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!
iker is content to read here, even if he's not here to challenge jasper for his badge. nobody really minds the quiet kid at the tables, and he doesn't mind anyone else. the electrike is an impatient fellow who dashes around the library, however.
it's really quite unfortunate when he actually runs into somebody. it's a good thing that his ability isn't static, huh.
the ranger doesn't even glance away from the book until he hears the sound of the impact. it was a really good book, okay. the geology collection at the proserpina gym are really something.
Honestly, Aiden is here more to see Jasper than read books. But the man is currently engaged in a gym battle, according the receptionist, and she shoes him away with a bubbly comment about all the great material available. There are people here, engaged in their own content while he browses, wandering about aimlessly.
He hasn't read a book in forever. In the household, father used to watch news on the television, and his mother's weekly subscriptions of magazines lay tucked under couch cushions. But Aiden has never bothered with that kind of stuff, and his thoughts sort of center and zoom in on the scourge, and how maybe the library will have some useful information on them.
Something bumps into his leg as he's reaching for a book on fossils, leaves him scrambling briefly to fit it back into place. "No big deal." He shrugs at the blonde, smiling as he digs out his pokedex and bends down to scan the creature, sort of curiously poking at the patterns on its fur as he does so.
even without the scourge, there weren't many who hadn't at least heard of the infamous pokedex. aka the maker of legends, but scrap metal in the wrong hands. everyone can only hope that they are falling into the right hands. iker decides that it doesn't really matter either way. he's not even sure if the region is salvageable. maybe that's why he's travelling. to make sure.
"i guess a gym would be a good place to take entries."
the electrike looks up and snarls at the researcher. it's then that iker wheels over to his pokemon and lays a hand on his snout. the pokemon seems pacified.
He nods, enthusiastically. "Yeah. I'm pretty new at this stuff, though. Are you?" By this point, the pokedex has finished recording the entry and blips to show this, but Aiden doesn't stand up. He's seen patterns like this on a pokemon before, but the blue and yellow color combination is new, and it's fascinating.
Meeting a new person is not on his agenda today, but it beats reading a book, so he's not complaining. Being snarled at by a pokemon is also not on his agenda, but if he's startled, he doesn't show it, only retracts his hand and stands up, staring at the text printed on the pokedex. Electric type, it says. He looks at his hand and wonders why he didn't get shocked.
"Actually, I'm waiting to meet Jasper." Aiden rubs his hair and laughs. "The entries are more of an extra bonus." Now that he considers it, people at this gym are most likely trainers, but he's already broached a separate question, and there's no going back now.
"yeah. i just became a ranger a few days ago" thankfully, the treck from juno to proserpina wasn't too difficult. after all, it was only going to get harder. "sorry about jax. he's a little ... overenthusiastic." the electrike gives a little 'yip' in protest.
well. maybe he shouldn't have put it that way, since iker was pretty excited himself. he just didn't show it very well on the outside. that, and he didn't feel the need to tackle people out of boredom. this boy didn't look like he deserved it.
"oh? not here to scan his pokemon?" iker's voice is still at a low volume, conscious that they are still speaking in a library. he supposes that it does make sense. even for a gym leader, the most pokemon that he would have would be six. he looks at aiden curiously. "is he really that famous?"
iker remembers his own gym leader, irene. she was a regionally famous performer. maybe jasper was of a similar repute within academic circles. iker wouldn't know.
He's not familiar with what rangers do, but that certainly doesn't mean that he's not interested. "No, I shouldn't have poked him like that, really." Aiden shakes his head and dismisses the apology easily. "His fur's really interesting though, couldn't really help it." Turning, he makes eye contact with the electrike and tries to say no hard feelings? with his gaze alone.
Jasper's not terribly famous - at least, not from what Aiden's heard about him. The man is a gym leader and a scholar, and that's all his reputation gives him credit for. "I heard he's pretty knowledgeable. Does that count? I'm hoping he's got some details about the scourge, maybe scan his pokemon - heard they're pretty rare, actually." Hopefully, Jasper is not like the library, because Aiden's got no time to sit around and listen to information about rocks, gems and minerals. He frowns slightly, pupils flicking to the books with a look close to accusatory.
"So what's it like? Being a ranger, I mean." This is a topic that he's glossed over, and there might not be another opportunity like this in the future, so he must grasp it now, while he can. "Learned any cool signs yet?" There's a fascination in his eyes that Aiden doesn't bother to hide because he simply doesn't want to - and why should he?
iker looks back to the researcher, since there's not much that he can even say to something like that. at least he no longer looks inclined to run into the people in the library. "i guess?" he shrugs, and adds a small tidbit for the inquisitive researcher. "kinda makes bathing him a pain, though. dust baths are the way to go with that kind of fur."
iker turns over aiden's words in his head, but there's not much that he knows about jasper, not all the way in bacchus. "that's weird. you'd think that a gym leader who knows anything about the scourge would be out fighting." or at least that's what he figures. "last time i checked, i think the only gym leader who has any vaccinated pokemon is the one in nerio." and really, he only knows about that one because of the proximity to his hometown. iker had been recuperating in nerio before he headed to juno city.
"yeah, i learned two." iker doesn't expect aiden to be so excited when they're not the gung-ho trainers that kohaku has revered so highly. at the same time, he does not find it unwelcome. "they kind of just...come to me? not sure how it happens, but i'm not complaining as long as they keep coming." battle
"Dust baths?" Aiden crinkles his nose. Personally, he's always thought that dust baths aren't baths at all - if anything, they're a way to get even dirtier. But this ranger has obviously done so before, and his pokemon looks spotless, so he supposes he can't dismiss this tactic just yet. "I'm guessing it's the shock that does it, with the electricity and all?" Aiden has the brief thought to scribble some notes down, but he doesn't have paper. He shrugs and files the information away for the day he gets - if he gets - an electric type of his own, just in case.
Iker makes him stop and think - the ranger has a point, made a better point by the fact that he could potentially be wasting his time here, when he could be doing better things. "That's true. Either way, I think It's worth a shot, I could use all the information I can get. Hey, maybe passing trainers told him something, who knows?" As for why vaccines weren't provided to them, Aiden has no clue. He's more than just a little miffed at the idea of a syringe of medicine holding back such powerful trainers from battle. "Nerio city...haven't heard much about it, but I wonder what makes them so special. Have you been there?"
The concept of ranger signs sounds complex and simple at the same time - Aiden nods his head even though he only half-understands the explanation. "Comes to you? Sounds pretty ambiguous to me. So you just - " He raises a finger in the air and traces an unintelligible design, pursing his lips in thought. "- 'feel' the right sign? Is it some form of instinct? Is there any way you could demonstrate? I've never seen one in person before." Self-consciously, Aiden twirls and looks around the library, but doesn't retract his statement. Thankfully, he has yet to raise his voice above the accepted volume threshold this entire conversation, and hopes that it stays that way.
"yeah. don't feel like traumatizing jax by letting him cause an accidental electrocution." that, and iker doesn't feel like dying quite yet. he'll consider the option when he's at least a hundred years old. "i'm pretty sure he's not the only one. minccino comes to mind." when he spent his entire life in a chair instead of playing games with the other children his age, iker spent a lot of time with his books.
iker figures that aiden is much better off collecting data from a pokemon center lounge, consideirng that most people seemed to be here to challenge jasper and leave. he thinks about saying something, but he doesn't. aiden didn't ask for his diagnostic anyway.
"...i took refuge in nerio when the scourge overran bacchus." there wasn't much of a sob story there, so iker doesn't make it sound like one. he shrugs. "there's a lot of gossip about him. not sure if half of them are even true, but it's kind of obvious when it's a gym full of dark trainers and his pokemon are a different color"
"sure" iker doesn't really mind either way. he draws the sign for normal - strength and lifts the entire reading table up by a few inches. nobody else seems to notice, since iker had picked a lone table to read by himself. he feels the sign wearing off for awhile, so he sets the table back on its feet before he pulls an arm muscle or something. battle
Mincinno rings a bell - he's reminded briefly of the girl next door and her swarm of 'cute' pokemon, mincinno is definitely among them. "No kidding?" Iker is smart - really smart. Aiden wishes he had a notebook to write down all of the things that he's managed to learn in such a short span of time.
His interest is already perked at this point, but it spikes at the mention of Bacchus town. "Wait, you came from Bacchus?" Decima is famous for being overrun by scourge, but Bacchus's situation is just as bad, if not worse, from what he's heard. "Are there any other survivors besides you, do you know? Is that where you were injured?" At this point, injuries are moot, they're just lucky to be alive. Bacchus isn't Decima, but any news about the scourge-run ares is new hope, or perhaps, reaffirmed misgivings, but he intends to take that risk.
It's not covered in textbooks, but a table is still a table, and when Iker lifts it with little to no effort at all. "That's really cool." He starts to clap, remembers its a library, then stops himself. "How many have you learned so far?" And, he wonders, do the other ones have effects as amazing as the one that he just saw?
"mincinno has really small hairs, fine enough to collect small particles." it's kind of weird to have someone who looks around to be his own age hanging on to his every word, but it's not a bad feeling. "it's not good news for them if the stuff in their hair start molding from a wet bath."
"...about a third of the refugees in proserpina are from bacchus. a good number of them have joined eos." had aiden not been so innocently curious, iker might have actually snided him a little for assuming that the entire city went down in a complete genocide. he almost reconsiders his decision when aiden goes along and assumes that he had some traumatic war story to contribute. he does not reconsider. "i left at the first reports of scourge sighting." iker shrugs. "i was only born this way. no sob stories here."
he turns over aiden's question in his head. there was the normal sign after he left sa'di's. electric sign from the electrike. fighting and poison from his proserpina assist, and a grass from his juno assist. "...five." battle
iker is content to read here, even if he's not here to challenge jasper for his badge. nobody really minds the quiet kid at the tables, and he doesn't mind anyone else. the electrike is an impatient fellow who dashes around the library, however. 
