"sam?" he says with a raised brow. the way mitch speaks his name so plainly tells nikkari this sam person has him on a collar. he also assumes that this person must be involved in rocket. 

"and do you -" but he stops short, nose scrunching up. instinctively, he raises a hand to his nose to cover up the stench as a trubbish trips out of the bushes and right in front of them. a few pieces of garbage fall from its side and nikkari steps curtly away, eyes smarting at the smell. 

"handle that, would you?" he says with a wave of his free hand. 

mitchel kane

skipping

☉

well, at least his current company is somewhat entertaining. his lips quirk at mitch's reasoning. mm, makes sense why you can't keep anything but a centipede around, he thinks idly to himself, but it would be rude to say aloud. 

"she is impressive," nikkari admits. he wouldn't call her cute. no, he'd call his vulpixes cute, bratty as they are. another pokemon falls prey to his drapion's slashing and nikkari turns his attention back to the road at hand. 

"tell me, mitch - how long have you worked for rocket?"

mitchel kane

skipping

☉

nikkari gives the proffered business card a quick once-over, skimming over what he's most curious about: caffey financial group. he tucks the card, and his follow-up questions, away for later.

"i appreciate that. i'm still getting my feet under me, but you'll be hearing more from me, frank."

Frank Caffey

☉

nikkari is not one for vengeance and he's rather slow to anger. frustration, though, sits nastily in the back of his mind as he watches the masked vigilante explode from harrowhark's fog and retreat into the sky. palamedes makes a move to give chase, but nikkari whistles and calls him back down. 

sirens are getting ever-closer. the wails of the damned echo on the docks. his duty, first and foremost, is to rocket. 

so when he looks down at his gremlin, she dances with utter joy. "silence them." they will not be given quarter to turn rocket's secrets over to their saviors, and nikkari is not equipped to rescue them with what little time remains. 

one by one, the wounded's screams fall silent. alecto returns from the shadows, claws glistening with scarlet gore. nikkari grimaces; harrowhark flies back down to perch on his shoulder. the haze she'd left still lingers.

"palamedes, if you would take care of those on the -" but before he can finish, the boat takes off. water spouts from the blasted end of the stern, sending it careening down and out of the marina. 

"let's hurry," he murmurs and flees the scene.

Leonicio Marceliño Thomas Benoit

alecto kills the remaining survivors on the docks
nikkari pepecringe as the boat leaves
nikkari makes his exit

☉

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

☉

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

☉

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

☉

after exhausting his resources, he'd finally found something. this discovery, however, had only told him all of his efforts had been in vain. fiona had been here; there was no doubt about that. but now she was gone, lost to the shadows. he would only ever get answers if he could find those closest to her. 

but he has to remind himself that what he remembers is a figment. the years have changed him as much as they probably have her. 

he could return. after working a couple of jobs and selling off some of his finds from the rifts, he has enough money in his pocket to get a boat home. but his crew has been slaughtered and there are whispers of galar's legendary duo abandoning the region.

if what he's learned is true - hoenn is the origin point for this reality's entire existence (he's still wrapping his head around it) - it may very well kill him to turn his back on it and return.

so he's here to meet a friend regarding his official job transition. 

jayden cross

☉

more questions than answers had come of his foray into the ultra crater. and like the insatiable fool he is, he's back again, though this time he is luckier with his contacts. there's no need to conceal his identity as ansel this go-around. he and girard have had dealings before. 

"if you find any rubies around, it's alecto up to her tricks," he warns with a smile. the little gremlin had gotten them out of a pinch the last time they were here by placing a breadcrumb trail of power gems.

"be wary of the ground and where we step. i fell into a celesteela nest last i was here and i'm not looking to relive that encounter."

alecto starts digging with her sharp claws under his and girard's instruction. satisfied when she gets the hang of it, nikkari lifts his head and looks to their other companion: "any luck over there?"

@girard caden maher

☉

nikkari is all for poetry and metaphors and that a captain must go down with his ship, but 1. they're at port and 2. he's fairly certain the captain has a bullet in his brain right now. it won't be long before this region's law enforcement swarms them. he can already hear sirens in the distance. 

whether it's some crazed maniac or someone with a personal vendetta, nikkari doesn't want to stay to find out. from his purview, he's able to skulk about and get a lay of the land. and it doesn't look good.

when alecto's charge disappears out from under her nose, she spins around in a circle, clicking in confusion. but then a grenade goes off too close to comfort and she slinks back to the shadows; she slithers her way back to nikkari.

"what happened?" he asks her. 

she points with one clawed hand at the boat, where screams have started. nikkari frowns. more screams on the ground. though harrow's haze hasn't let up, it doesn't seem to be impeding him in the least. he looks down at alecto and she frames her face with her long, spidery fingers.

"a mask? disable it." her grin is all teeth, sapphire eyes gleaming with energy as she zeroes in on the circuitry in the man's mask.

"those on the boat will have to fend for themselves," he murmurs. 

Leonicio Marceliño Thomas Benoit

alecto uses disable on the mask

☉

fiona continues to elude him. any trace of her in this god-forsaken region has been scrubbed clean. he has little doubt where her new allegiances lie; it seems the two of them have wandered their own paths into rocket's ranks. though, he at least doesn't have a target on his head for defection from the dragons. 

his contacts in hoenn, as far and few between as they are, have gone radio silent. it wasn't until the local news stations got ahold of what was happening in dewford and another one of the rifts that nikkari realized why.

he hadn't quite understood until that moment the warzone he had ended up stuck in. he has looked enviously at supply boats leaving hoenn's port cities. it would have been an easy task stowing himself away and sailing back to galar, everything forgotten.

but fiona is here somewhere. and besides, he's always been too curious for his own damn good. 

so in the aftermath of ruin, a win in this sect of rocket's belt, he scours the shoreline of dewford. he intends to get closer to the rifts; what he doesn't anticipate is recognizing a ghost from his past.

jayden cross

☉

"oh?" he says, smiling thinly. "then we're similar in that regard." despite his attempts to smother her angular smile and the memories of the intensity in her eyes, they blossom back to the surface now. he looks wistfully at another passing painting, pausing beside frank so that they might peruse while they converse. 

"nikkari hect," he offers warmly in return with an extension of his own. frank's grip is strong, businesslike. most of the rest of him is too. the psychoanalyst in nikkari looks for flaws, but before he can delve too deep, he turns his interest back to the painting at hand. 

"i might be interested in accompanying you, if i may be so bold."

Frank Caffey

☉