alright, one of two things needed to happen. either they needed to stop callin' him out to assignments, or they needed to stop putting shit in places that were near impossible to find through a gps.

like, alright: he got why. but, what's he supposed to do when he's not even half-way through writing down the directions to eat later or something when he only gets to hear it maybe once before the channel got disrupted? luck had everything to do with how he'd even made it down to the power plant's basement without setting anything off while still being well within the window of time he'd been told to show up.

rainy barely makes it so much as in the door before he hears part of his name and small shoulders pinch together with unmasked irritation where his obscured face failed. duffel bag is promptly tossed into one of the far corners of the server room, programmer doubling past their would-be supervisor. "not so freakin' loud." he grumbles, voice robotic and shrill. "you want everyone to know? don't you guys have codenames or something?"

a pause, and then a tacked on: "er, sir."

rainy even salutes, then starts to dig through the bag's contents. he scratches his chin absentmindedly ( or, well, tries ) as he just barely registers the sound of nails on plastic. "you told me to come, didn't you?"

imagine saying no.

he'd sooner be sleeping with the fishes. or, you know, be the subject of one of those organized crime documentaries. he'd make for great online discourse.

this guy had biceps bigger than his head. probably. "if i wanna keep my beautiful little body in one piece, s'not like i can tell you to fuck off. sir."

Zev Harcourt

eh?

"you mean you guys don't just give 'em out?" sounded pretty lazy to him. didn't seem like rocket were really the types to care what regular grunts like him would want to be called, but rainy hasn't yet parsed out whether or not this was a trait that was exclusive to the guy looming behind him or if the other higher ups were equally as cordial. he had said hi instead of kicking his face in.

"i kinda expected you to call me cupcake."

or maybe somethin' meaner than his high school gym teacher, but it's hard to imagine a buttoned-up criminal like that cursing much. maybe if he put on some shorts and a real tight t-shirt or somethin'.

clipping a zip tie and unwinding a few cables, rainy offers a passive wave in the direction of the rotom and privately reminds himself to go get one for his own purposes. had enough encounters lately with other losers on the internet these past few weeks.

all of 'em with their friggin' electrical pokemon when his particular band of idiots couldn't figure out a door if he held it open for 'em.

"shouldn't be a problem so long as the infrastructure here doesn't get damaged or transmission towers don't get their shit wrecked in the—" a vague gesture, "whatever you're planning on doing." the details hadn't really trickled down that far. not to him, at least, but the blood was in the water. he'd have to be an idiot to not have noticed how the news was girdin' up to be more league propaganda than anything else.

he'd heard somethin' about more combat training here and there, but. not much reason to teach him how to take a punch. didn't even make sense to really even refine what little ability he had to battle. he planned on staying as far away from everything as possible. wouldn't even let himself think about the possibilities or ask beyond what'd been given for plausible deniability.

"'m out in mossdeep anyway." rainy digs out his laptop, then hooks up a few cords to the physical servers before tipping his head in the rocket beast's direction.

"unless you're tryin' to tell me i shouldn't be in a few. days?" another hesitant pause, "weeks?"

Zev Harcourt

few weeks, huh?

should be enough time to put in some pto.

rainy hums in reply, searching through his built-in access points. "logistics and intel ain't my thing." it'd been a difficult enough task trying to search undetected. reading through other crap and finding papers was another thing altogether. what they asked for, he replicated. what they needed, he dug out. whatever else they wanted out of him was beyond his pay grade.

espionage and all of that shit? all things he neither had the skill nor patience for. especially with mouthy field agents that thought they knew better.

he glances up for a second at the other man, pausing as he not so discretely stares at things he shouldn't before turning away. rainy pushes the screen of his laptop farther back, then digs out a few snacks from his bag as he balances the device on his leg.

"they 'lready didn't notice. made off with a paper for someone to do something with."

hands press on either sides of a plastic bag, air releasing with a pop before he shakes the bag of chips in zev's direction. then, as clarification, he adds: "this shit's more boring than in the movies."

all that hacker shit was only cool if they pretended like anything about fast typing and clicking was cool. "what're you guys plannin' on doing with the center?" rainy slowly shoves a chip through the seemingly open abyss of his mask. "biggest freakin' target there is on that island otherwise it'd probably be a waste of time to conquer or whatever the fuck."

Zev Harcourt