it's been a fairly seamless transition. aside from the literal grenades that shook up his life (he's still unsure who went all mad max on his now-sunken ship), and the fact that the woman he'd come searching for in the first place is nowhere to be found, and rifts to other dimensions are opening and threatening the end of the world -

well, aside from all that, everything's been just peachy.

having connections and a resume as substantial as his own has landed him a comfortable position in hoenn's branch of rocket. his shoulders aren't nearly as heavy as they were a couple of weeks ago.

he sticks to the shadows out of habit and because the gremlin on his back prefers as much. as he nears some of the lampposts lining the edge of the docks, she scuttles down like a roach and dives into the safety of his stretching shadow.

"hmmm." her soft chittering and furry little fingers poking out from within the shadow direct his attention to the person at the end of the planks. 

it sways slightly as he crosses it. here, at the end, the water swallows much of the light. so alecto pokes her gleaming eyes out from the shadows and stares at the zorua in his lap. 

"russo," he says, by way of greeting.

DAMIEN RUSSO

☉

in the scant seconds between damien's uttering of nikkari's surname and his zorua fleeing from his lap, nikkari drinks him in. he notes the eyeliner, smudged and faded - purposeful? the long, tumbling swath of hair, healthy from root to tip but tousled. messy. his forced, clipped speech, as though nervously teething at a bit.

damien is posturing and he is deeply uncomfortable and he wishes he were anywhere but here.

before nikkari can ask alecto to please stop, the zorua - nuggs? - darts away, startling almost everyone but nikkari. alecto's eyes glitter with amusement; she half-crawls out of the shadow, scraping her claws against wood. nikkari toes the top of her head and gently pushes her back into the shadow. 

damien's a frontline man. whether he knows it or not, he has an easy charisma nikkari decidedly lacks. nikkari stands out too much; not in a good way. give him time, let him work, and he can make people trust him, but that takes time. there is an infectious, puppy-dog piteous air surrounding this one.

men in their line of work love taking advantage of the foolhardy.

"here," he says and withdraws an earpiece. a matching one sits in his own ear. "a contact from the johtonian branch is getting cold feet. turns out hoenn being the 'origin point' and attracting the attention of literal ruin is, to put it frankly, bad for business. but there's blood ties involved and with the uprisings in kanto, he's not in a very good position to be turning down allies. 

"well, come on then. walk with me.

"so you'll, mm, be doing the convincing. hear him out. listen to what he has to say. feign a lack of experience. play dumb. play coy. whatever it is. make him want you. make him want us." 

he stops a block away from the bar, where taoyang is more than likely already waiting for them. 

"i'll guide you. can you handle this?" 

he raises a brow. there's no question here.

DAMIEN RUSSO

☉

to damien's credit, his brave face is mostly believable. nikkari fiddles with the piece in his ear and watches the man walk away. he simultaneously grinds his heel into his shadow when alecto tries to crawl her way back out from under him and scamper after the other man. 

"alecto, be still. i need to focus." he hushes her and then raises a hand to his ear. sounds of the bar's interior floods his left side. he adjusts the volume somewhat as he walks across the street.

a dingy bench across the way doesn't offer much by way of eyes on the place, but he'll at least be able to tell who's coming and going. from this door anyway. 

palamedes is stationed at the other.

'taoyang?'

inside, a surprisingly thin man, unassuming and looking very much like he doesn't belong in the bar, looks up when damien sits across from him. he regards him and then turns to someone on his left, muttering a few indiscernible words to the individual.

"ah, that's mr. lin. he's a formal man. apologies, russo," nikkari says.

taoyang lin speaks up now, addressing damien directly: 'we were told we would be meeting with mr. hect.'

DAMIEN RUSSO

☉

taoyang lin gives damien a once-over and there is a flash of something akin to resentment that flits over his features. the man at his side, back still turned to give them privacy, peeks over his shoulder when his boss doesn't say anything following damien's admission. but then snaps back to attention when taoyang shifts and folds his hands on the table. 

"it seems all this region has to offer are emergencies," he says disdainfully. 

"which brings me to my main reason for being here, damien russo. we have lost men. good men. our profits are in the red solely because of our hoennian shipments. between the avatar on the prowl overseas blocking port and the agents waiting for us at port, we are losing product and people."

on the bench, nikkari examines the back of his hand. a small, mostly healed cut is on his pinkie, courtesy of alecto. it's still itchy. 

taoyang continues to talk, but nikkari talks over him: "he likes a firm hand. his business will cease to exist if he withdraws now. remind him of this."

"- and what of that galarian shipment from months ago? dozens of agents dead at the hands of, what, a rogue civilian extremist?"

DAMIEN RUSSO

☉

nikkari stills his fidgeting and has to smother his laugh at damien's rebuttal. let's think logically here. oh, he can just imagine taoyang's affronted face as he's talked down to, how the muscle is stretched taut in his jaw. and beneath that aggravation is a commendation, a certain type of wanting that comes from being told what to do. 

damien has him hook, line, and sinker. 

taoyang's face flushes at in the red. there is a brief flicker of disbelief and frustration. how they'd been able to track his carefully hidden records was beyond him, but the threat is substantial. whatever cards he thought he had coming in here didn't matter; the house always won. 

"are thinly veiled threats this branch's version of helping with my concerns?"

nikkari allows himself a laugh now. "he's shaking in his boots now. you must be scaring him quite a bit. you can seal the deal." he stands, brushing out his rumpled folds, and buttoning his jacket back up. 

this won't be the last they hear of taoyang lin, surely. he'll need a slap on the wrist every few months, and he'll expect damien to deliver said slap. the man's a sadist at heart. 

"there's a bar a few streets over by the harbor. drinks are on me."

DAMIEN RUSSO

☉