It happens very fast.

One second he's pouring his coffee, and in the next few beats he's punched an unsuspecting woman in the face and found himself on his back, winded, with said woman looming over him with her fist poised to strike.

Orion is not naturally aggressive. So when met with anger and violence from someone who wasn't Rocket, he cringes back in fear and closes his eyes out of instinct.

"I'm sorry!" he yelps. "I-I didn't—"

She doesn't punch him.

He cracks open his gaze, still with his shoulders bunched to make himself as small as possible on instinct, and finally registered who he'd decked in the face. Oh, no. His expression shifts from terrified to mortified. She's bleeding.

"Y-yeah," he admits, when she correctly guessing his reasoning for violence. "You too, huh?"

He'd raise his hands in surrender if she didn't have him pinned. "Fuck, I really am sorry."

Crobat. A Pokémon who could only achieve evolution through a strong bond of loyalty with its trainer. That the criminal's Golbat evolves out of sheer desperation in the middle of combat should perhaps have softened Orion's views on his foe, but Orion only finds himself annoyed as the CROSS POISON strikes his Silvally.

Perseus is still on his paws, bitter and determined as weak as he is, but Orion won't force him to fight in his condition. Red light swallows him, the only solace in the fainted prey beneath his claws.

SHADOW BALL strikes Slowking in his crystal-studded crown, its HEAL PULSE offering no aid to the Royal Pokémon's own injuries. It does help the scarred Noivern to remain airborne in spite of the violent DISCHARGE from their confused foe, though Libertas is forced to land and ROOST in the aftermath.

DETECTING the trajectory of Pinchurchin and Amooongus' attacks, the Absol feints in order to bait out the POLLEN PUFF and then jumps back from the BUBBLEBEAM.

Left unmolested, Alakazam elects to RECOVER from its injuries. Orion starts toward Isaac Merlo, his arm still radiating energy from another building NASTY PLOT.

It's a small sign of trust that he's placed on a mission with Talia Celes, Orion imagines; she's a new transfer to Slateport HQ, and his reputation for being rude and rough around the edges surely puts him at the bottom of the list of ideal partners. He's been trying his best to work on his attitude, though, not wanting to let Tam Fawley down more than he already has.

"Hey."

Pushing off from the rail of the ship chartered for the mission, Orion extends a hand. His right, of flesh and blood. In the midday Hoenn heat, there was no covering up the obvious, and so his metal prosthetic gleams in the sunshine as he steps close.

"Orion. Captain Fawley told me to give you the run-down." He wastes no time. By 'working on his attitude', he's only restrained himself from being an ass. His usual stiffness and discomfort is agonizingly present. "Contact was lost with a police vessel patrolling close to hostile Sootopolis waters. There's been reports of unnatural weather in the area, and it could be interfering with their comms, but HQ wants us to double-check. It's a bit of a trip, so the boat'll take us most of the way." Once they assessed the situation, they could figure out if the intervention of their Pokémon was appropriate.

mission: a deadly job
valor: search and rescue

"Yeah," he affirms. "Might not have bothered if they weren't so... ugh." He gestures vaguely with his metal hand, the movement too sharp and nearly tipping his glass. Startled, he steadies it with his right and flushes from the embarrassment. It was hard enough to deal with a lack of coordination thanks to the alcohol, let alone when your limbs weren't your own.

"Can't imagine you being anyone but 'Tam'."

Perhaps another might've been oh-so-careful about Orion's prosthetic, especially considering how touchy he'd proven himself to be, but it's Tam's lack of hesitation to address the elephant at the table that leaves Orion feeling more relaxed. Well, that and the buzz he was steadily developing. That helped, too.

"Bit too mean of a punch," he admits. "Still working out the difference between 'playful nudge' and 'broken nose'." He does smile in spite of the joke at his own expense; Tam's not wrong, and he'd said it as a joke rather than a scolding. That made all the difference. "Guess I should learn to fight a bit better if I want to break anything that isn't mine."

Nikita is added to a rather small list of contacts under friends. Rangers is the largest group, but Tam Fawley, Caleb Harcourt, and Calliope Marks have managed to work their way onto the short list.

"I do like Kalosian food."

He smiles, though it's quick to vanish under the thought of heading back to work. He sighs with a glance out the window; the sun will only be up for a couple more hours, and he knows it's imperative to fix the fence before Capella decides on a midnight romp.

"You're no trouble," he assures Nikita, sensing her discomfort in lingering overlong, "but I do have to work on those repairs."

It was harder with a prosthetic arm, but he's too stubborn to beg help from the neighbours or even his friends. If it took him all night, he'd figure out how to do it himself.

"Take care," he adds, by way of farewell.

"Sure do." A scoff scrapes rough in Orion's throat. He wanted nothing to do with his family. "Changed my name for a reason."

Downing the glass of harder liquor with more fervour than he had the beer, Orion's starting to feel its effects. He doesn't drink much, has always been a bit of a lightweight, and the lack of food in his stomach certainly doesn't help.

"Give people like Jiro power and you get Rocket." He doesn't realise how accurate that is; it's a wry statement, meant to be humorous, with no actual knowledge of his family ties to the criminal syndicate. "Don't miss it, don't want it. Never again." A pause, and then with a morbid smirk, "Unless they could give my arm back. Maybe I'd consider it."

He snickers into his glass, waving for another.

Alakazem TELEPORTS to avoid the SHADOW BALL, sustaining no damage but left unable to go on the offense as a result. Absol lights up the POLLEN PUFF with another FLAMETHROWER, growling low in his throat.

Silvally has no means of defending itself from the CLOSE COMBAT, staggering under the force of the attack. Panting, snarling, the chimera backs away from its opponent with teeth bared. It can't rest with so much attention focused its way, so the weakened Pokémon instead opts to retaliate with a sharp AERIAL ACE. If it could take down the Riolu...

Sensing a desperate situation, Orion looks up at Noivern.

"Stop him!"

Libertas shrieks in answer, turning its attention from the battle to Isaac Merlo himself. Though the Noivern was more than capable of fatally wounding with a well-placed attack, knowledge of its trainer's disposition instead leads the large-eared bat to fire a SUPERSONIC blast. With luck, it would confuse the man and hinder his escape as Orion recovered from the spores.

A dark glow ripples down Orion's arm as the Rotom within forms a NASTY PLOT. Slowking is sent back onto the field, REGENERATOR offering a burst of vitality it had earlier lacked.

He laughs in bitter agreement.

"As if losing a part of yourself is something anyone would choose." They weren't cyborgs. The technology, much as it has improved over the years and with the assistance of Pokémon like Rotom, was not flawless. If there were a chance to restore his arm of flesh and blood, there's no question of what choice he'd make. "I feel like an animal in a zoo, sometimes, the way they look at me."

Once, he'd prided himself on his ability to go unnoticed. Life was easier that way. Now, he couldn't avoid the stares. That they were not malicious didn't matter; they made him feel other.

Friends.

He looks surprised, then smiles.

"I would like that," he says of lunch. "I'd like to know the good spots in Mauville. I've lived in Hoenn my whole life, but the move to Verdanturf is recent." Before, when he'd needed something from a big city, it had been Lilycove he'd gone to.

@arashi's bold, cheerful greeting catches Orion off guard. "Uh, hey!" he returns, and actually laughs. "Same hat?"

He doesn't know the meme, but he can get the gist when the other Ranger gestures at their prosthetics. Instantly he feels more at ease within the group, as if the elephant in the room had been relocated.

That doesn't last long.

"Wh — no, that's just—"

A bad idea. But Arashi's Ursaring is acting before the words can leave his lips, and Orion too is resigned to assisting in whatever way he can. He cringes as fire blooms near the hive. We're supposed to be protecting the environment, not destroying it.

Even without their Vesipquen queen, the Combee seem particularly aggressive in the defense of their hive.

"Is fire really a good idea?!"

He releases a SLOWKING from a pokeball at his belt, a PSYCHIC TERRAIN rippling around them.

It surprises him to hear that Tam, too, is slow to trust... a brief spark of warmth kindles in his chest. It meant all the more, then, that the captain had taken a chance on him. Even if Orion had immediately proved why that was a bad idea.

Warmth is replaced by guilt, strangling his lungs.

Blessedly, Tam offers a subject on which he can focus his anxious energy.

"Ugh. Worse." Finished with his beer, he offers a tight quirk of his lips when the bartender catches his eye. "Shochu. Thanks." His attention diverts back to Tam. "I only ran to make sure my brother didn't get the seat. Jiro?" That Orion was a member of the Sakurai clan was not known to the public, yet he doesn't hesitate to share it now. He takes a large swallow of his drink when it's handed to him. "He's still all about his Lilycove expansion project."

Jiro Sakurai, and in fact the entire Sakurai family, were well known in Lilycove. Respected. Perhaps a little feared. They were everything he wasn't.

"Anyway, it was a lot of red tape and business meetings. I hated it."

He'd only stayed because he wanted to help people. He feels too shy to admit that idealistic part of himself aloud.

Caleb's aloof nature puts Orion more at ease; at least he won't be suffering through the night's duty with some goody-two-shoes suck-up. Not that there were many of those in the Slateport Squad. Tam Fawley attracted good people.

Disasters, some might say.

"Kanto." The word is heavy on his tongue. "M'sorry."

He doesn't know what Caleb went through in Kanto and doesn't feel the need to ask. Rocket had destroyed the region and its citizens. He doesn't need details to understand the horrors his fellow Ranger has left behind.

He laughs, gruff, when Tam's name comes up.

"Had no business hiring me, either. I'd got myself suspended for telling the wrong person where to shove it." The wrong person being one of his superiors, and not for the first time. Bad attitude his file read. "But I guess he saw something in me, cause he gave me a second chance. He's a good guy." Orion, too, bears the red badge and armband of a Cadet, but, "I used to be an Elite, if you could believe it. Before."

He makes a face, cracking open one of the beer cans and taking a long swig.

mission: sparkling spawning

A fight. That's what you wanted, wasn't it?

Orion's head is spinning. He feels like he's going to be sick. Humans weren't meant to take point-blank SPORES to the face, much less resist their soporific effects. Coughing, he regains his faculties only to spot the criminal meddling with his bike.

"Step away from the vehicle!"

Damnit. He's not Slateport PD. He can only make a citizen's arrest if the citizen is cooperative, and hope of immediate back-up was dashed when his radio was compromised. There's his phone, but his ROTOM is interfacing with the prosthetic arm and he's still not used to operating without the Pokémon's aid.

CONFUSED by the SUPERSONIC, NOIVERN'S AIR CUTTER swings wide. FUTURE SIGHT comes down upon the GOLBAT in retaliation, ALAKAZAM bending its spoons toward the airborne annoyance. POLLEN PUFF weakens it in return.

CURSED by the DUSKULL, the SILVALLY has only a few minutes on the battlefield. Orion knows this, taking a DARK MEMORY from inside his Ranger's jacket and swapping it out as Perseus leaps to his side. RKS SYSTEM darkens the chimera's fur before it rounds on the DUSKULL with a DARK-TYPE MULTI-ATTACK.

SLOWKING, significantly weakened by two electric attacks, is SWITCHED OUT in exchange for an ABSOL. Altair targets the AMOONGUS with a brilliant FLAMETHROWER that lights up their makeshift battlefield, exposing Isaac in silhouette.

"Back-up is en route!" A lie. "Stand down!"