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!
"Kindness, is she?" the gym leader asked. Her voice had become a low drawl now. "Or the red wine, perhaps?" She pauses, only to ask, "Or maybe both?" It wasn't evident what what of a drunk Irene was, but only the slight flush in her face and her articulation were the sole indicators that the intoxication was beginning to kick in.
irene wasn't making too much sense, but J wasn't bothered by it. he watched the gym leader offer him some, and J took a glass himself. it wasn't polite to decline, especially because he was trying to get her to go back to bacchus.
The woman hmm'd, before responding to J's comments. "Aah, Mylene, she is a wonderful woman," Irene commented absentmindedly. "Very generous." She wished that she had more to give out, though the sad reality was that she could not even provide for her own town. Bacchus Town was a ruined little place, and she believed in her heart that nothing could be done. Yet, if she could save it from the Scourge, she would.
J remembered the wad of cash the old lady had gleefully handed over a week or so ago. "yes," he said. after he counted the notes, he realized that there was slightly over two thousand dollars in it.
and then J had decided to splurge it all on a casino encounter with irene that he wasn't sure was heading anywhere. "has she for you?" he asked back.
"No, I have my pride," Irene quipped. Ironically, the blush was rising in her cheeks as she took another sip of the wine. "I wouldn't ask for money from another, dear." She was liable to give pet names to most people, even if there was, most likely, less than a ten years difference between the two of them. "I wouldn't ask anything of anyone, especially not money."
On the other hand, she was happy to take any and all winnings that she walked away with from the casino table. "Why, have you?"
"oh," J said, smirking, but not before he concealed his expression as he drank the wine. irene had been all too happy to take the chips from his hands; it was only natural to want more money, it was human to want precisely that.
"yes, i have," said J, finding no point in hiding the truth. his expression was stoic and calm as he looked at the gym leader, and gestured for the attendant to refill her glass of wine. "it's not bad, living off someone else's luck."
"Hm, I suppose so," Irene muses. "I wonder, are we only living off of each other's luck now?" Perhaps it had been luck that kept Irene alive after the Scourge razed Bacchus Town to the ground, making the area a living example of the destruction they heralded in their wake. She set her wine glass down on the casino table a little too hard.
"Why are you here? You couldn't have come to only... speak with me."
Her voice was beginning to trail off at the end of her thoughts.
Irene's eyes flicker as J tacks on the "ex". "Ex-gym leader, you said, dear?" she muses, lacing her slender fingers together.
She doesn't have a home anymore, and nobody forced the woman out of her gym. It was her own choice, her own resolution that had decided that she would leave.
the situation would not have been as amusing had they been somewhere else. however, the fact that they were in a casino remained, and it was because of that, that J found the situation very interesting and of course, amusing. it could have gone either way -- she didn't want to accept her loss at the tables, or she was having one of her usual irene-breakdowns.
"yes, i did," said J, placing the glass on the table. "did you not leave upon your own volition?"
Only after the woman calms down a bit does she give J a small nod. The woman sniffs. "What is Bacchus Town?" she asks, though of course, the woman means, "what has become of Bacchus Town?" She knows very well of the town left in shambles, the gym in scraps, but much like her losses, the woman appears to have a difficult time accepting what it had become. Perhaps this was why she was at Casino Aurora all the time.
"I did," the woman says, wiping at her eyes with white gloves. They were stained with cigarette ash from who-knew-where and left streaks of gray across her face.
"Liberation..." Irene muses. She hears the shouts of victory from her gym echoing vaguely in her ears. She does miss those days. "Marching towards liberation..." Perhaps, one day, Bacchus Town would be free. Perhaps, one day, she would return to her gym.
