him time turning to face the right way.
She heard the trunk move before she saw it, and even then she only glimpsed the last second or so of it standing upright. She frowned and looked over at the boy but he was already moving to where the trunk had just moved.
“Thanks again, uh…” Tiffany said as she walked through the path first. “What are your guys’ names? I’m Tiffany, and this is Mo.” Which they've probably definitely figured out by now, she thought to herself.
"i'm isaac, that's clavier," said the ranger with a small smile, "and that pansear ... well, it's still called pansear, i haven't given it a nickname." he glanced up at the monkey in the trees, who huffed at the sight of the boy.
"should i? either way, it's a pleasure to meet you, tiffany and mo." isaac grinned, gave a nod at them, and started off on their way.
clavier raised a hand in greeting. sorry about the pansear, but the pokémon center ought to help out a bit. the dragon pokémon easily scaled several obstacles with the aid of its tusks, and waited for the other two to catch up.
Isaac, Clavier and… Pansear. Tiffany always found Pokemon without nicknames odd, but in this case she thought she had figured out why the Pansear had no nickname. “It’s nice to meet you too. And it’s fine. He’s learned his lesson now.” She felt her Rotom glare at her and done her best to ignore him. With any luck, from now on he’d think twice before playing that stupid prank on people’s hair.
“So…” It was time to see if her guess was right (because who else and how else had that tree trunk moved). “Isaac. Are you a ranger?”
"yeah, did the sign give it away?" isaac grinned, twirling the styler in his hand. "i usually don't show these skills off much, but since it was in the way ..." his voice trailed off, and he shrugged.
"what about you? tiffany, tiff -- um, how should i address you?"
Tiffany’s face had brightened. “No harm in showing off every so often, right?” Right. She had been right. He was a ranger. She hadn’t made a right guess in what seemed like a long time! And the best part was that Isaac was a ranger. A ranger like her. Someone who wasn’t a trainer or researcher or whatever.
“Tiff is fine,” she said, waving her hand as if she were waving away Isaac’s question. “As long as I can call you Zac. Okay?”
Talking to another ranger was exciting. She had so much to talk about – so much that she hadn’t talked about with Eden. Eden had an aura that made her hold back, and “Zac” definitely did not have that aura.
“So how long have you been a ranger for? Did you get Clavier from Sa’di?”
isaac had barely processed what tiffany had said, but nodded anyway. it sounded like 'zack' to him, which was fine. he'd never really had a nickname before in his life, so he was alright with tiffany giving him one. "sure thing," he agreed, much to clavier's (well-hidden) amusement.
"yeah, i got him from sa'di. i haven't been a ranger too long," said the delacroix. he had progressed quicker than the rest, though, which surprised him. "but i'm not very experienced at this job.
“Brill.” Wait, what was that? Tiffany rolled the word over in her head and mouthed it a couple of times. She couldn’t remember where she had picked up that word from, but didn’t consider it for too long. Zac was answering her questions. It was a bad time to get distracted.
“Oh neither are we. We’re pretty new at this too.” As if that wasn’t even a teeny bit obvious. Tiffany didn’t even have a single sign that she could show off in return. A forest didn’t seem like the right location for it and even if it was, she did not feel like going for a swim.
“How are you finding it? Being a ranger. Has anything interesting happened?”
"something interesting? no," isaac admitted. nothing had been too interesting, short of meeting his sister in juno entirely by accident. nothing else qualified as interesting enough for mention. he doubted the adventure he had with a pelipper was anything to brag about, and neither would be the encounter with a highly-enthusiastic researcher.
"in fact, nothing has happened. nothing really worth nothing," said the boy as he hopped over a fallen branch. "i guess it's been a whole lot more relaxing than a trainer's job." trainers seemed to need to train all six of their pokémon to be battle-ready. as for isaac, he only had one to focus on. that made his job easier.
clavier glanced at the rangers. you guys shouldn't be expecting anything too dangerous around these parts unless you're actively looking for it, said the axew, scourge is way up in nerio city, and until you get there, it's just learning up the necessary signs before you head into battle.
Well that was a bit of a boring answer. Tiffany almost didn’t believe him, but the Axew clarified what they thought she had meant by interesting. “I didn’t mean dangerous things,” Tiffany pointed out to the little Pokemon. “Things don’t have to be dangerous to be interesting.”
Tiffany fell quiet as she replayed the last part of what the Pokemon had said. The scourge was in Nerio City. Hearing that had sent shivers down her spine, even though she already knew it. “The hills, right?” Bellona Hills were easy to picture with all the fancy architecture – it was weird trying to imagine it being run over with zombie Pokemon. It was such a clean place after all.
“Hey, what would be a good number of signs to learn?” Tiffany asked as soon as the question had come into her head. “Aside from as many as possible.”
everything was about the scourge to the axew. nothing else interested it except actively combating them, as it had been trained to do as a ranger's partner pokémon. without being serious about training, neither of them were going to fare well in combat. alone, the axew felt as if it could do nothing, compared to trainers and even researchers who boasted up to six pokémon at a time.
yes, the hills, clavier said, giving tiffany a nod. it used to be a site for the rich and famous, but all that's left is ruins now. after it's cleared, us rangers and partners would most likely have to help rebuild the area.
"but tiff's right," isaac said as he looked at the dragon-type. "we need to learn signs first." the boy frowned slightly; he didn't know many signs. he didn't even know where to learn some of them. "i think twenty is a good number. we'd get strong enough to fight even scourge on even-level footing, but you can always go one step further and head for forty.
"then your signs would take effect instantly instead of having to wait a bit." he grinned.
Tiffany knew what the hills were, what they had been before the scourge had hit. Suddenly, she became interested in looking at the trees as they walked past. She still listened to what the Axew said, even if she didn’t like hearing the place described as ‘ruins’. She probably should have never prompted the little Pokemon to speak.
Thankfully, the topic did change, but Tiffany didn’t like the answer. “Twenty?!” she repeated, aghast. She had only learnt one sign so far – and she was lucky to have even learned that one! “Forty?!” That would be a lot of signs. No, the words ‘a lot’ didn’t even cover it. She turned to Mo, and held her hair so it was mostly obscuring her face from Zac’s and Clavier’s view, and mouthed the numbers in disbelief to her own partner.
So what? The number didn’t seem to faze Mo at all. Tiffany pulled a face at him and turned back to Zac and Clavier. It took almost all the effort she had to not mention the number again, even though it was ringing in her head. “That’s a big number.” Her voice lowered as she tried to count up the different Pokemon types in her head. “A really... Seven. Big. Number.”
Tiffany wasn’t sure what was more embarrassing: to admit that she had one sign that she was sure couldn't be used outside of an ocean, or to lie and say that she had none. At least Zac said that he didn’t have much. They were on the same level. She had to keep telling herself that. She wasn’t miles behind.
The other ranger’s grin was infectious and Tiffany found herself smiling again. “Actually… I only have one.” She was a bad liar and anyway, she didn’t have to tell more than she had. “What about you, Mister-I-Can-Move-Trees?”
isaac blinked. oh, so tiffany didn't know that many signs yet. that was fine, though. he knew about five himself, and was starting to learn how to pacify scourge pokémon. these things came with time and experience, and couldn't be rushed.
"uh," isaac said, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, "i've learnt five signs. the most useful is this grass sign, though. it moves plants out of the way. i don't think the others are too practical in the wild ..."
