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!
"food?" J said, poking at the seafood sushi he had ordered. he deftly flicked the tips of his chopsticks to remove the carefully-cut slices of raw fish and seafood from the rice, before eating the rice. "yeah, you're right. i should bring more water."
If he'd brought food, maybe he wouldn't have had to eat cursed huntail.
"I'm usually right," Neo said, underlining but not pushing the point about food. She wasn't entirely sure why J had ordered sushi if he would only eat the rice. For her part, she picked at the salad, which was tasty but would've been even tastier if she were hungrier.
"yes," J said; he would have smirked had he not been occupied with removing ginger from a piece of sushi meant to be a palate cleanser. he concentrated on the sushi, expressionlessly and methodically removing the ginger.
he then wrapped the ginger in a slice of salmon and ate that.
Neo ate in silence, finishing off about half the salad before setting her chopsticks down, ending the light meal with a cup of tea. She did not contemplate stealing the teacup, mostly because she already owned travel-friendly teacups.
She noted that J also ate ginger.
"Whenever you're done in the desert, we could use you in Bacchus. I'm eyeing Pal Park."
J nodded. he would be back in the earlier areas, of course. he finished off the rest of the sushi by slathering wasabi and soy sauce on the non-rice components, before he sipped his tea. it had been too long since he'd had something else for food.
... he wasn't sure if his stomach was going to throw a fit.
"The same five of us. Delilah says there'll be more soon." That's if they were lucky anyway. If they were unlucky, the prospectives would all die before they even made it to Pax. That'd suck.
She wasn't sure that J looked well. Maybe raw fish was a bad idea.
To be on the safe side, Neo asked for the check. They should probably get someplace where J could collapse a little less obtrusively if it came down to that.
"She does. Lucky to have her. I don't even know the names of the newer EOS trainers myself."
J paid for the meal as he addressed neo. "eventually you will," said the trainer. "we should." he had to correct himself; one couldn't quite work alongside people one barely knew, after all.
he was reminded of fighting scourge with stefan. they were lucky no garbodor happened.
but what about the garbodor bitter powder was about to wreak?
<50 passes out
J crumpled onto the table. evidently, sushi had been too ambitious a meal.
Well, this was the sort of time when Neo wondered why no one had ever invented a pokeball for carrying humans around.
Neo had an impressive arsenal of pokemon, a few of which could easily shoulder the weight of J's unconscious body. None of them would be particularly welcome in a sushi restaurant.
When a concerned management came by, Neo assured them it wasn't the food (she hoped not, anyway, because if she passed out too, we'd have a problem).
She could call out her hydreigon (in a restaurant) or a charizard (in a restaurant), and instead, Neo dug through her bag for a revive. She wasn't entirely sure how she was supposed to apply it to a human.
She gave up with the revive. "Sorry about this," Neo said, and promptly started searching through J's pockets until she dug out the bag of bitter powder.
With a bit of effort, she pulled J to an arguably upright position. She dipped a fingertip into the tea, wetting it, and then dipped it into the bitter powder. The powder stuck like batter. "Here," she said, and with as much dignity (and friendliness) as she could retain, Neo pressed the bitter powder'd fingertip into his mouth, looking for tongue.
J was successfully propped up into a half-slumped, half seated position. it was an awkward stance to be sitting in, but for a passed out guy, it didn't look half bad. just strange, considering the scene.
a packet of bitter powder on the table, a researcher trying to resuscitate a trainer, while in a sushi restaurant where the management passed on by without asking questions. what mattered to them was that it wasn't the food that caused the issue.
the bitter powder jolted J's senses, and for the first time in eight years or so, he actually choked on the powder as soon as it touched his tongue. he coughed, eyes snapping open in an instant. bitter powder hadn't tasted as awful as it had just now.
covered in cold sweat, and feeling rather clammy overall, J's gaze moved slowly from the bitter powder to neo. he was unable to say anything just yet, and everything seemed to process twice as slow.
Neo considered performing a wake-up slap, but she was not Thalia. She would wait to see if it was necessary first.
Neo shook J gently by the shoulder. "You okay?"
She couldn't tell if he doing just fine, considering the circumstances, or if this was still upon the precipice of consciousness. Quite frankly, he looked like he had just tasted a mouthful of bitter powder, which was more or less accurate to the situation.
