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!
"i knew you'd win, though. that fact hasn't changed. neo - 1, delta - 0."
it didn't really come as a surprise. he had expected her to gain the upper hand eventually, and she had. he sat upright when a telepathic voice floated into his mind -- phoebe. tresillian hadn't rung the bell as he always had, but he supposed that with a helper around, he didn't really need to. (and besides, he was probably trying to do some sort of elaborate plating for dessert, or something along those lines.)
"we should go down to dinner," he said to neo, extending a hand to her after rising from the armchair. "tresillian shouldn't be kept waiting."
"You'll even the score next time." She wondered if she could beat the star player of his family. Somehow, she doubted it. Delta had been challenging enough.
She took his hand. "I'd hate to see what happens to Tresillian if he's kept waiting."
Phoebe led the way to the dining hall, although a guide wasn't necessary. Anyone with a nose could follow the smell.
neo's curiosity was one best left unattended, iskander thought. he'd seen his fair share of tresillian's anger ever since he was a child, and it was something he would rather not have to relive again. the argument after getting home was already bad enough. he merely smiled, shrugged, and went downstairs after phoebe to the dining room.
tresillian stood to the side, waiting for the three of them patiently. he was unruffled, but he cleared his throat as iskander drew a chair for neo -- iskander smiled at the butler, and tried not to incur further comments from him. "a four-course meal?" he asked, glancing at tresillian --
"five," tresillian replied, and returned to the kitchens.
Four, Neo mouthed in disbelief--five? Under her breath, so Tresillian couldn't hear, she whispered, "I don't think I can eat that much, Delta."
She took a seat at the table, and Phoebe took great joy in presenting her with a warm hand towel for her hands. (Phoebe floated over to Delta with a second hand towel.)
Then Phoebe disappeared and returned with two crystal glasses and a wine bottle floating in the air. She stopped before the two of them, shifting back and forth before she decided to present the bottle to Delta. <I think you're supposed to taste it.>
(Neo distinctly remembered the last time she'd gotten drunk with Delilah in Nerio City. It was a miracle neither of them were arrested.)
First course was simple enough: fried calamari, pleasantly spiced with an accompaniment of chilled cocktail sauce.
"neither can i," he mouthed back to neo once he had settled down in his own chair. "thank you," he said when phoebe handed him a hand towel. tresillian really had twice the efficiency when he had an extra hand helping him. phoebe truly was an amazing pokémon.
he tasted the wine, and glanced at neo across the table. why was tresillian pulling out all the stops for a simple meal like this? (granted, it was a five-course meal, but still ... wine?) "this is good," he said, nodding. he had no idea they still had wine in the cellar.
the fried calamari definitely had a touch of tresillian to them, thought iskander. had his cooking always been this good? (or perhaps it was the company that made things different, better, in a sense.)
"Then why does he bother?" she asked, rhetorically because who knew why butlers did what they did. There was a question she actually needed answered though: "Will he be offended if I don't finish? I don't want to upset him."
Pleased as punch (mostly because Phoebe didn't actually know where the wine cellar was, so it'd be difficult to find an alternative bottle), Phoebe poured two glasses and promptly exited stage right.
Neo tasted the wine, a hesitant sip, returning to it only in more hesitant sips as she sampled the calamari. "Your butler seems to enjoy preparing these sorts of meals."
Unfortunately, she had the alcohol tolerance of a newborn kitten. By the time the second course was out (tossed salad with pecans, blueberries, and feta cheese in balsamic vinegar), Neo's cheeks were pink and tingly.
"i don't think he would take offense," said iskander, "he should have expected it, considering there's only us here." he paced himself, and was happy to see that tresillian had prepared one of his favorite salads. "he does," iskander smiled, spearing a blueberry, "i just told him not to bother most of the time, considering it's just the two of us living here. i can't exactly stop him when there are guests, though. he takes advantage of that fact."
neo's tinged cheeks did not go unnoticed by iskander. he kept that fact to himself, however; pointing it out to neo didn't seem right, and a part of him wanted to see how she would act. he was soon treated to a medley of ramblings on various topics, and he tried his best to keep up with her. it was enjoyable, to say the least.
She partitioned the salad, feeling almost like a child again as she tried to figure out how to make it appear like she'd eaten more of it than she actually had. It wasn't because the salad was bad (it was quite good), but the thought of three more courses was a daunting one.
She made sure to eat all the blueberries before Phoebe returned to take the plates away and present a third course, a hearty lasagna that smelled (and tasted) like a perfect grandma made it just for you.
An entire childhood (and then some) spent in the local library had made her host to entirely too much random knowledge. Normally, it never came up, but now she talked about whatever came to mind. Comparative poffin cooking. The history of Hoenn soap operas. Religious schisms in the church of arceus. Magic tricks. Famous violinists of the modern age. Medicinal plants of Mt. Aurae.
"Am I talking too much? I'm talking too much, aren't I?"
what neo chose to talk about was wide and varied. iskander kept up his encouragement for neo to keep the conversation going. whatever she told him, he remembered; the facts were strange, but he believed that it would serve him somehow, someday. medicinal plants of mt aurae was by far the most interesting topic out of many, and he had spent some time discussing them with neo until she asked him a question.
"you're not," iskander reassured her as he twisted pasta around his fork, "i'm far from bored -- it's entertaining, and i'm glad to have learnt many things. mt aurae and its herbs; tell me more, neo."
he sipped his wine and watched her for a bit. while he would have liked to be in control of the conversation, switching roles for a while wasn't as bad as he had imagined it to be. perhaps it was the alcohol that made these ramblings interesting; neo hadn't started a giggling fit or crying over things lost and forgotten, and that fact alone made iskander happy.
She went on talking as the fourth course arrived. (She couldn't eat much more, which was a damned shame because the salmon steak was quite palatable.) Neo left her second glass of wine alone, half-empty as it was. She tried to speak in complete sentences, pausing to gather Delta's thoughts, if any, although her mind still roamed from topic to topic haphazardly. Drunk is as drunk does.
So she told him more. Her knowledge of Mt. Aurae was exhausted soon enough, but she moved on from there. The Amberwell had various healing properties, although it would run dry if they kept consuming it like this. Still, it was the most potent panacea they had access to. The Eonwell of Somnus Ruins was theorized to be similar, but it was empty. Could they wring water from its old stones? Maybe, but probably not. There were more theories of curing the hades virus using DNA cloning (it was a flawed theory, she explained, starting with why would you want to clone a scourge pokemon as the first of many reasons).
Crying when drunk was apparently the domain of another woman in Kohaku. Neo would not dare trespass on another lady's schtick.
medicine and potential anti-scourge measures other than the vaccines. the conversation had started treading into interesting territory, but iskander kept his interest in the topic at a modest level. he didn't ask more than he needed to; all he had to do was to encourage or prompt her at the right pauses. she brought up the eonwell soon enough. that bit he was more interested in that the part about cloning, but he humored her all the same.
"that sounds like a bad idea," he agreed when she talked about cloning scourge pokémon, "they shouldn't be increasing in number, organically or artificially." iskander said nothing about bringing down the numbers. as far as things were concerned, the scourge seemed to have calmed down for the time being. nothing else other than nerio had cropped up, after all.
"would cloning give you the same pokémon? what happens if it's an inorganic one, like a porygon?"
"Normally? It's the same pokemon, exactly the same, except newborn. It loses all its training, its memories, that sort of thing. It's like a fresh hatchling, although more modern cloning procedures can produce stronger pokemon. The museum is Hespera can actually clone pokemon born with combat prowess, although I think they have Pax Institute to thank for that."
Neo wasn't really an expert, but she did know that porygons could be cloned just fine. Hell, they could breed just fine too. "I think a porygon is literally reconstituted from its data, whatever is available, so it's more like clean reboot of the original program. I'm not sure about the other inorganics though."
"any recommended readings?" iskander asked, "i'd like to get some new books for the library."
he tipped the bottle and poured neo more wine. it was fine even if she didn't drink; he just felt like doing so. "have you tried cloning before?" he asked neo.
a researcher didn't strike him as the type to clone things, but he supposed that many of them have tried something similar before. all in the name of science, or whatever researchers did to justify their own actions. he sliced his fish into many small pieces as he pondered upon that thought. tresillian would have his head if he saw him playing with his food like this, but he didn't care.
what exactly were researchers capable of? what was neo capable of?
Neo still ignored her glass of wine (full now--had she ever had a second glass, or was that just her memory playing tricks on her?) until desert: chocolate souffle, perfect to Neo although a discerning critic would note that it was slightly undercooked at the core.
Neo rattled off a series of authors, some of them for non-fiction on medicine, but a surprising amount of fiction--anthologies of regional legends, collections of local folklore, old tales of dragon knights, ancient plays of love and tragedy.
She drained the glass of wine over a few bites of souffle. She really shouldn't have.
"No, never--only a gift from Garnet at the museum. It shouldn't be much a process though. Once you have the DNA analyzed, it's only the press of an extra button if you have the apparatus handy. It's more a feat of engineering than science at this point. The only cloning breakthrough in recent years we've made is the addition of Amberwell water into the process, but it's expensive. Probably a waste--but I guess that's what they say of most research we do." vertigo
he imagined the process to be rather reminiscent of a cartoon he had watched as a child; three monkeys, battling to save the city of solville. panpuff girls, or something like along those lines -- it was a good show, but he remembered little of it. most of his time hadn't been spent in front of the telly.
"would it function as chemical x? you know, like from that one cartoon," said iskander. he disliked the idea of comparing real life to fiction, but he supposed that to some extent, it was a necessary evil. "i wouldn't say its a waste. tip the amberwell water a bit more than needed, and you might've just made ultima weapon."
