[Fin] This isn't supposed to happen!

[TawnyAngel]

Char was standing by the coats, the air around him rippling lightly with heatwaves. When his master reappeared he bowed his head and gave a quizzical look but he waved gently waved off, stay where you are doing what you are doing.

Puck, who had been passed the bags again, floated invisibly nearby so that the gifts too could enjoy Char's powers of extreme warmness.


"Seriously," Aulus agreed as they stepped back into the bar proper, waving vaguely at Char to tell him to stay drying out the coats for now. "What's your poison?" he added as he fumbled in his pocket for his (damp) wallet. "I figure it's my turn first, given the guy wouldn't have gone after you if I'd spotted him and twa- and hit him before he set his kitty cat on me," Aulus explained, lest he just be thought generous or something.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Alright," he said as he joined Kurt, glancing around before heading to the bar itself where they could order their drinks. "I'll buy next round then, since I didn't actually help that much in taking him down and all," the blond offered. He really hadn't managed to help too much except yell at the guy.

Isaac offered a polite hello to the Charizard drying the coats and to the... whatever pokemon was holding the bags that he couldn't see, but assumed there was one there, before trotting after Abel.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Sorry, I suppose I got a bit carried away," Aulus shrugged, "I get a bit annoyed when people underestimate me. You might have guessed that." He assumed that was why he'd been a target anyway, but did he assume that because it was reasonable or was he being paranoid again? Sensible and paranoid all felt the same so he had no honest idea of his own and he was too afraid of being an annoyance to ask somebody he trusted later on. It was just a thing that had happened and now it was over so nothing else mattered really, it was probably best if he never mentioned this in fact.

"House red please," Aulus said as he reached the bar, the reflexive 'please' to people serving you things had reappeared over the last couple of years and thought he kind of felt it damaged his image at the same time he felt it indicated that perhaps he felt more confident. Then again perhaps he was just going nuts. "And whatever my damp companion is having."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Nah," he waved a hand dismissively, "I don't think you got carried away at all. The guy deserved every bit of it for the s**t he tried to do." Probably more - no, that was probably enough. It wasn't like he'd actually succeeded in stealing their pokemon for more than a couple minutes tops, and most people didn't think of stealing pokemon as kidnapping anyway. But still.

Damp companion, huh? An amused smile spread across his face as he gave his own order - nothing too strong just yet - before he leaned on his arms on the counter. Man, wet clothes sure were uncomfortable... Hopefully they'd dry soon, but at least he'd have alcohol in short order and that'd help warm him up - at least on the inside.  

[TawnyAngel]

The wine was nothing special but after everything that had just happened it tasted pretty ******** divine. Aulus grunted agreement with Abel's comment as he took a slow sip and then set his glass back on the bar. "Too right. Did you tell me your friend's name by the way?" Aulus nodded at the Espeon, trying to remember if he'd heard Abel use a name for it. If he had clearly he'd missed it. "That's Char over there," he added with a nod to the fire type, who was making heatwaves in the air next to the coats.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

He received his drink with a polite "thanks" to the bartender, and raised the glass to inspect its contents briefly. Yep, that definitely looked like it would hit the spot. With that thought in mind, he took a sip of the alcohol and then sighed contentedly. "Hm? Oh," he leaned over a little to look beneath his stool and smiled down at the Espeon, "his name is Isaac." The named psychic-type offered a polite 'prreon' of greeting. "Char, huh? He looks pretty cool. I've a Charmeleon back at home," he said, trying to make conversation, though he wasn't entirely sure if Kurt would find it interesting or not. Then he gestured to the Charizard and asked with mild curiosity, "How long have you had him?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus was always interested in pokemon; he nodded a greeting to Isaac in return. "Nice to meet you.... Hu." How long had he had Char now? Aulus pondered this for a couple of moments, placing the event in his mental timeline, before replying; "About four years now I suppose, a while I guess." It was hard to remember a time before he'd had the reliable Charizard with him, hard even to remember him as a Charmeleon come to that. He remembered the evolution vividly however, falling off a walkway and plunging towards certain death tends to fix things in the mind. That had been the day Aila died too, and Legendaries had filled the sky.... Yep, not forgetting that one in a hurry.

"What about you and Isaac?" Aulus thought to add after a moment, reciprocity being a good thing and all that.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Four years, huh? That's cool," he said with a nod before he took another sip of his drink. Four years... Wasn't that how long he'd had Sonia? No, maybe it was nearer five now... That sounded about right; almost five years now. Had it really been that long since he'd moved to Unova? "Oh, me and Isaac?" The blond and the Espeon looked to each other at about the same time. "We've been together for pretty much forever," Abel said with an amused smile, leaning back on the counter again. "My parents got him when he was - I forget if they got him as an egg or if he'd just hatched, but point is they got him really young, right around the time I was born. Been buds ever since," he finished as he raised his glass to his lips again for another sip.  

[TawnyAngel]

Glancing between the pair Aulus could believe Abel's words easily, they certainly seemed close. "I got my first pokemon when I was seven, though obviously I wasn't officially his trainer until I was ten," Aulus offered after another sip of his own drink. "I'd introduce you but most places get a bit pissed if you let a Rapidash out indoors," he said dryly, gesturing vaguely around them with his glass as he lacked a free hand to do so with. Sometimes he could still hardly believe he had him back, but then there was a lot of stuff in his life these days both good and bad that sometimes seemed incomprehensible or unreal. He certainly wasn't short on adventures anymore though admittedly quite a few of said adventures had a prefix of 'mis', this evening for example. It was taking a turn for the better though, the evening that was; Abel seemed like a chilled sort. He also had very pretty eyes.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Isaac yawned, his tongue curling a little and his ears flicking backwards at the action before the psychic-type curled up beneath the stool for a catnap. Abel took another sip of his drink. "Seven, huh? That's a long time too," he noted. "Yeah, something about you have to be ten to be a trainer, right? I don't know too much about that - didn't officially become a trainer until almost five years ago now, I think. Yeah, they probably wouldn't like that too much," the blond laughed, imagining for a brief moment how the bartender and other patrons would react to a Rapidash being let out inside the bar. Probably not well. "Maybe some other time."  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus shrugged expressively. "Different places have different rules I guess but I think ten is pretty standard, yeah." Being an official trainer was hardly necessary so far as he saw it, though doubtless plenty of people disagreed. Plenty of people disagreed with plenty of things.

"Some other time, yeah." If he ever saw Abel again, and it was quite possible that he wouldn't. Since joining Team Rocket he'd rather avoided getting to know anyone outside the organization but then come to think about it he hadn't exactly been Mr. Friendly beforehand, in fact if anything he'd probably been rather more hostile. Oh well, you never knew, they might run into one another again. He might run into that girl Sera again too come to that, and for a moment Aulus found himself wondering how she was getting on.

"So you've got Isaac and a Charmeleon, what else do you train?" Aulus continued, trying not to be concerned about the fact that his smalltalk was a bit of a one-track record; if Abel didn't like it then Abel could leave and it didn't matter what Abel thought of him, so no problem.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Yeah," he said agreeably, though he didn't really care about the minimum age for trainers. It didn't matter to him, anyway, so it was kind of a moot point.

So he wanted to stay on the topic of pokemon, huh? That was just fine with him. Abel swirled the contents of his glass a bit while he hummed thoughtfully as he mulled over his response. "I don't really train as much as I probably should, especially after just a bit ago," he said somewhat bitterly, though the feeling cleared and he shrugged. "My pokemon are all family, pretty much, but apart from Isaac and Elizabeth," the latter name could be correctly assumed to belong to the one other pokemon he had mentioned so far, "I've a Zoroark named Sonia, and a Growlithe named Caleb." He paused to finish off his drink and order a second one, something a bit stronger this time, before he turned back to Kurt. "What about you?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus quietly agreed with the sentiment about family, he didn't say as much but he did incline his head just a little. For a couple of years it had been just him and Tortie, before her he'd felt like it was him and Phaethon against most of the world. The fact that he actually had human friends now and had more pokemon, did not diminish their importance, though admittedly some were closer than others. Discord was probably the crazy cousin nobody talked about in polite company but whispered about at family gatherings.

"I've got quite a few," Aulus admitted with a bit of a grin and a shrug of his shoulders. "With me today I've got Char," he gestured, "Puck, the Gengar you saw; Red, a Pidgeot; Tortie, an Absol; Paul, a Spinarak, and Phaeth is the Rapidash I mentioned." His collection was ever expanding but it paid to be versatile and it wasn't like he lacked time and opportunities to train them.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Abel twisted around in his seat to look at the Charizard he gestured to - he'd saw him before but they'd obviously been a little preoccupied at the time - and offered the large fire-type a polite, friendly wave. "Huh, that is a lot," the blond agreed, eyebrows raising a little before he took a sip of his drink. "I've been wondering if I should get more sometime, myself. But," switching tracks back off of himself, he turned a curious expression to his temporary companion, "that's a cool variety of names they've got. How d'you pick names for them?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus swirled his wine as he pondered his answer; it was an unconscious motion, one he'd picked up from his family and those around his family. Had he been thinking about it he would have been aware that a) it was something to do with enhancing the nose/aerating the wine and b) something middle class people did to pretend they were more like upper class people. As it was however he was thinking about his pokemon not what he was doing with his hand and was probably happier for it.

"Well I don't remember what I was thinking when I named Phaeth," he'd probably thought he was being terribly mature, "but Tortie is Tortie because she's got a kind of tortoiseshell pattern. Char is unimaginative, Red has kind of russet feathers, Puck is puckish, and Paul... was sort of named in a rush and it stuck. So," he shrugged and sipped his drink again, "that's that I guess."