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!
iskander nodded, and went to get his coat. he slipped it on and opened the door for neo and athena. "after you," he said. "cypress labs is to the right and straight on, down a small hill, and around the bend. you'll see it in the distance." he felt that athena would likely know the way from sense alone, but he wanted to explain, anyway.
outside, the weather was rather cold. there was a strong winter chill running in the wind, but thankfully, there was no snow.
It turned out Athena had relatively few questions. There wasn't much to ask, not when she had Neo standing in front of her, mostly healthy and not too much worse for wear. She was a different creature from Phoebe. Phoebe would fuss and worry, but Athena was born and raised to fight the scourge. She asked about as many questions as any good soldier. Neo preferred that for now.
At the laboratory, Athena barged in, while Neo stayed by the door to at least knock.
jMwtdbD_ < 50 Professor Cypress is in < 50 Assistant Jo is in
<No one's here,> Athena said. <Besides him.>
Mr. Krauss, the alakazam, was there, playing the spoons on his knee to a jaunty beat. <Ah, Eos! Hello! Do you know how to play a triangle? I'm thinking about starting a band-->
Neo threw Athena under a bus. "Athena can. I need to borrow the labs. Professor Cypress keeps blood for transfusions, doesn't he? He must."
<Sure, in the cold room.>
Surprisingly keen on the idea, Athena stayed in the lobby, and the sound of spoons and a triangle lingered there. It faded into the distance as Neo took Delta's hand and started walking for the laboratory proper. Once there, she retrieved a liter of blood (O+) from the cold room and released a scourge mantine onto an operating table. Ismael's blood joined a vial of black mantine goop (if that passed for blood) and a bag of anonymous donor #P256C3-079 next to a small centrifuge.
She directed Delta to a seat and searched for a decent vein.
She heard voices, indistinct. Theirs was a hollow, ringing sound, from a far distance away--another world, or another land. Nightmares. She remembered it well. (She wouldn't forget.)
(She would never forget.)
"Do you hear that?" she asked, almost certain he couldn't. The hand that held a syringe shook, not nerves but fear, and it showed in her face. Her pupils dilated wide, and the color in her face--already lacking--turned ashen. Neo set down the syringe, there was no use for it until her hands were steady, took a deep breath.
< 50 she gets her shit together < 50 he can hear that
iskander entered the laboratories with just the right measure of nervousness, much to mr krauss's amusement. ('the professor's not around, so lighten up!' or something like that. he wasn't paying too much attention.) he allowed neo to take his hand and lead him into a room with an operating table on it. it wasn't his idea of fun, but then again, science was mostly serious and never fun, unless it was on the telly.
"hm?"
his inspection of several curious items on the table was interrupted by neo's question -- heard what, was his first instinct. if it was the anguished cries of pokémon, yes, they were faraway, and he'd learnt to tune them out bit by bit. if it was something else altogether -- like the land of nightmares, for instance, he could always tap into it when he wanted, but that he had long since knew how to force it away from his ears and mind around others.
"what's wrong?" he asked, watching her for signs that she wasn't doing all that well. she had just mysteriously appeared in his house all of a sudden. "are you feeling ill -- did someone whisper into your ear, or did you hear some sort of strange noise?"
iskander almost wanted to place his hands on her shoulders and have her regain her usual composure about herself, but felt that attempting such a deed wouldn't have been in the right. instead, he offered: "i can go get athena -- or we could head out for some fresh air."
"It's nothing," she said, too quickly and too out of breath. She set her hands down on the table, watched them until the trembling turned subtle and imperceptible at a glance, monitored her breathing (inhale, exhale, and again) until her heart stopped threatening to quit on her.
Neo repeated, mostly for her sake, "It's nothing. Thank you, but I need results, not fresh air."
Neo ditched the syringe, because she couldn't trust herself with it. It wasn't the same as Ismael, she wasn't just going to stab Delta with it anywhere and extract what she could. Maybe if they were at his home, she would, but this was a laboratory. There had to be standards.
Instead, she took a needle, didn't hesitate to prick her fingertip with it. It took her two tries, the first glanced her nail. She collected two or three drops of blood. She didn't need any more than that.
Neo presented Delta a second needle, a clean one. "A drop of blood is enough. I could do it for you, but I'm sure your hands are steadier than mine right now."
She watched him, expectantly.
< 50 neo falls unconscious 1-50 she's out for 30 seconds, 51-80, she's out for one minute, 81-100 five minutes
iskander watched neo busy herself in the laboratory, and settled into a chair as he waited. he was supposed to be here to just watch and catch her if she fell -- that was the scope of his tasks. that was fine. he could manage that just fine.
"alright," said iskander, taking the needle. briefly, he considered the outcomes of performing such an action -- it was obvious to him that she wanted to perform some sort of blood test, but what for? what was she testing for? but these were questions he couldn't get the answer to unless he pricked himself with the needle, and so iskander did.
no sooner than the first drop of blood had fell that neo fell as well. iskander yanked the needle away in time to catch her before she crashed to the ground; gently, he placed her upon the chair for lack of a better surface to use. lying on the floor was cold; the operating table seemed wrong.
he glanced around the table and its contents -- she seemed to have more vials of blood than she needed for a simple test. was it a consistency test? a type of blood held something, and another type held ... nothing. find the odd one out; a simple sort of game that one would find in the papers.
not much time had passed before neo stirred, and iskander turned to her.
"welcome back," he said, holding out a blood sample to her, "i did what you told me to."
She woke up in a chair. She wasn't in a chair, last she checked. Last she checked, Delta had been taking his own blood sample for her.
28iIdg7P < 50 voices continue
Mostly steady, she got back up and took the blood sample from him. "Thank you. How long as I out?"
She went to the centrifuge. Delta's blood, her blood, Ismael's, random normal person's (male, an athlete, 32 years old), and the scourge sample's rapidly decaying blood. It'll do. It was enough. She loaded each into a separate cartridge after a short stay in the centrifuge.
Without any fanfare, she placed each cartridge of separated cells into one of Cypress' many strange, state-of-the-art machines.
"Fifteen minutes now," she said.
Neo didn't look at him when she asked, "What were you doing at Pax Lake when we first met?"
"one minute, maybe two?" said iskander. while neo worked, he returned to the chair, and sat. he half-wished he had a book to read. fifteen minutes was a wait, after all. he glanced up at neo.
"reading, fishing, looking out for scourge and trainers to give out items to," he said. "it was foolish." he knew better now. going out there in the open -- not a good idea. going to where scourge was and appearing in the aftermath of scourge -- bad idea. staying home in juno -- not a good idea too, apparently.
"if it attacked me, i would have died there, yes. but i didn't meet scourge. instead, you found me reading a book there. fishing for magikarp i shouldn't eat because it was likely infected."
iskander didn't know how long he was there for. an hour? maybe more, considering how much he had to set up. he hadn't checked his watch that day. but he was sure that he hadn't gotten too far into the wind in the willows by the time neo showed up.
bQt1tnj3 < 50 and the rest of the 15 minutes is silent too
Neo went back to work. In the laboratory, with research to be done, she had a singular purpose. Delta barely existed.
She lined up her hoard of vaccines, but she likely wouldn't need them. Cypress had plenty of the amberwell water on hand, carefully distilled, and he had everything else she might need too.
It'd been a long time since she'd last dissected a scourge pokemon. The mantine was sliced into two, internal organs removed and quickly bagged. It made a mess. She didn't mind the dark blood on her hands.
Neo made a habit of taking notes, but she didn't need to. The formulas were stored in her memory, easy access. Her journal was just for record keeping's sake. Good research habits.
In her own world, one of numbers and equations and chemical reactions, she crafted a pale concoction. It bubbled. She wasn't sure if it was supposed to bubble. That part wasn't in her calculations.
She took a slice of mantine, all sea flesh and slime, and placed it on the counter. Taking the discarded syringe from earlier (it was still clean, she was not, in fact, breaking every single laboratory safety rule in the books--just most of them), she drew forth 500 mL of the bubbling liquid.
Not hesitating, she inserted it into the mantine sample. The flesh writhed.
The machine beeped, and Neo returned to it to check the results. She frowned. She checked them a second time, as if reading it again would make a difference.
Neo returned to the blood samples. She found Delta's, ran what little remained of it in the centrifuge, and loaded it into the machine again.
Idly, she said to Delta, "I thought you were an agent."
he was very much awake throughout the entire process that neo walked herself through with ease. this thing into that machine, this knife into that organ. that dead mantine and a syringe. something along those lines. iskander remembered the steps, the procedures that neo took.
"an agent?" iskander repeated after neo. her thinking that didn't surprise him in the least. most people were happy to think that things were good and all, but neo thought of all the possibilities. good. "what are the signs of an agent that you saw in me?"
"You should ask what signs I didn't see in you. I thought you were mad at first, or with a deathwish. You don't seem to be either, not in a fashion where you'd be found defenseless at Lake Pax--not unless you have nothing to fear."
She shrugged. "Or perhaps I don't know you well enough yet to explain that."
Her experiments weren't complete. She junked the first mantine sample into the incinerator, and not too soon, because it had been regenerating at an alarming rate.
The first trial had limited success, but that meant she only needed refining of the process. The general theory seemed sound.
Her second concoction didn't bubble. That seemed right. She tested this one out on another mantine sample.
"How has Cameron been? You two seem to know each other. I told her I'd punch you next we met. I didn't. I hope I don't meet her again, I suspect she'd be disappointed in me. She even gave me lessons for the purpose."
iskander smiled, slowly. everything had to be rationalized in neo's world, then. if there was something amiss -- find the reason behind it, and explain that. then when everything was alright and nothing was wrong, move on. that seemed to be her modus operandi. iskander was used to things being different -- every time he visited the library and listened to the land there, he heard things and accepted new words as fact. he didn't know who was right, but to him, it didn't matter all that much.
he watched the mantine fade back into normal mantine colors, blue, and slight patches of gray. the coloration was still slightly off, but it was a good step forward. better than a regenerating mass of hadean flesh. he wondered if neo would forget about it long enough for him to read up on the details about what she had performed on it.
"i haven't met cameron in a long time. not since i came back to juno. you could still punch me if you wanted, though. there's no point in breaking a promise you could perform easily."
"I thought spending time with you would provide answers. In hindsight, that theory made no sense. I feel as much in the dark about you as when I first met you."
A third trial. A third sample. They'd seen this before, and they'll see this again.
NfKHldTm < 50 its the cure
"Maybe I should. Maybe I will. Why let me? Do you like being hit? You're so kind. Too kind. It confuses me." Her voice is calm, but something about it--the clipped diction, the sharper staccato sounds than she'd normally use--was frustrated.
She starts working on another edition of the would-be cure, tossing fine laboratory instruments around like cheap toys as a new concoction splashed into existence. "I do want to, sometimes. I was once told that I can't get everything I want though."
"because you promised cameron to hit me, and it would be wrong to disappoint. you also want to do it, because -- i don't know, maybe your guesses about me weren't on the money. maybe you just want to put things into practice. i don't think i'm kind, but it's in me to do everything i can - within my power, at least - to help ease things. it's not easy, but --"
he took her hand lightly, and lifted it. "i don't like being hit. when you hit me the first time -- it stung. i didn't like it one bit. but it's normal for someone to hit another person, so i accepted that. you can hit me if you like, more than once. i don't care if you've been told you can't get everything you wanted. what's important is that you tried to achieve that."
It turned out Athena had relatively few questions. There wasn't much to ask, not when she had Neo standing in front of her, mostly healthy and not too much worse for wear. She was a different creature from Phoebe. Phoebe would fuss and worry, but Athena was born and raised to fight the scourge. She asked about as many questions as any good soldier. Neo preferred that for now.
