Orion is, admittedly, a little disappointed when the criminal gives up without a fight. He's itching for a scrap these days, even if he shouldn't be. Still, this is the desirable outcome in the eyes of his superiors, so Orion buries his disappointment and curls his metal fingers around the offered ball. The other never makes it into his hand. He purses his lips in annoyance but doesn't snark (he had just ran the man off the road, after all), bending down to retrieve it.

Several things happen at once.

A flash of light (the pokeballs, opening) blinds him.

He coughs, violent, as SPORES are scattered in his face.

"Fuck,"

His radio fizzles, sounding only static.

Thankfully, Orion's Pokémon are prepared to go on the defensive. Where the Golbat seeks a truce, the battle-scarred NOIVERN answers with a deafening BOOMBURST. Libertas. Liberty. The Noivern had been rescued from a Black Market operation, whipped and beaten into a vicious fighter who would now utilize those skills to defend the one who'd rescued him.

Orion staggers, suddenly exhausted, but a quick SAFEGUARD set up by the SLOWKING stops him from falling asleep. Struck by the SHOCK WAVE, the Royal Pokémon staggers in pain.

With its TELEKINESIS DISABLED, ALAKAZAM instead begins to rely on its FUTURE SIGHT.

SPORES may not have put Orion to sleep, but they render his movements sluggish and his response time slow. He manages only to grab for a single ball, a SILVALLY howling as it appears at his side. It's fur is accented deep pink (RKS SYSTEM - PSYCHIC MEMORY). It doesn't attack, a low growl rippling from its jaws as it sets up a HEAL BLOCK.

Orion's smile is tight.

"I want to get better, not worse."

He'd pushed himself too hard in the first couple of weeks, and it had been his physical therapist to sit him down and explain how dangerous overexertion could be for his health. Then he'd had to sit and listen to his mental health therapist lecture him about recklessness.

Nikita's kind words seem to soften the discomfort of those memories, the smile shifting more genuine with her admission.

"Orion," he insists, and with a touch of humour, "You're not so bad yourself." It's more than that, but it takes a moment for him to find the words. He's never been good at that. "It's a relief to talk to someone who understands. Someone who isn't being forced to talk about it." He was in group therapy, but he loathed that more than anything. After a pause, he clarifies, "You treat me like a person, not like a bomb waiting to go off. I appreciate that."

Orion seems quietly delighted by her reaction to the snack, a sparkle kindling in his ordinarily dour gaze. That she'd made the second bowl for him hadn't registered until she nudges it closer — he's not used to company, but he doesn't seem to mind as he realises.

"Oh, thank you."

He hadn't realised how hungry he was until the yogurt touches his tongue, mouth watering from the sweetness. He's been working all day, a one-track-mind set only on his goals and not on bodily functions.

"Maybe not trophies," he affords, for that was ambitious, "but maybe for fun? Except the issue of time, I suppose." He grimaces sympathetically. "There's never enough of it, and less with the meteor." It was stressful to put his faith in the League to stop the meteor when they hadn't even been able to rescue him from Rocket.

He actually manages a soft laugh at the apology, looking a little sheepish but not upset.

"No, don't worry. I get that from my therapist all the time. I'm taking it easy." He's on lighter duties as a ranger and he's nowhere near able to handle the weight he used to at the gym. But doing something felt better than not trying at all. "Just eager to get back to work, and all. I've been a ranger my whole life." He'd thought, however briefly, that he might have to give that up. There'd never been a lower point in his life than that, not even when Chu-e Choi had taken his arm to begin with. "But I have help here for the bad days, and the squad still treat me with kid gloves."

It's as annoying as it is endearing.

Orion expects Tam to doubt him. His lips part around an instinct to defend himself, to insist upon what he'd seen despite his certainty that he won't be believed. Slateport PD hadn't believed him, after all. The pity in their eyes had been the most unbearable part.

Tam, though... Tam doesn't doubt him, or even scold him beyond a warning that he should be more careful.

Orion closes his mouth, stunned into momentary silence.

"Yeah," he begrudgingly agrees, after a beat. "I didn't expect him to survive a z-move. Whatever he did..." Orion shakes his head, looking troubled. He doesn't know how to put into words the crystalline monster he'd witnessed. "I think he might be one of their avatars. I can't remember his name." Frustration knits his brow, knuckles white around the glass. "He did something to my head. Or one of them did. I can only remember bits and pieces."

His metal fingers curl tight against his palm.

"I'll never forget his face, though."

No matter how much he wishes that he could.

He grimaces as he meets the Captain's gaze. "Sorry you got dragged into all this. I'll say whatever I've gotta to keep you out; no reason for us both to lose our jobs."

mission: cut one's losses

The Ranch is the safest of his vices, and the only one that doesn't run the risk of getting him fired. Picking a fight with any suspected Rocket who looked at him sideways and drinking a little too much had also become part of the routine, but he leaves those shameful admissions out of an otherwise pleasant conversation. She doesn't need to know he's a disaster.

Well, not more than he'd let on himself by admitting he'd lost his job, anyway.

Noting the honey, he says, "Oh, that's from one of the neighbors who keep Combee. It's really good." He seems more comfortable talking of Pokémon than people. "Something to do with their Sweet Scent." If only everyone treated their Pokémon with the reverence and kindness that some of the farmers around here did, they wouldn't have need of the Rangers.

Sipping at a glass of water sweetened with the juice of a Nomel berry, a small smile tugs at the corner of his mouth as she admits to a love of riding as a girl. It takes on a sadder note as she gestures with her prosthetic.

"I imagine you still could." It would take a lot of practice and dedication, but so would anything either of them tried to do. They had to work harder than others to achieve what had once been taken for granted. With a twitch of his lip, he says, "I've been training at the gym, to try and get my strength back. I used to be able to run any mission they threw at me, but I'm on light duty for now." There's a wistfulness to his words, but at least he doesn't sound angry.

Most people avoid Orion. Those people are right to keep their distance.

Calliope Marks means no harm when she bumps into him, but the synapses firing in his brain don't know that. The Rotom, nestled up against his conscience in order to more accurately control his prosthetic, does not know that.

Threat is registered, and threat is responded to.

Responded to with a sudden and violent SUCKER PUNCH, Orion lashing out with a closed metal fist.

Orion feels a little more at ease upon spotting Calliope Marks among the crowd, even if she slips past them to greet someone else. It was just comforting to know he wouldn't be the only one attracting looks.

He nose wrinkles at the mention of pepperoni.

"Damn, I'll pass."

He should probably explain why, so as not to be rude, but Orion's not very good at social cues. Besides, there was nothing to ruin the mood like explaining you went vegetarian after watching your own Pokémon consume your flesh. Yeah. Maybe it's best he doesn't say anything.

He does, however, opt for some of the Mac and Cheese that Callan Young brought.

Holding up a small glass bowl of it in silent answer to Hailee Jacobs's question, he finishes chewing before answering, "You're barely even late. Come sit."

- He's with SLATEPORT SQUAD (Tam, Noah, Hailee, Calli)
- OPEN TO INTERACTION; Orion's just awkward
- Has his ABSOL with him
- Passes on the pizza (he's vegetarian), but does try Callan Young's mac'n'cheese

Though Orion cups his hands around the glass of beer when it's handed to him, focusing on the strange sensation of damp against his metal hand, he does not yet take a sip. Tension is present in the stiffness of his shoulders, and he looks anywhere but at his Captain.

Finally, Tam breaks the silence, and Orion winces.

It sounded so vile, phrased like that.

No, he thinks, that isn't me.

"He was Rocket, sir." He takes a drink, now, if only to have something to do. His hand shakes a little, but his Rotom thankfully helps him maintain his grip until he sets the glass back down. It's a little too rough, accidental, liquid sloshing over the rim. "He's the one who..."

Not fueled by anger as he'd been before, Orion finds it harder to force the words. Kidnapped me. Cut off my arm. Changed my life. Instead, he makes a mute gesture toward his arm with a pained expression. Did all this.

mission: cut one's losses

"You want the truth?" There's no bitterness in Orion's tone, not like there would've been if someone else had ventured to call this a realisation of dreams. @nikita understands, he tells himself. He'd seen it in her eyes. "I needed a distraction."

The door opens with slight protest; he still has to fix the hinges. There's a lot he still has to do.

The kitchen is well-stocked, at least, coffee and tea and farm-fresh produce in the fridge. What products didn't come from his own Pokemon he sourced from the farms nearby, the quiet countryside of Verdanturf fostering a certain sense of community. They'd accepted him into their number without fuss, and for that he was grateful. Even if he couldn't express it.

"Help yourself," is encouraged, and then, after a hesitant pause, "I lost my job, for a while. Bought the Ranch because it was driving me mad having nothing to do." He'd had only a weekly appointment with his therapist to mark the days, and it certainly hadn't been something to look forward to. Yet she'd been the one to suggest the Ranch, in the end, so he owed her that much. "It's been good for that, I think. It's kept me busy." Even if he had to work harder than his neighbours on account of the prosthetic, that hard work only incentivized him more.

Curious, and emboldened by the fact she'd asked a question of her own, he wonders, "What would you do, if you could retire?"

Group therapy was not the vibe.

He'd only agreed to attend at the insistence of his therapist, and only then after she'd worn him down over the course of months. If she'd expected that the environment might get him to open up to other survivors of trauma, she'd been dead wrong. He could perhaps empathize with the others who shared their stories of being held against their will, so often by Team Rocket who he loathed, but he could not open up to them. He wasn't ready. So the only word they've ever heard him speak is simple:

"No."

No, he has nothing to say. No, he does not want to share. No, he doesn't want to be here at all.

They wrap for the day and Orion shuffles toward the small kitchen of the community center, desperate for even their cheap coffee to give himself something on which he can focus.

You're welcome, Tam Fawley.

Orion, too, avoids bars on principle. A drink or two is a welcome excuse to drown out his anxiety but the presence of strangers offsets any comfort that liquid courage might provide. He'd hated social settings before the incident, but his prosthetic arm now attracts more attention than he ever had before. Perhaps that's part of the reason he's had such trouble accepting it as a part of himself. It makes him stand out, when all he'd like to do is disappear.

So, when Tam leads them to a quieter part of the bar, Orion is thankful regardless of whether or not it had been for his benefit.

"Whatever's on tap," he mumbles, too worked up to consider their menu. "Thanks."

mission: cut one's losses

Aside from a few ordinary ranch livestock he'd inherited from the previous owner, several of the Pokémon taking advantage of the grazing fields are an unusual sight. Rather than Miltank, an ornery Camerupt chuffs at them as they pass, YAWNING. A Honchkrow ROOSTS in the branches of a sprawling tree.

"I've always wanted one, but I never had the money." Being a Ranger paid decent enough, but he'd been disowned by a wealthy family and forced to make his own way in life. Keeping up with his place in Fortree and caring for all his Pokémon had kept his bank account all but empty. Then came the Council position. "Then when I was on the Council, I didn't have the time."

Now he had the time and the money to spare, and a need for a distraction besides. He doesn't feel the need to say as much to @nikita, trusting that she understands.

He dismounts from Merope as they draw up close to the house, a wooden ranch-style building with a covered porch upon which his ESPEON rests. She perks her head up in greeting as they pass on the way to the barn, letting out a lazy meow and stretching out her paws.

The barn itself is fairly empty, set up to accommodate his lone Girafarig as well as the Camerupt and Skiddo when the weather took a turn. Merope doesn't seem to mind the intrusion upon her space, even if her tail makes strange sounds as the Long Neck Pokémon bends her head to drink.

"Your Rapidash will be safe here," Orion assures Nikita. "Delphi keeps watch."

Delphi seems to be the name of the ESPEON, for Orion gestures in the vague direction of the porch.