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!
the fuck is that indeed. froslass collapses, but not before taking out haunter. good going, eos.
her pokemon are down, but physis' anger is not sated. she does not give into it in the hopes of fighting another day. she runs forward to grab the froslass off the floor before drawing the psychic sign - teleport
"Kinda glad you were here to see that," Thalia breathed out. "Now I know I wasn't hallucinating. I think. Any ideas on what was up with that? I've fought the human scourge before. When they lost, they lost. They didn't do that."
Was that what the agent had been buying time for? The froslass spent most of its time evading and guarding under protect. Neo could've sworn that it was just waiting.
"It didn't make a difference in the end though," Neo said. That was a good thing for now, but probably less good in the future. "Maybe she expected more from it--but the battle was already lost by then."
What good was an ace up your sleeve if it couldn't win you the battle?
"Imagine the camerupt doing that though. Not really my idea of a fun time."
Thalia walked over to the room where the woman had emerged from. "What was she doing in here, anyway." It's not really a question. She picks up a handful of papers.
"What do you mean? This is their territory, isn't it? It's theirs to come and go as they please. ...Although I'm not sure that there's anything left here for them."
Neo thought about it. "They meant to ambush us here though. It could've been a last minute plan, but I'm not sure. Maybe there's something worth defending here."
She circled the room, recalling her injured pokemon. She hadn't been to this part of the laboratory before, but it honestly looked about the same as any other room--but laboratories were all like that.
"Exactly. I can understand why wild scourge might be here, but why the woman? There's nothing for her to linger over here--they own this place. Shouldn't she be out, I don't know, eating children and planning to attack Nerio again?"
Thalia shuffled through the papers she was holding, skimming through the information. "It looks like a scientist's notes. From before. Neo--I think you should take a look at this. You're the researcher. I think this might be important."
Y3DjduPU > 50 the papers contain information on the dreamwalkers and the shining city. if < 50 the papers discuss the land of nightmares
"Two women," Neo corrected. There was the one with the sableye too. "Whichever agent runs with the sableye was considerably weaker--for now. The more we fight them, the stronger they get."
Neo took the sheaf of papers. She glanced over the initial abstract, then flipped through to see numerous tables. They weren't the graphs and charts she'd expected though, only a few maps and then endless lists of data. She returned to the abstract and table of contents.
"...They think there's an anomaly here. No, they know there's an anomaly, the papers are about what's causing it." It was a shared paper, multiple authors. It seemed like each scientist writing a chapter had their own pet theory. "A rift in time and space. One guy thinks it's Giratina, another Celebii. Or it's caused by Kohaku messing with the Dream World. More theories too, but--"
She skimmed further. "It's at Lemures. The scientists could enter, take samples."
Neo licked her lips, which had suddenly become dry. She didn't like what she read. "It appeared in January--when they started their experiments with an artificial... it's only mentioned in passing, but they call it a parasite. It sounds more like a virus to me."
Thalia swallowed. Fucking around in Pax Institute was one thing--dangerous, sure, but survivable, as she and Neo had just proved. Lemures was something else though. Lemures was really something else.
"A rift in time and space," she repeated dully. "That they entered and poked around in and coincided with the development of some kind of parasite virus. And almost a year later, we're standing in their empty lab, in the heart of scourge territory. And scourge pokemon infect other pokemon.
She felt nauseous, but plowed on. "Lemures would have to be cleared first, of course. If we wanted to investigate this rift in the safest way possible."
"I don't think we can clear Lemures," Neo said. She didn't like to say it, but it was true. "We can barely keep Nerio clear. Even if we could, out of all the places we need to take back, it'd be insane to put a priority on reclaiming Lemures."
Carefully, she put the papers in her bag. She could read through the details later. "Who do we have that's any good at staying out of sight?"
Thalia ran through a mental list. "No idea where Stefan is, and even if he would do it--and he wouldn't--he's so obnoxious the scourge would sniff him out in a moment. Delliah, no, J might be a long shot but I'm not sure. I'll do it if no one else will, but."
She fell quiet for a moment.
"There was someone I bet a while back. Quiet, and he seemed like a pretty decent guy. Mordecai, I think? We met at Pax, so it wasn't like he was helpless either."
Neo had never seen Mordecai fight. Quite frankly, when she thought of Mordecai, she mostly thought of an unassuming young man that did roughly anything she told him to do.
"I know him," she said. "We met back in Proserpina when we both starting out. He's a doormat. Nice, though."
Stefan would be a horrible choice. Delilah was loud. Alia wouldn't know discretion if it bit her in the ass. The last time Neo had left J alone, he'd managed to drown in a desert--although that didn't disqualify him from being stealthy.
"If we take the four of us--Mordecai, J, you, I--and went in pairs to try to find the rift... that's probably our best chance at all of us not dying."
"It shouldn't really matter... but ideally, you and J shouldn't go together. If me and Mordecai get caught out, we probably don't stand a chance without a trainer to hide behind."
"The fuck is that!" It wasn't a question.
