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!
ikram knew when to talk and when not to. she walked silently after cyril, sidestepping debris and broken parts of stairs that would otherwise have her crashing down to the bottom floors. the girl had no intention of dying a short, abrupt death like that -- she moved away from them, and made use of her natural agility to get herself by the worst of it. cyril's noivern had come for her, but ikram shook her head and declined the help. she had it wait for just a moment longer. it would be more beneficial for her to study something alone -- they were supposed to go look at lyanna, but she wasn't interested in a person that wasn't there. neither of them were mediums.
she passed through the last of the passageway, and came out to a small room. the glass looking into it had shattered, leaving a gap where it used to lay. ikram clambered through it, and was careful not to cut herself doing so.
the surveillance room was relatively clean and devoid of much destruction. she suspected that nothing there would work -- a few taps here and there confirmed her suspicions. maybe the backup generator had also shorted out whatever else had remained working in the aftermath. she took a few notes on the state of the room, before going back to where the noivern was.
ikram was taken to the third floor.
"there's nothing to see, right?" ikram said, glancing over the bare room. even the equipment had been taken away. she walked over to where the bed used to be. "oh -- how did she leave? the dream world, i mean. did she just wake up, or die without even waking up?"
given everything, it seemed unlikely. someone who spent time in the dream world had to be lying down, or at least asleep. maybe she had been killed while she was still asleep? that seemed unlikely, too. she would have thought that an elite member would be slightly more competent than that.
cyril supposes that he should be grateful that the room is cleared if it meant that the police were actually doing their jobs. at the same time, it's also a hindrance to their not-quite-legal investigation.
"who knows? whether she's waking or dying-" the reporter crouches and notes where the police had made tape marks to denote the location of the furniture. white strips of tape made 'x's over the places where forensics were able to find footprints. two sets. "doesn't make much of a difference to the witnesses. without a body or surveillance video, there's little that forensics could do."
cyril inspects the ground outside of the door, as if he was looking for something that he knew was there. it doesn't take long to find what he's looking for. "police were able to match the blood traces outside the room to lyanna, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she died here. there's not nearly enough to indicate that she bled out."
he imagines that a comatose lyanna wouldn't be that hard to kill. so why bother going through with all this trouble? was one high-profile death simply not enough?
"you took a bit of time getting here." cyril straightens up his posture. "what did you find?"
"not a lot," said ikram, truthfully. the surveillance room had only served to confirm her suspicions and nothing more. her hypothesis had been proven right, and she was satisfied with that. "i took a bit of a detour, wasn't really repaid in effort. wasted time, but i suppose it was a gamble from the beginning, anyway."
he smiles. "i'm pretty sure that holds true for out entire investigation." it's been a few weeks. whatever that can be found probably has been found. but it didn't mean that cyril was about to give up. far from it. it's never too late to make a new connection.
"...i think that's all we're probably going to get." he glances at ikram. "unless you have any ideas." even so, he starts to put all his stuff away. vertigo
"none at all," said ikram. she placed a hand on her styler, and it whirred to life. "if you're ready, i'll draw the dark sign again, and we'll leave the way we came."
