He couldn’t help but laugh. ”Alright! Fine! Fine!” He said finally being able to stop his laughter. ”If the little princess wants to ride with the big boys then that’s what she’ll get.” Adam smiled, hiding his devilish intent as he began to walk off towards the barn.

”Just hop on down and wait right there.” He added right before he disappeared into the building. When he came back out following behind him on the reigns he was pulling was the meanest, biggest Rapidash of the lot. ”So this is what you wanted, yeah?” Adam asked, walking the horse over to Bailey.

”This big boy right here is Cloudjumper! He’s a five times Champion of the international Pokémon race that takes place in Unova. Don’t want the kiddie coral? Well, here ya go?” He’d offer the reigns over to her. Honestly, he didn’t expect her to take it. No one in their right mind would do this.

And almost as soon as he finally relaxed someone called out to him. If his glare could blow people up this place would look like the aftermath of an air raid.

He looked over to the woman who had disturbed his rest and then over to the Rapidash that she referred to. Adam did this a few times before rolling his eyes and getting up from his spot, begrudgingly walking over to the woman and her Rapidash.

”Why? So you can end up one the ground busting your ass like that guy?” It was probably Adam’s job to help said person but he couldn’t really give a care at the moment. The man would probably be fine anyway, just needed to walk it off.

”Besides there’s nothing wrong with this Rapidash.” Adam added, walking beside the woman and the Pokémon. He was only able to keep up because of how slow the Rapidash was going, poor thing was probably tired from today.

”Probably an issue with the rider and not the steed.” Adam began to pet the Rapidash, even giving it a treat.

”Isn’t that right? Don’t let the mean lady get to you, you’re fine just the way you are.”

Once Quinn and Soul were out of the way Adam could go back to focusing on the Obstagoon. At this point the two Pokémon were no longer in a death lock and had pushed one another away. Being impatient the Obstagoon rushed back in to attack which was of course the perfect opening for Adam.

The ranger ordered Rillaboom to attack back, using Wood Hammer to deliver a powerful blow. The ape Pokémon charged in, ducking to avoid the Obstagoon’s attack and counting with an uppercut from below. Surprisingly the Obstagoon endured the attack and striked back, landing its own blow.

Damn thing was as tough as it looked it seemed so it was best not to drag this fight on longer than need be. A drum beating attack was enough to take care of the Obstagoon, the large roots the Rillaboom summoned being too much for the dark type to handle.

”Alright! Good work.” He’d praise his Rillaboom, giving the Pokémon a fist bump before turning to Quinn. Had she been here this entire time?

”Well with that out of the way it looks like we’re good to go.” He figured at this point they had all the sheep and the big bad wolf was taken care of so there was no point in sticking around.

”You did a good job there rook.” She didn’t lose it when the Obstagoon showed up out of nowhere so she had some guts at least which was good.

Kyle seemed really eager to blow something the fuck up and Adam couldn’t blame him for it, this job had been boring as fuck and now it was just getting interesting but if you asked Adam in the worst sort of way.

”Hold on there a sec. Let’s figure out what we’re dealing with first before you start blowing everything up and turn this place into Slateport.” Last thing they needed was to then have to deal with a forest fire going nuts because one of them got a bit too trigger happy. Though seeing a Mightyena shoot a death beam was a pretty funny idea.

Adam’s let’s think about this first mentality went out the god damn window when his foot was suddenly snagged by something and he was now being dragged across the forest floor like a rag doll.

”Okay you have permission to fire!” Adam cried, doing his best to grab onto whatever he could as he was being swept away. Looking back to try and see what was dragging him but he couldn’t at first until it was then pulled up from the ground and the culprit was revealed to be a Grimmsnarl.

”SHOOT IT! GOD DAMN IT! I’M NOT TRYING TO BE EATEN BY A TROLL!”

Well damn she actually called him out on his bs, granted she did it in a really meek way but nonetheless she called him out and he kind of respected that. But before he could make a response the diligent rookie made her way to get another sheep, what a nice girl.

And now he was feeling a bit bad about taking advantage of her but it was still nice to get paid to do nothing. He looked over to the sheep in the truck and even they were giving him judgmental looks which was fantastic. ”What are you fuzz balls looking at?” Adam rolled his eyes.

Fine, he would go help her out; the sheep would be fine in the truck. Then out of god damn nowhere an Obstagoon appeared and within its arms, it was holding a Wooloo captive. ”Aw fuck.” Adam cursed under his breath, running forward and releasing his Lucario from its capsule.

”Extremespeed! Grab the Wooloo!” The Lucario moved, disappearing in a blink of the eye, flying past Quinn and unleashing a flurry of attacks of the Obstagoon. The Galarian Pokémon didn’t have a chance to react and the onslaught was enough for it to loosen its grip on the Wooloo and for Adam’s Lucario to be able to grab it.

The Obstagoon was furious as the closest thing to it was Quinn so it’d be taking its anger out on her. At least that’s what it planned on doing and even lunged at the girl but was stopped by Adam’s Rillaboom which he had called forth a moment ago, the large grass type holding back the other large Pokémon.

”You okay?” Adam’d ask Quinn, walking up to her. ”Let me take care of this ugly bastard. You and Soul can go back to the truck with the sheep.” He’d crack his knuckles, his view turning to the Obstagoon.

”Gotta thank you for showing up! You really livened things up!”

”And they’ve definitely got a mouth on em’” Adam sighed in response, looking over to woman. His eyes moved from her to what she was carrying, a brow raised at the smell coming from the cups.

”Oh hey, thanks. I’ll have a coffee I guess.” The warm drink would do wonders for keeping him awake and alert, dozing off was a real concern given the leash that he was on.

At least someone on this damned job was actually a decent person who gave a shit about someone other than themselves, made doing this a hell of a lot more bearable.

”They let you back there right? Ain’t you some sort of expert on these sort of things or something of the like. A professor, right?” He believed he heard one of the excavators mention something like that.

”Okay, if you say so.” Adam shrugged, not really caring either way and went back to relaxing but would glance over in her direction every now and then to see what she was up to.

Wrangling the little bastards wasn’t easy with to pipsqueak Pokémon like that and no history or knowledge of doing so. It made growing up on a farm not seem all that bad in hindsight but that didn’t mean he wanted to switch spots with her or anything of the like.

"Ohey look! Just.....let’s see…four more to go!” He'd give a thumbs up for a job well done so far but there were still more of them running around. "I think I saw some of them run off in that direction, deeper in the route." Adam would point in the direction he was talking about.

Her enthusiasm, instead of making Adam feel bad about taking advantage of her doing all the work, actually made him feel better about this. If she was so eager to get to work and do it all on her own then who was he to get in the way of that?

He’d give a lazy wave as Quinn, along with her Pokémon, headed out to get those rascally sheep Pokémon back to where they belong. Adam was going to catch some well deserved Zs but the sound of Quinn doing a bang up job kept him from dozing off properly.

One eye opened, the man looked over to where he heard the sounds. ”You doing okay out there, rookie?” Seriously, this should be hard at all.

Protection detail for an excavation site sounded like a lot of fun but if he had known how it was going to turn out he would have turned down the job. Here he was standing in some cave staring at nothing but dirt and rocks with nothing to do.

No wild Pokémon or thieves to keep him preoccupied and he couldn’t even check out what all the scientists and excavators were up to as last time he tried one of them yelled at him to get back to his post because “anything could happen and who would protect them if he was busy being nosy?!” Bah! Adam rolled his eyes at the idea that something would go so horribly wrong he couldn’t handle it.

”Man this is boring.” He groaned, complaining to his Lucario partner who was standing next to him. Curious, Adam peeked over his shoulder to get a glance at what it was that they might have found.

Again the league thought it was a grand idea to stick Adam with some rookie who needed to be showed the ropes. Alright that was fine but this time he was going to have a bit more fun with it. Their first outing would be a mission and a simple one at that.

Some farmer’s sheep were all over the place in a nearby route and they had to wrangle them together and get them home which was easy. Too easy and in fact and Adam didn’t have much intention on actually doing much during this job, that’s what the rookie was for.

”Alright rookie this job should be pretty easy! Get the Mareep and bring them back here. I think there’s about 6 of them or so out there, no biggie for a tough cookie like you, right? I’m going to stay here and watch your progress.” Adam leaned back against a pickup truck, ready to drift off to sleep once the kid got out there and started Mareep wrangling.

”Oh and once you get them back here just throw them in the back of the truck. This is your first test, do good and there’ll be a good reward for you at the end!” He was most certainly, definitely, actually factually, lying to her.