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!
Neo looked at her wrist. It was bleeding. Profusely. Then she looked at Thalia, and it didn't matter as much.
She lunged for J, grabbed his arm, but not in time to stop anything. Vaguely, Neo knew that she couldn't have stopped him anyway. It was a wasted effort.
She let go of him to do things that actually might help. She took the syringe and threw herself at Thalia's side. There was only a small window of time before the regeneration took over, she knew, and Neo plunged the syringe needle into a vein in Thalia's one remaining arm. That was the most she could do for her.
She stood and turned on J.
"What--" and Neo doesn't even know where to go from there. "Why? Give me one good reason why that was even halfway necessary. Because there's two of us bleeding now, and only one cure, and last I checked, one doesn't add up to two!"
J's first instinct while the claws were out was to lunge. he supposed this was what thalia felt like in the land of nightmares. the desire to attack and to kill, or something along those lines. back there, he was calm, collected. except for the time when he was ordered to kill karimi. that was different, he reasoned.
"the cure doesn't make you regenerate," J said, a picture of calm.
he was no researcher, but he was certain that the healing factor wasn't something neo could just concoct out of nowhere. he sheathed his claws, picked up his bottle of alcohol, and drank.
UC2GgFxv < 50 gory reactions to the cure < 50 keeps healing factor. if she fails she keeps it long enough to regenerate at least. < 50 keeps super strength < 50 keeps telepathy shield < 50 crystal remains in her chest < 30 the cure immunizes her against any further scourge influence
For a moment after Neo injected Thalia, nothing seemed to happen. But then she began to convulse, her body spasming on the ground. Her limbs hadn't grown back yet, or even slowed in their bleeding from the stumps, but the Deoxys crystal spun out of her chest with a sickening, sucking noise, rolling a few feet away. It was slightly blood-stained.
< 50 wakes up
Her eyes shot open and Thalia curled in on herself, trying to scream. There was fire in her mind, her skull, like someone was peeling back layers of skin from her scalp, inch by inch. Nothing came out when she opened her mouth though--just a hoarse whistling noise. The fire spread from her head to her neck, chest, ruined remains of her torso and legs. It scoured through her veins and nerves, re-routing every pathway the scourge had traveled, barricading against future intrusion and destroying whatever traces were left. Her rib cage shifted and collapsed, structuring around the crystal's new found absence with a noise like boulders grinding together.
She fervently wished she were dead. And then as suddenly as she had awoken, the pain receded. Thalia lay on the floor, unblinking.
< 50 unsteady and weak like after a long illness < 50 her limbs are back by now
Neo snatched J's drink out of his hand and took a long draught out of it herself. She didn't give the bottle back. It was hers now.
"Have you changed, or have I just never known you?" she asked J, more scathing than she'd intended.
She sat on a barstool now, leaning with her back against what remained of the counter. She watched Thalia. If everything went sour, there wasn't anything she could do, but Neo figured she could at least play witness. Meanwhile, she applied pressure to her wound.
"Welcome back from hell," Neo said. She tilted her head toward the heart crystal lying on the ground. "Don't forget your little souvenir."
"didn't we all change?" J asked, levelly. "no one stays the same in this place."
J wasn't affected by the changes thalia was undergoing. he picked up the crystal that was once in her chest, before kneeling down by her side. "yours," he said, voice quiet, and placed it in her hand. he wasn't one to participate in an argument with neo, and therefore chose to focus on thalia instead.
he was certain that he had always been this way. it was in his blood, just like back in the letum warehouse where he had smashed crates and stared down a female - another researcher - after she had said careless words to him. (neo wasn't careless. she was just too logical. too focused on remaining as she was to think about other things. J lived with what he had. someone like him didn't have the luxury of choosing.)
the thanatos in his heart had reared its ugly head.
Thalia tried to prop herself up on her elbows. She was lying in a puddle of her own blood, but aside from the academic revulsion and a lingering exhaustion, she felt perfectly fine. Everything seemed to be back in place.
_tfzXuST < 50 she can't
She slumped back to the ground, her hand curling around the crystal.
"I see you two had lots of fun while I was gone," she breathed out. "I'm not dead. I don't know if that means your cure worked or not. I don't suppose you have any ways of actually testing it? Outside of calling upon scourge Deoxys again, and asking him which one of you he wants me to kill so we can see if I listen or not. Because that wouldn't be my first choice. Or my second."
She drained the rest of the bottle, which was perhaps more alcohol than she even had blood left in her system.
"Easy test. Machine at a laboratory. Blood sample, centrifuge, wait for machine, results. Voila." They weren't at a laboratory though, and even Febronia Museum wasn't exactly a center for scourge research. Neither Kohaku University or Cypress Laboratories were nearby though. "Your plan's good too. Efficient. To the point."
Y7Brs2HV < 50 she's lost a lot of blood yo
Neo, surprisingly, did not pass out from blood loss.
"stop talking," he told neo, "and lie down for a bit. next to thalia." he went off in search of a first-aid kit. bars had to have one or two, just in case of a fight.
beJEoHwS <30 he finds one
in a bar that no one goes to, there was no need for a first-aid kit. J came back empty-handed.
"Just put a bar towel on it," Thalia said. "Keep pressure on, try and slow the bleeding. Isn't there a medicine shop a block or two down? If J runs, he can probably get there and back in a few minutes."
"No," she said, and it's part squeak, part whisper, and potentially part giggle. "Fuck that. Wanna yell at you more. Not gonna shut up just because I'm bleeding to death."
Nevertheless, she did lie down, which Neo managed by falling out of her chair.
J figured neo was just drunk. he let neo fall to the ground, before surveying the situation at hand. he was the only one standing. neo had passed out. thalia couldn't move. he could only carry one of them.
"i'll be right back," J said, determined. "medicine shop."
J knew where the medicine shop was. the question was what he bought.
as fond as he was of bitter powder, he knew his priorities. he bought two packs of blood replenishing herbs, and returned to where the two of them were.
J proceeded to arrange neo neatly next to thalia, before attending to the latter first. he held out a couple of leaves to thalia. "open," he waved them before her mouth, "chew and swallow." he figured that even if she could regrow limbs, she couldn't recover her lost blood in that instant.
he returned to staring over neo. he pressed a leaf over her wound, tentatively.
<50 it helps
the shopkeeper didn't lie and neither did J's knowledge of herbal remedies. the leaf melted into neo's bloodstream. J pressed another leaf against the wound, and it acted like a sort of makeshift band-aid. the leaf was half-melted into her skin, but once it peeled off, she wouldn't be sporting a wound that gushed blood.
<50 the wound doesn't scar
considering how she had passed out, she wasn't likely to be chewing the leaves. J decided to rely on a tried-and-tested formula.
he mixed bitter powder with some distilled water, and dripped some of the concoction into neo's mouth.
Thalia watched Neo fall, J arrange her and leave, and then come back with a handful of leaves in the same way: completely and utterly blankly.
It was about the only thing she could do, honestly. She really didn't even feel up to grimacing at them. She chewed and swallowed as J directed with a series of mechanical motions.
1Esy6B_K < 50 the leaves work
Say what you would about raw plants as a scientific remedy, but she immediately felt better.
"Thanks," she said to J, and hauled herself into a kneeling position beside Neo.
She coughed, recognizing the acrid taste of bitter powder down her throat. Normally, it tasted like burning. Now, it tasted like salvation.
She sat up.
< nope < v-day nightmare just happened
She lied back down.
In a haze, she checked her limbs (still attached) and then her wrist, where the bleeding and stalled next to a... leaf? Well, whatever it was doing, it was doing her good. She left it be.
Neo glanced at J. It was hard to focus her vision on him, but she could tell tall, dark, and handsome from pinky and pretty on the other side. "You?" she asked him weakly, lifting her sliced wrist just as weakly. "Thanks. And fuck you. Still scary. Still mad at you too."
"no problem," said J. it would seem that he knew what exactly he was doing when it came to herbs and traditional cures. even his bitter powder hadn't exactly backfired on its recipient. neo coughed herself back into consciousness and didn't even complaint about the taste. that had to count for something, the trainer figured.
he held out the blood replenishing herbs to neo regardless of what she was telling him. he couldn't care less if she was mad at him. at the very least, she was awake and angry, not half-dead and fuming. "chew and swallow," he told her, "helped thalia. it should help you."
She wasn't interested in the two of them and any domestic squabbles they might be having. It wasn't her place, anyway. Thalia slipped the crystal into her pocket, got to her feet and surveyed the bar. Stepping carefully around her rapidly drying blood, she walked over to one of the bar stools, picked it up, and tried to snap it in half.
Yn1ldPpy < 50 she does it
The metal snapped with a violent recoil, and Thalia stepped back, hands numb. She tossed the pieces over her shoulder, and they landed somewhere in a corner.
"Super strength seems intact," she said. "Even minus the crystal. Don't know what that means for anything else."
Neo looked at her wrist. It was bleeding. Profusely. Then she looked at Thalia, and it didn't matter as much.
UC2GgFxv < 50 gory reactions to the cure
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