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!
Take one and pass it along. That's how the gas masks of Decima Town worked, anyways. Mordecai was just happy to get one and decided not to question where or from whom it had come from.
Instead, he focused on the task at hand. Granted, the man sensed that Delilah and Isaac would be hesitant to cut ties with Nerio City, Mordecai still felt that relocating to Cura Village might benefit all of them. Fresher air, quiet, albeit perhaps a little boring, but all-in-all healthier.
Vulcan's body puffs at the man's side. He had a feeling that growing up in the heart of a volcano meant that the Slugma was immune to the gases that permeated Decima Town's air. "Vulcan, how is it?" he asks the Slugma.
The only response he receives is, as usual, a single syllable of, "maaaaa," and a nod.
Aside from two lone figures, the area was a graveyard. Mordecai did not expect to see a single soul all the way out here.
sigma tunnelled an underground path to the graveyard, its drill proving to be a great help in avoiding the noxious humes from above. "stop a moment," J said to the creature, and the part-steel creature paused for a while.
sigma glanced up, and pointed at the ceiling. J's hearing picked up footsteps above, and he shrugged at the excadrill. it didn't matter, did it?
The Slugma shudders and looks down at the earth beneath his heated body. Mordecai raises a brow. "What's wrong, Vulcan?" He receives no response, only that the Slugma began to slither in circles, all in place. The breeder had a feeling that, with the Pokémon's body lying completely on the floor, the creature would be more acute to shifts beneath the ground.
Mordecai gives the floor an experimental thud with his foot.
J stared up at the ceiling and the falling rocks. he had two options: to surface, or to tunnel in deeper. just to be sure, he had sigma tunnel downwards before going up again.
it took less than five minutes for them to surface in the graveyard. J's vision focused on mordecai; for some reason, the man didn't need a gas mask, unlike the breeder. maybe he was part-steel after all.
sigma appeared beside the trainer, shrugging off dirt from its shoulders.
Mordecai grabbed Vulcan and took a few steps back as the floor began to rumble beneath his feet. He did not ask why the Slugma's molten body did not burn him, mostly because he was too preoccupied with watching something unearth itself from where he'd been standing not too long ago.
His eyes widened with familiarity. "J," he said with a small nod. "Coincidence bumping into you out here." He realized that the noise he must have made was what brought the trainer and his Pokémon to the surface. He probably should have thought more about making noise with his foot, considering he could have brought the ceiling down on the Eos trainer.
Now for the important question: "... you're not wearing a gas mask. Is that safe for you?"
"probably," J nodded. he didn't feel strange. he felt normal.
perhaps he was indeed wolverine, boasting an adamantium skeleton. sigma tossed its head about, and flexed its drills. it preferred the damp underground to the stuffy surface.
"... I suppose that's lucky for you then." The gas mask was a little haphazard to be wearing all the time (he hoped to Arceus that they were sterilized before getting passed around again). "Probably, but not a 'yes'?"
Vulcan, meanwhile, slithered over to Sigma's side with a curious expression. The little Slugma could never get enough of his surroundings. He wanted to meet absolutely all the different people and Pokémon in the world. He let out a cheerful, "Maaaaa!", as if to say hello to the restless Excadrill. It wasn't every day that he met one of these drill Pokémon since they spent most of their time under his body feet.
J shrugged. the gas mask looked sort of stupid, he had to admit, but it protected most people from the toxic fumes. he supposed most of the steel-types he had been training rubbed off on him somewhat in terms of resistances.
sigma glanced down at the little slugma. it wasn't too bothered by its presence, despite its weakness to fire-types. "uzu," it grunted, prodding the slugma gently with one of its claws.
Fair enough, Mordecai figured. If J turned up dead with no detectable signs of causes of death, then he would know what had happened. He hoped that this would not be the case. The breeder had grown rather fond of J and did not wish to see him dead on the road any time soon.
The Slugma's body jiggled a bit as the Excadrill prodded him. He let out another one of his trademark, "Maaaaa"s. If he had shoulders, he would shimmy them. Vulcan blinked innocently at Sigma, body bubbling a little higher than it normally did. This was the only sign that the Slugma wanted to greet the Excadrill. As long as Mordecai was around, he didn't feel particularly threatened.
sigma glanced down at the slugma, and promptly lost interest. it was a rather self-absorbed thing, and would rather tunnel through all the undergrounds of kohaku.
Vulcan didn't seem to take any offense in Sigma's lack of interest. The Slugma, on the other hand, was very interested in Sigma. He slithered to and fro, as if examining the ground-steel Pokémon from head to toe, then wandered back to his human partner to sit on top of the man's feet.
Mordecai can't think of anything else to say to J other than, "Nice Excadrill."
sigma, unfortunately, was uninterested in the slug pokémon. it wasn't anything particularly impressive. it lived in lava pools and it'd come across some of those occasionally, but that was about it. the excadrill found them uninteresting and rather dull.
"thanks," J said, at a loss as to how to continue the conversation.
