[attr="class","wizzcred"]

The original plan was to meet in Verdanturf.

But then again, his place there was too small to host more than three people comfortably. Not to mention that it was full of junk he would rather keep private.

So instead of going to the small, cramped as fuck apartment, Lars decided to call them out to the family’s guesthouse, back in the city of his birth. While he had renovated the place to make it less of a temporary way station and more like an actual home, the fact of the matter remained that it was still somewhat lavish.

He’d tried to make everything as simple as possible. Besides, his entire family had either left the region, or gone into hiding, or was dead six feet under at the base of the giant tree that grew out of the heart of the city.

He had just finished bringing something out of the oven toaster when he felt his Pokénav vibrate. Quite a useful little thing, really, he thought to himself—having set up the place with a complicated system that would alert him if there were visitors to the place.

Today was one of those days.

Forgetting that his hair was down, he shuffled over to the front door and opened it, before the people he knew who were waiting on the other side of it had the chance to knock.

“Ah, here you are. Come in, come in,” he began, opening the door wider to let them in, before closing it behind them once they had entered properly.

Right in front of them was a living room—while simply furnished, the sofa and the single-person couches were comfortable enough to sink into without a worry in the world. The distinct smell of something would reach them.

“Pizza?” he offered. “Sorry I don’t have anything nicer than pizza, chips, and soda to offer,” he apologized as he scratched the back of his head and went to the kitchen, re-emerging with a tray that had several slices of pepperoni pizza stacked atop one another along with a bowl of chips, a bottle of soda, and three plastic cups perched atop said bottle of carbonated badness.

“Help yourselves,” he offered once he had set down the tray on the coffee table and taking one of the beat-up couches for himself.

[attr="class","orion"]

[attr="class","wizzcred"]

“Oh Arceus, please don’t call me Mister, I’m not that old,” he began, gesturing towards the pizza and the soda to help themselves. “Just call me Lars, makes things simpler,” he added a few moments later as he began to work on the slice of pepperoni pizza he had with him.

Well, Orion wanted this meeting to be as informal as possible, hence why he’d already hinted to drop the formalities—they weren’t at the Ranger Headquarters, for one thing.

“So, humor me this, Orion,” he continued, turning to the other man with a knowing grin on his face. “Asides from the unexpected—and very welcome—house call, what would you want to talk about? With Annie present, no less?”

There, he was getting to the point. Stopping himself from taking another bite, he poured himself a glass of soda and started to knock it down while waiting for him to answer.

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[attr="class","wizzcred"]

“Hey,” he retorted in Orion’s direction—although he knew that Orion’s name wasn’t really Orion, he decided not to reveal that information in front of present company. It was something he knew of but decided to keep to himself, at least until the other person involved openly brought up the topic.

“How could I forget? I got a lot of reports about forest fires breaking out around Fortree… yours happened to be the very first one that found its way to my desk,” he mulled over, pouring himself another serving of carbonated badness. While he dined on a slice of pizza, he turned his attention to Annie, listening while he was working through the stringy cheesiness that was in front of him.

Already two badges? That’s much better than my none! He thought with a grin on his face once she was finished talking—or rather, making her case as it was. In his case, he wanted to join when he was eighteen, but decided to hold off a few more years since he was still getting a hang of himself living alone in the wild.

Arceus, he remembered having to move from Secret Base to Secret Base until he’d saved up enough money to get the dingy apartment in Verdanturf. Small and lousy, but it suited his needs just fine. Then came the problem of having to work a second job because the salary he was earning back then wasn’t enough to cover all his expenses, which is why he was also a courier in Western Hoenn…

…this was before the gigantic Pokémon and all the strange berserk ones started causing more trouble than usual.

Along with it, his own rise to infamy through the Ranger ranks.

“Let me put it this way,” he began after a considerable silence. “Normally the age to join is eighteen, yes, however… I would have to ask around regarding an apprenticeship program. I wanted to join early… hell, to be honest? I don’t have a high school diploma when I joined at twenty-one myself. I learned from the wild, in more ways than one,” he shared.

He was pretty sure Orion didn’t know about that—until now.

“Another way of getting in is helping, yes,” he continued in Annie’s direction. “Helping without expecting anything in return… helping out consistently because that’s what you really want to do, it’s a good way to get acknowledged,” he added.

While Orion had the formal training and everything else, Lars remembered how he had to literally gain rep in the wild, working his literal ass off for… what, three, four years? Even if he knew he was qualified, he had to wedge his way in and it wasn’t easy.

“Oh, you didn’t know that, Orion?” he inquired with the other Ranger. “About… about the apprenticeship program?”

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