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 has little reason to be here. for one, the mystery egg isn't much of an incentive for a ranger. for another, he had never been bathed by high society the way that some breeders have been.
however, he does think that a small reprieve should do him some good. especially after he's seen what bacchus has become. what meira has become.
he crushes a grape between his molars.
what a load of bullshit. iker has little paitience for such things.
what can he promise her, though? what can he promise anyone. he didn't think that he would have a reason to care. that was before he set off from juno city.
he takes a few cubes of ham and throws them to his shellgon and manectric.
she paused mid-step, glanced back to where the voice was coming from. she cocked her head. strange, why was she getting stopped for no particular reason? adjusting the styler on her wrist, she walked towards the speaker --
"what's up?" she asked, as casually as she could, as if nothing bothered her. "... registration?"
she squinted at the desk with papers on it, and signatures of people too rich for her tastes. she frowned slightly, and sighed. fine. she could sign her name, and be off -- right? she did so, and entered the gala unhindered.
ranger this, ranger that. half of her wished she hadn't taken up this job. maybe she should have been a breeder instead. she plucked a slice of fruit off a tray, and watched as a manectric lapped up a cube of ham hungrily.
he tries one of the ham cubes himself. iker finds that the food is actually pretty decent. not bad, mercedes. not bad at all.
jax gives a little bark, and iker finally notices ikram beside him. huh. he notes the capture styler on her wrist. definitely union-issued.
"...didn't think i'd see another ranger here." most of them were probably cleaning up after the invasion of ceres forest, he'd assume. that should...probably be his next stop after the gala, actually.
"no?" was ikram's response. how odd. he hadn't expected another ranger here -- why exactly was that? the girl had little clue of what had transpired in ceres. as far as things were concerned, it was only juno that had experienced some form of mishap in recent times.
"well, now you have," said ikram, smiling. she hadn't brought her partner. she left him at the ranger union to make itself useful, which meant shuttling around parcels from department to department to make life easier for those rangers who were left on duty in the building while the rest attended the gala. "i think i've seen a few other rangers here. no one's really passing up the chance for gifts, or that's what i heard."
she glanced at him.
"are you here because of that too? no shame in admitting it, y'know."
iker probably should have paid sa'di a visit. oops.
"aren't they mystery eggs?" the mercedes eggs seemed to be much more well-advertised than a tutored egg move. they were much more exciting to a wider populace. "i don't have enough capture stylers for another partner."
he wasn't really interested in taking care of a freeloader that didn't fight either. for now, these two are enough. they've made it to bacchus and back, haven't they? the shelgon and manectric continued snacking. this time, on a couple of pokepuffs that the gala had so thoughtfully provided.
"i needed a breather. thought that the gala would be a good opportunity." juno is about as far away from bacchus as he could get at this stage. he'll be back. just not today.
ikram tilted her head, humming. that wasn't what she had heard. mystery eggs were of little use to them. to civilians, for protection; to trainers, for priming; to breeders, for procreating; to researchers, for perfecting. she didn't see where rangers came into the equation. her first capture disc was linked to wukong, and she hadn't a clue where to obtain a second.
"no, for rangers, mercedes tutors one of your partners an egg move," said ikram, picking up a cube of ham and nibbling on it. ah, it wasn't bad. "but yes, breathing is important. it keeps you alive." she laughed softly.
maybe it was worth checking up on the important types of people every now and then. although he supposes that it would make sense that mercedes could ... magic egg moves onto pokemon. iker looks down at jax, who had been a sa'di pokemon with one egg move to selwyn's four. the manectric pouts a little.
"a breather from beating up scourge." there's no acid to his words. iker rather liked people with some wits about them. "i think it would keep me alive. can't be too winded up like those rangers at pax." working at a place like that probably cut their lifespan by half from stress alone.
she had heard rumors. it was supposedly very bad there -- bad beyond all recognition because it was the source of all their pains and troubles. she didn't know what that entailed, but she was now living in this age and time. she figured she should find something out from someone to bolster her sparse knowledge.
"well, to clarify, i've seen how odd those rangers who teach signs can be. i figure those rangers at pax would end up more eccentric. close proximity exposure, something along those lines."
"kind of eerie. just a little. you probably don't want to buy real estate there."
he thinks back to his first week there. iker considered himself pretty temperate, but pax lake was still a special kind of hell on his nerves.
"it was bad enough for me to vaccinate my assist pokemon instead of telling him to hide." not that there were many places to hide at pax.considering that vaccines usually went for 5k a pop without researcher friends, iker thinks that's a pretty good description of how bad things were.
"haven't actually met any, but i've heard of them. i figured that they probably weren't like the juturna rangers if they volunteer all their time in a place like that. " he shrugs. vertigo
ikram hadn't really thought about vaccination, but iker's comment made her actually pause to consider it. it seemed to be important, yes, but she didn't know just how vital it was to keeping alive in other parts of the region.
she returned his smirk with a smile of her own.
"oh, you'll see when you reach di manes. the guy there is pretty intense. i figured they'd only scale up in intensity -- like a bell curve. the more temperate ones at the ends of the region, the crazily-focused ones in the middle of carnage and all."
"i met someone pretty intense in di manes." iker thinks back to the night that he had met thalia. the girl had been washing her hands of blood and disposing of a woman's body. she had ... certainly been memorable. "don't think i've seen anyone like her since."
actually... the agent with the lucario that he met in bacchus was kind of...out there too. funny how all these weirdos are all thalias. "actually, bacchus is a pretty strong contender. maybe you're right."
"you've been many places," said ikram, but she had no intention of tailing him around. it wasn't really her method of doing things. "i'll give you the benefit of the doubt if you say that i could be right." ikram popped a slice of fruit into her mouth, and chewed.
she thought of the chirpy ranger in the tavern, and then batin, later on the older ranger in the di manes shrine. she supposed it was only going to scale up further along the route.
"only about halfway." quite literally. i counted the number of boards and everything.
iker feels a little less charitable about the attendees than ikram. he suspects that there are probably quite a few weirdos mixed into the gala crowd. they just so happened to be dressed up in nice suits and a need for decorum.
he tries a bit of the walnuts at the table. vertigo
she continued to chew on the fruit. it was very fresh and tasty. a couple of server bellossom sashayed their way over to ikram and offered her a glass of punch. the ranger accepted it and sipped the drink through a curly straw.
"cool," said ikram. "i feel like everyone else is so dolled up for this and we rangers are here to either get a breather --" a look at iker, "-- or because it's practical and rewarding to."
curly straws. wow, mercedes really did think of everything.
he shrugs. "i think most of these people are eos anyway. hard to blame them for living like they might not die tomorrow." at least for the duration of the gala. vertigo
