The overcoat draped on an empty chair next to him, he was pretty much enjoying his meal.

Of course he’d made sure to dispose of the evidence and consolidate all the assets into one singular wallet… and then had to set aside some extra for the storage locker he was renting out to keep the toolbox he would need whenever he had to perform repair work.

But then again he didn’t have a permanent place to call home, preferring to live out in the wild kind of like how Hideo Kino did.

Anywho…

He took another bite out of the burger he was scarfing down on, enjoying the taste of it before grabbing some fries and cramming those in as well.

The peace and quiet continued for a couple more seconds before a shadow—a towering one—caught his attention and he put the burger down.

Holy shit she was huge.

And that was more than enough for his eyebrow to twitch out of annoyance.

“Yeah, what about—?” he began, reaching for another fry before…

What?

Wait, what?

“Huh?” was all he blurted out afterward.

“…what’d you know about my dad?” he continued, looking at the towering woman with suspicion.

He continued consuming his meal in silence, waiting for her to finish speaking.

Of course, he wasn’t expecting the…

“Wh—excuse me, what?” he said, midway through another bite. The burger was forgotten, for the moment at least.

“Wait, wait, wait, hold up, lady, what’cha sayin’? My dad’s married my mom all’a way back in Enju, and she’s from Galar… how sure are ya ‘bout what you’re claimin’?” he countered.

That was as much as he knew.

And the way that smug little smirk on the woman’s features—he didn’t realize it yet, but the way it sat with him—it was definitely sending up all sorts of alarm bells at that very moment.

Right now his food was abandoned.

Was she some kind of—wait, she didn’t look the part of a crazy, the way she was dressed…

“Don’t tell me you’re one of them, those guys? Y’know…” he dropped off, looking around before hissing the last part.

“You’re part’a Rocket?”

There was no way in hell he was going back. They’d have to drag him back kicking, screaming if he had to go out with a fight. Because—

Hell.

Naw!

Unfortunately, there were pictures that supported the claim—

Holy fucking shit, that really was him.

His ol’ man. The oyaji, in the flesh, but… not with the person he knew was his mother!

“Holy fucking shit,” were the next words that escaped him. Because those were the words that fit the entire… premise of what he was seeing. Damn, what the fresh hell?

Unfortunately, the thing is, his entire family was dead so he would never be able to get the other side of the story now. There was something that bothered him, though.

“Why’d he leave you, then?”

There was no way he was going to be able to ask the ol’ man now, so might as well go for the second-closest source of information, right? That was how things usually went, right?

Unless he was wrong…

The only thing he could do at this point was—stare.

And blink.

Thankfully he hadn’t taken a bite of the burger that he still held, and made sure to put it down, otherwise he’d have literally dropped it to the ground (and lost his last meal for a while).

And then, several things suddenly started happening all at once.

“Wait, wait, hold up a second—you’re—what?” he blinked, unable to believe what he’d heard.

This—this was a lot of information to take in, all too quickly.

“I—have you seen—” he continued to stammer, before pulling off the glove on his right hand and realizing that the entire thing wasn’t going to be seen so he shrugged off the overcoat just so she could see just how much of a wreck he’d become.

“I’m pretty sure you missed this,” he added quietly, revealing the entire length of his right arm to be a full prosthetic. “And that’s not all.”

He then raised part of his jeans, showing that at least the bottom half of his left leg was also a prosthetic—and it wasn’t the kind that was easily removable.

“I don’t know if you have the full details, but the ol’ man died in a fire back home in Enju—I couldn’t do a thing to save ‘im.”

And that still bothers me up to this day, he added to himself in the back of his mind.

“And… do you know how much… trouble I’ve gotten myself into? After that?”

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait a second, hold the hell up—

“Sister? What do you mean—I have… more siblings?!”

He gaped at the proclamation, his jaw silently falling open in shock and surprise. He blinked for a few more moments at the new information. Boy, this was going to take some time to digest properly.

(Little did he know that he would be meeting Johanna Joy in the future himself.)

“Before… before I get ahead of myself,” he remarked with a hint of hesitance in his tone, “…just how many more siblings do I have, and… and am I the youngest? The oldest? The middle child?”

His mind was literally going a thousand miles an hour, because not only was the promise of security right there, the fact that he had an actual blood family…

Well, damn.