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!
after healing up mo at the pokémon center, isaac had traversed ceres again alongside tiffany. he bade goodbye to his partner pokémon in the forest, a pansear, and glanced at the caverns up ahead. isaac had a somewhat bad feeling in his gut, but he ignored it as they entered.
his assist, a dratini, came to join him at the beginning of their journey. isaac was pleasantly surprised. "cool," he said, grinning at the dragon-type. the dratini was rather sassy, though. clavier had been at the end of one too many sharp remarks, and the axew was now sulking, arms crossed.
they walked on.
"hey, tiff," isaac said to the other ranger as he wiped sweat off his forehead, "do you want to take a break? i'm getting a bit tired." not to mention that the temperature was getting hotter as they neared the vulcan depths.
breaks are pretty cool, said the dratini, nodding its head in agreement. the surroundings sure aren't, though. getting pretty hot around here!
No lies – Mo had been happy to see the Pansear leave, and he hadn’t kept that a secret. Once the Pansear was out of plain sight, of course. He had started a debate with Tiffany over whether the tuft of hair on the Pansear’s head looked like a turd or not, and Tiffany had steered the debate away from the Pansear as quickly as possible.
They ended up talking about hair in general, for who knew how long. It kept their minds off other things, like how dark and ominous the cave was. Never had Tiffany been so thankful for having an electric Pokemon that practically glowed in the darkness.
Thankfully, their conversation was ended when Zac asked to take a break from walking. Oops, it was easy to forget that they had company.
“Uh, sure.” Tiffany was slow as her brain emptied itself of her previous conversation. “How long have we been walking for anyway?”
"beats me," isaac said, sighing as he slumped against the rock walls. the caverns seemed to span for ages. who knew how long it would take for them to get to nerio city. it had seemed so near on the town map, but it was horribly far after they started their walk. much -- no, way too far. but they'd come to an extent where the only way forward was to plod on, whether they liked it or not.
"it feels like we've been walking for ages."
nope, just half an hour. the dratini giggled. it was amusing to see its partner all tired out. you guys are sort of bad at this thing ... it shook its head, and its entire body wiggled along with the movement.
"really?" isaac sighed. "we've still got a very long way to go."
and if you spend more time here, who knows when we'll see nerio city, clavier pointed out calmly.
Tiffany stared at the Dratini with disbelief. Only half an hour? “Seriously?” The hair conversation felt like it had stretched out for longer than that, and Tiffany didn’t know if she could talk about it any longer. She was going to have to find something else to talk about in order to pass the time.
“When we get to Nerio City, the first thing I’m going to do is…” She had to pause to think about it. Mo took the opportunity to finish the sentence for her.
Get your nails done.
“I have priorities, you know. Like hot food. I miss hot food.” Tiffany dropped her backpack onto the ground and tried to copy what Zac was doing: slumping against the wall. But she quickly decided that standing around was more comfortable by a margin and went back to doing that. “What about you guys?”
“Ugh, don’t remind me!” They weren’t even close to getting out of the caverns. Tiffany crouched down. It was a little more comfortable than standing up, and it didn't count as sitting on the ground. She looked over at the Dratini and said, “Please tell me we’re, like, a quarter of the way through this place.”
That’s a bit hopeful. Mo interjected.
“Quiet, Mo. I’m asking someone who actually knows their stuff.”
the dratini thought about it for a bit. aaaaalmost a quarter, the dragon-type said, you guys are making pretty good progress. it was lying, but it did want to make the rangers feel better about themselves.
above them, a band of rowdy camerupt and numel started their humming and singing. they seemed to be singing a folk song, so there was a lot of stomping going on.
Tiffany shot a doubtful look at the Dratini. If the rule of three counted for all lies, then they were only a twelfth of the way through. And if it had taken them half an hour to get this far, they still had another five and a half t—
Ew. She was doing maths.
Before she could give it any more thought, her mind was pulled back into the here and now as foreign sounds reached her ears and she realised that her legs were shaking more than they had been before. Huh, she wasn’t that tired, was she? It took a couple more seconds for her to realise that it wasn’t just her that was shaking.
“Um!” the word had come out as a strange half-squeak. “What’s going on?”
Mo chuckled at the group, immune to the shaking. You all look funny right now. After receiving a look from his partner that suggested he wasn’t being very helpful, he added, It’s probably a normal thing that happens every day. Nothing to worry about.
On cue, the rumbling noise grew louder and the shaking also grew.
"are you sure?" isaac asked the rotom. pebbles were starting to fall down from the ceiling, and he frowned. he didn't like the feeling of this. "you sure it's a normal thing?" this time, he directed his question to the dratini, which was native to the caverns (don't ask) and probably had a better idea of what was going on.
yeah, but usually we get the heck out of that place when it happens, the dratini replied, albeit too cheerily. the camerupt families usually don't know their own strength.
(dratini, how are you native to the caverns anyway?)
See? It is a normal thing. It’s not like the sky is falling down. As the Rotom finished his sentence, a single chunk of rock fell from the ceiling and appeared to land directly on top of him. Tiffany paled and lost her voice, but the Rotom popped up out of the rock a second later. He turned to the Dratini. So what was that about getting out of here?
“Can we please go no—ah!” Another rock had fallen, this time in front of Tiffany, landing on an inch or so away from her. She scrambled backwards as more rocks began to fall. The smaller, looser ones were the first to fall, but there was more where that came from and they weren’t going to stop anytime soon. Tiffany occupied herself with backing away as fast as she could.
Tiff! Come back this way! Mo called out to her.
“Are you crazy?!” She was not going to run through a rain of rocks – she knew she’d get knocked down and crushed in an instant.
"i think it literally is," isaac said as he glanced up at the ceiling. the ranger quickly got to his feet, worried about their current situation. dratini had said to get the heck out of the place, right? why were they still here, then? clearly, they had to --
the ceiling started to crumble and rain down on the two rangers.
isaac, c'mon! clavier yelled, but as the rocks started to rain down with alarming frequency, the axew found itself on the opposite side as its partner. dratini was still on the other end, too, beside mo and isaac.
the dratini gasped in surprised at the sudden turn of events. oh my god, it hissed, blinking in disbelief. dust scattered, then settled. there was a moment of silence as the dragon-type stared at the wall of rocks.
well then!
"what do you mean, 'well then'?" isaac said, aghast. the dratini had been a little too calm for his liking. "tiffany's on the other side -- right, mo? what are we going to do?"
he remembered that the normal sign could be used to move rocks, but he hadn't learnt that one.
Tiffany stared at the new, horribly laid out, rock wall. She stared and stared and had no idea what to do. Her bible had never mentioned avalanches or whatever this was! It hadn’t even mentioned caves or caverns – she knew, she had checked it before she left Proserpina City.
One passage went through her mind ‘A separated individual could easily be surrounded and consumed.’ She was a separated individual. (She hadn’t yet realised that Clavier was on the same side as her). Zombie Pokemon could easily pick her off at any moment and no one would even know. Her body wouldn’t be found for years and years, and that was even if it was found in the first place at all.
A whimper escaped. She didn’t want to be eaten by zombie Pokemon.
==
On the other side of the wall, Mo stared at the rock wall. To him, it wasn’t such a big deal. He was a ghost and could move through it no problem. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the other two beings that were with him.
Oh well. Sucked to be them. Mo started to move through the wall when he heard his name and hovered back. What? Why did you say my name?
hey, tiffany, clavier called out to the ranger. you've still got me. if that counts for anything, the axew added on mentally. it didn't have a very good impression of the other ranger, and if she tried to hug it out of relief, it wouldn't know what to do.
worrying won't get you anywhere.
--
c'mon, you can't abandon us just like that, the dratini said, trying to reason with mo. clavier's on the other side, and if anything, we should get over to the other side together. or move this rock wall. whatever. its tail whipped about in the air.
Why not? the Rotom asked, but he didn’t move towards the wall again. You’ve got each other, you’ll be fine... His voice trailed off as he figured out the answer to his own question – he was the living, breathing flashlight.
Fiiine, whatever I’ll stay. I don’t see how you’re going to move the rocks, though. Unless the ranger has some special, magical sign. He sounded doubtful. The Dratini was tiny, and lacked arms which were probably a crucial part of a moving process. And as for the special, magical ranger sign - well if the ranger had one, then he would already be using it, wouldn't he?
==
Tiffany looked over at the Axew, surprised that it was here on the same side as her. She was relieved too, but more surprised. “Thanks, Clavier. But…” She stopped there – it would have been stupid to ask why he was here, and she knew the answer already. They were just unlucky. Stupid unluck.
“Um… what do we do?” Tiffany asked the smaller Pokemon, trying to ignore the exaggerated ideas that were jumping about in her mind. “Cave-ins were never mentioned in the bible.” Bloody jungles were, but there wasn’t a mention of caves. “I mean, it’s not like can push through that,” she added, pointing at the rock wall.
well, isaac did have a special, magical ranger sign, but it also had crap accuracy and was no use against a wall of rocks. the ranger glanced at the dratini, hoping it'd say something. and it did.
well, i'm native to this area, the dragon-type began, so if we backtracked and blasted a hole in the ceiling, we could cross over the cave-in and drop down on the other side.
isaac thought the idea sounded a little stupid, but he had no other ideas of his own, so he remained silent.
--
clavier gritted its teeth. if i were stronger, i could smash the rocks. and if you had a normal sign, even better. we'd make progress quickly, but i doubt we'll be able to clear it in a day, the axew said, concluding his analysis of the situation.
i guess we can go to nerio alone, but that's hardly the right thing to do.
the dragon-type crushed a rock with one of its tusks as it contemplated their next move. do you think we can continue walking until we find a bend that would bring us back to the ceres entrance?
