nostabbing | 007 | Violet City;

Being back in Violet after a successful thieving mission has left Parker...oddly restless. Sure, it was great to be back On The Job With A Team after a long dry spell of personal freelancing — albeit with A Team that surely would've driven Nate to drink even more than he usually did (which is saying something) — but working a job in the first place, and completing it, has put her in something of a Mood. Working (stealing) is something she understands. It's something she's good at. It's one of the few things in the world she could actually confidently say she likes.

The problem is, the long con has never been her game, and while professionally speaking she doesn't actually have a problem with stealing, thieves, or committing crimes in general, there's something that still puts her off about the thought that Team Rocket is the Bad Guys™. The capital letters are significant; even if you are something of a bad guy yourself in the strictest law-abiding sense, the Bad Guys™ are the ones who hurt people and deserve to be crushed into the dirt in flawless Nate Ford fashion, and helping out the Bad Guys™ in their aims — even if it's all part of a plan to situate yourself to be able to take them down in the long run — still doesn't quite sit well with her.

On the other hand, part of what they do (that is, she and her team of bad guys who are not Bad Guys™) is protecting the people who are Actually Good, and there's some of that to her promotion, too. It's always better to have the head of security's ID card than some average grunt's; just the other day, she successfully pulled rank on somebody and it got him to lay off. So this is a good thing, this promotion into the Bad Guys™'s fold. She just...doesn't...like it.

What she does like is stealing, and stealing suggests jewelry stores, and that's how she'd ended up at the little mom-and-pop jewelry store tucked away down a side street in Violet City, where her standard perusal of the modest wares was promptly derailed — the clerk, apparently whiling away a somewhat boring afternoon behind the counter, had been amusing himself with making simple bead sculptures to decorate the window display case, and Parker's ~~creepy~~ rapt fascination with his work had quickly led to the offer of a demonstration.

(Was that flirting? Maybe it was flirting. Giving her the benefit of his employee's discount on an assortment of beads and wire to take with her when she left was probably flirting. ...Maybe.)

Which left her with an armful of boxes, a head full of new information, and a slip of paper with a guy's phone number on it. Did it actually make her feel better? She's honestly not entirely sure. But hey, competently (?) navigating an everyday social interaction? She'll take her successes where she can get them.

~

[This afternoon, ~~Parker~~ "Alice" can be found at an outdoor table belonging to one of the cafes in Violet City, an iced tea condensing and forgotten on the tabletop near her as she concentrates on something that, given her level of fixation and focus, appears to be infinitely more interesting than her drink. Assembled in front of her are a set of tiny clippers, a spool of thin jewelry wire, and a few boxes of beads in bright and cheery colors; at the other end of this operation, a finished cell phone strap lies completed while a second, half-finished one takes shape beneath her careful fingers.

Every so often, she snaps a picture with her Gear, almost absently, like she's momentarily forgotten that it's set to upload those for public consumption to the Gear network when she does.

Bead art. It's serious business, apparently?]

[OOC: The reference picture used in this post was originally found here!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

_{[Look who's finally dragged himself into town! Almost literally. His knuckles brush the dirt as he stumps across the town threshold and starts scanning the streets to get his bearings. So this was Violet. It was so...small. You couldn't be anonymous in Violet.]

[Needless to say, Ralph's camping trip didn't quite turn out as planned. It isn't long before he spots a familiar face and gravitates towards Parker like a gloomy planet.]}

[RALPH. Already the day is looking up! She waves rapidly, not quite catching his gloom until after she's already hailed him.]

Ralph! Hey! Hi, hey! You made it!

[...And you look really sad...]

_{[Ralph doesn't respond until he's finally reached the little table. He invites himself to sit down on one of the comically small chairs and shrugs his travel bag off his shoulder.]}

Yeah...whacha got there?

_{[He sounds SUPER mondo interested in phone charms. Like totally.]}

[SHE NOTICED.]

Stuff.

[And now promptly ignoring that stuff.]

What's the matter?

Stuff's nice.

_{[Ralph pulls a face. He's pushing a lot of words around in there and isn't exactly sure which ones he wants to use. He's never been that great at words. You can almost hear the gears whirring as he zones in on the completed charm. The beads are so tiny. Like pixels.]}

Th' kid's gone.

The one you were coming to Violet with? Where'd she go?

Back to her own game. Where they don't like her.

_{[It wasn't FAIR.]}

[Oh. Oh, no...that's really terrible. Poor Ralph.]

Why don't they like her?

I'm not actually sure...

_{[He shrugs helplessly. He's seen people come and go, but none of them were people he knew. Ralph is not 100% sure how to deal with this whole loss thing. So he decides to try and redirect the subject again, pointing at the beads.]}

What is that, anyway?

[Well, sure, okay, she can go with that.]

It's a thing. You put it on your phone, I guess? And then it hangs there and looks cool. It doesn't actually do anything.

Oh...

_{[He guesses he could get behind that. Ralph rests an elbow on the table dangerously.]}

So, what's the deal with this place? Where's a guy go in Violet City?

There's a shopping district and Cafe Row — that's right here — and the Pokemon Center, the Mart, and what's his name's gym. And the inn and everything, too. What're you looking for?

I...don't know. _{[He pushes his hair back and looks completely lost. HOW DEAL WITH LOSS?? HOW DO? He kind of just wants to go back the way he came and live in the woods.]}

Other job stuff, I guess.

You mean not...

[SIGNIFICANT LOOK.]

Job stuff. Just other job stuff?

_{[He nods.]}

They don't have jobs where you punch people, do they? I'm good at that.

Sure they do. There's lots of jobs for that.

[Like being a hitter and being a bodyguard and being a retrieval specialist and being a security guy and...

...wait, did he mean in Johto? Um. Hmmmmm.]

...Hey. What if you didn't punch people, you punched grapes?

Grapes.

_{[Help him out here, Alice.]}

There's these monk guys at the Sprout Tower. They make wine. You make wine by punching grapes. Grape harvest season just started so I bet they're looking for a ton of help. And have you ever seen wine casks? They're huge, you could fit like three people in there. I bet they need big strong guys who can carry stuff around. You'd be really good at that.

[THUMBS-UP.]

_{[Ralph is momentarily distracted from his gloom by imagining the work Alice describes. Those all sounded like things he could do. It sounded like work that could be done OUTSIDE on top of everything else. No tiny kitchens. No cooling units to knock over on top of people.]}

I think I could do that. Thanks, Alice. You always have my back.

Oh! And the other way you crush grapes? They put them in a big open cask and get people to stomp around inside to smash the juice out.

[Wait for it...]

Barefoot.

[AWW YEAH SHE'S GOT YOU, BRO.]

_{[Ralph gives her a squint and--there it is! The tiniest hint of a grin.]}

Are you makin' this up?

No way! That's how they do it. You can go ask.

Alright, I'll go see about a job after I've rested. My dogs are killin' me.

_{[And are filthy. And covered in little cuts and bumps from the road because five days of hard trail is different than wandering around the streets of Goldenrod on a guy who's only been made of flesh and blood for a few months.]}

So what do you do around here?

I just got back! From out-of-town work.

[...Pause.]

At our job.

Boatloads of fun, huh? Guess I gotta hop on that train eventually. No laundry to fold way out here.

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