[PRP] Got Some Explaining to Do

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

A visitor.

That was something Izaya never thought he would have while incarcerated. Not a friendly one, anyway. There were plenty of people who would have loved to come over to laugh at him, taunt him, or even wring his neck. It was one of the many reasons he currently felt safer in jail than out on the streets. Being imprisoned and confined to a specific location, though - that made him nervous and restless.

He'd thought talking to cellmates at least might satiate his boredom, but he had none of which to speak. Worse than that, he had no information from the outside and no other way to determine what was going on - not in Camphoreon City, not Kodo in general, and certainly not with Team Rocket.

Part of him wondered if this was a good thing; especially since he'd known for a long time that the ship that was the criminal organization was sinking. If it had finally sunk, at least he hadn't been on it. Still...what of his partner and teammates?

And so when he'd heard that someone had come to visit him, the informant could barely contain himself. Whoever it was, friend or foe (with the latter being infinitely more likely), he was inexpressibly grateful to them for cutting into his restless boredom and pondering about what was going on in the world. This visitor would certainly bring him some sort of news whether they meant to or not. How could they talk to him without doing so? And it had been so long since he'd even had the simple luxury of having someone to talk to. At this point, even if it was Shizuo, he wouldn't have minded.

But it wasn't Shizuo. In fact, it was one of the last people Izaya would have ever expected to see. It wasn't anyone who particularly cared for or hated him as he would have thought. He sat down at the booth with the glass wall and picked up the telephone that connected him to the person on the other side. He almost felt like someone at a ticket booth, but at the moment he didn't care.

"Rosie?"

Her presence there reminded him yet again how unpredictable humans could be. It was one of the main reasons he loved them so.  

[Blood_Goddess]

The list of Rockets who had been captured had been released to the public, Rosie had been one to read it, feeling that she should be one to keep up with the happenings of the League and Team Rocket.
Upon skimming over the names however, intending to just familiarize herself with them, she found that there were a couple that she already knew.
the first made her heart sink, Inigo Eizzini. She knew that person, she knew and beyond that, they were friends.

After that, Izaya Orihara, while the name looked familiar, it took her some time before she recalled where she had heard it.
This was the name that her friends had said belonged to the man that was with her sister that night in Kanto.

She wasn't allowed to see Inigo yet, the timing was off, they would not tell her why. So she had asked about Izaya.

Thus the blond dressed in a pink summer dress with white leggins, hair loose around her shoulders found herself waiting with a stiff back in a seat facing a thick piece of glass and an empty seat, a phone sitting at her right.
Her hands fidgeting nervously at the hem of her skirt as she tried to only look at the back of the empty seat.

That was, until the seat was then occupied by someone.
Snapping her eyes up, before they widened in surprise as to who she saw, wearing an expression that said she was not expecting who she thought.
She spoke, but before she had picked up the receiver her lips forming the name "Nakura" before she reached out and fumbled with the phone as he picked his up.
Seeming almost scared to put it to her ear.  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

With his black hair somewhat disheveled, dark circles beneath his crimson eyes, and a black fur-trimmed parka instead of a white one with pink buttons, the man before Rosie looked quite different from when she'd first properly met him. However, it was quite clear that he was the same person. Though surprised and hesitant at first, it didn't seem to take him long to make light of the situation with a short laugh and a broad grin.

"Ah, yes, that's right. You knew me as 'Nakura' first, didn't you? Sometimes even I have a little difficulty keeping track of who knows me by which name. If I didn't, though, I'd have been in here a whole lot sooner, and not of my own volition."

Resting his cheek against the palm in which he held the telephone, he propped up his head with an elbow on the tabletop of the booth and set down his other arm next to it. "I suppose that means you didn't come here to see me. Not the fellow you met on that fine Valentine's Day, at least," he sighed. "That was a wonderful day. But strolls down memory lane aside...why did you come, mm?" He gave her an understanding smile. "Was it to ask about your sister, maybe? Because I'm afraid I'm as clueless as you are at the moment. Probably more so."  

[Blood_Goddess]

The words that were spoken into her ear from the receiver caused her eyes to widen, her reaction to his words were easily transparent.
her lips parted slightly as if she wanted to reply somehow, looking somewhat bewildered, searching the man's tired face for some kind of hint that he was kidding around, that he wasn't actually Nakura, or even that he wasn't the kind of person to pretend to be a number of people... why? to trick others? Was this what he did as a Rocket? a man with many names to get him in with whoever he needed.

At the mention of that Valentines day, Rosie's mouth closed her cheeks flushing as she lowered her gaze from his red eyes in a moment of
He had been so nice, and fun on the day she had met him, she couldn't imagine he was this person now sitting here on the other side of a thick glass wall.

For a moment she just stared down at the warn out wood counter in front of her, looking more of less humiliated.
"So then is Izaya even your real name?" she asked, with a force of determination she lifted her gaze back up to meet him, staring straight back at him with a look of sad disappointment that she couldn't quite shake, one that only grew when he almost instantly brought up her sister, and his lack of knowledge about her.
"... I did come here to ask about my sister, I'll admit, I honestly... didn't expect to see you here..."
A hand reached up to close around the base of the reserved, her brow furrowing gently.
"How could you be clueless?" She asked "You worked with her didn't you? The others told me you were there that night in Kanto."  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

"Oh, don't look so surprised, aishita hito," he told her, his expression mimicking sympathy, as if he felt sorry to have confused and deceived her. "Even before Team Rocket, I made a habit of going around with a number of aliases pretending to be people other than myself, both on the internet and real life. It was part of my hobby, so to speak."

"The 'Nakura' you met was just one of them, but what's in a name, really?" He giggled. "What's that saying, again...? 'A rose by any other name...?'" The prisoner allowed his voice to trail off as Rosie took a moment to get a grip on the situation. "I truly did enjoy our time together, just so you know. You reminded me then and now why I so love human beings." He traced a heart with his finger on the glass wall, framing Rosie's face.

When she finally spoke, he sat back in his chair with a sigh and put the arm behind his head that wasn't preoccupied with holding the phone. It was odd, since he usually loved to see the looks on peoples' faces once they realized something he laid out before them, but this time he wasn't really interested in meeting that disappointed gaze of hers. "Yes, that's my real name. Izaya Orihara, underground information broker. Or, as the public now knows me, Rocket grunt." He waved a careless hand. "We have our spiteful friend, Asch-kun, to thank for that."

With a weaker smile, he forced his crimson eyes to meet her bright blue ones as he leaned forward once on the wooden counter once more. "Oh, sure. She was assigned to be my partner, actually. But when Muk hit the fan, I purposely stayed behind. Right now I have no idea where she is or what she's doing; only the speculation that she's probably terribly cross with me."

He tilted his head as he considered the blonde young woman before him. "Rosie-chan...did it ever occur to you that they might see your association with me as a reason to suspect you as a Rocket yourself? I mean, after all that suspicion surrounding Lukey-chan and the fact that you knew about Asch-kun...frankly, I'd be a little suspicious myself. You're just a little too sweet and innocent - almost too good to be true."

"Not to mention that your sister who you were supposedly so close with was found out to be a Rocket as well. How long is your claim that you knew nothing about that going to hold up?" Izaya continued to study her face. "Because you're either going to have to plead that you really loved her and kept quiet because you were trying to protect her, which would make you an accomplice...or that you were really, really stupid to be so oblivious."  

[Blood_Goddess]

Rosie was more of less left speechless as he not just confirmed that he had not been truthful about who he was, but that he seemed to make a hobby out of tricking people?
But why? Because he loved them? Because he wanted to see what they did, or just to see if he could fool them?
"You're hobby is to trick people? In being someone who isn't you, So you can see what they do?"

She wanted to believe that he had enjoyed their interactions, a part of her should have wondered if he was even being honest about that, or if he simply meant he was enjoying the opportunity to completely pull the walls over someones eyes.
but that would be a waist of an experience that she had too enjoyed, for nothing else then meeting a new, interesting person.

Rosie looked down when he formed the shape along the glass with his finger, fighting, and failing to come up with something to say. And feeling deeply embarrassed in front of him.
"You say you love people, I don't understand, if you love them then why would you go out of your way to do something like this, from the sounds of it, pretty often too... or even join team Rocket for that matter." It made no sense to her, you don't hurt the things you love.

His next works drew a quick blink and a widened eye stare at the man on the other side of the glass,
"I've never done anything to hurt anyone, a lot of the trainers in the region know me,"
Granted... most of those trainers had recently abandoned the region for the fact that it was too dangerous, a fact that brought consistent worry and sadness to her.
though this left a stab of fresh concern with this point, one she tried to shake off, since to her, it was ludicrous.
Shaking her head forcefully she looked back to the crimson eyed man, his words shaking her.
"They'll understand about Luke, its already been taken care of with the League..." Yeah, and the following that a trainer attacked him for that suspicion... "And they understand about my sister, of course I love her, and of course this hurts me. But all I've ever done was help people, and that's what they'll see. Because I love people too, and I know they'll do whats right."  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

"Yes and no," the informant answered. "My hobby isn't to trick people; that just tends to happen. My hobby is to observe them - or, as you put it, 'see what they do'. Of course that's not much to watch by itself, so now and again I like to introduce a new element to the mix."

Heaving a sigh, he explained further, "As fun as it was watching the day-to-day activities of the people here in Camphoreon - both legal and not - I was craving something new. So think about it this way: if you were a people-watcher and you were given the opportunity to peek into the inner workings of a private organization, wouldn't you? How could that be called criminal? It's just curiosity~"

He sat straight in his chair again, crossing his legs and draping his free arm across his knee as he switched the phone to his other hand. "What is it that you don't understand?" he asked patiently. "It's because I love people that I do these things. I'm not a humanitarian or an altruist, if that's what you're getting at. Perhaps that's the way you might love people, but my sort of love is a very different kind."

Izaya playfully walked two of his fingers along the top of the table before him. "I like to think of the human race as my toys. I enjoy playing with them and testing their limits; seeing how they react if I change them around a bit. That might mean that once in a while one of them gets broken, but that's not usually my intention. After all, what fun is a broken toy? But sometimes they follow my expectations and sometimes they don't. That's half the fun, see?"

Lifting a finger from the table, he twirled it whimsically to point to Rosie. "For example, I never would have predicted you of all people coming to visit me. Even if it wasn't your intention, it's such a joy to see you like this~! Especially since solitary confinement makes incarceration a great deal more disappointing than I'd thought."

"I haven't really done anything to hurt anyone either, have I?" His face portrayed the picture of innocence. "At least not directly or physically. And yet here I am, mostly through association. A lot of trainers knowing you isn't much, especially when they are just as likely to be Rockets." A flicker of malice sparked in his eyes. "...Hahaha...of course, Luke's the son of a noble family...he couldn't possibly be a Rocket, because then who else could that mean was corrupt? The whole government of Grande Ile, perhaps?"

"Nevermind that Luke's twin brother was a Rocket or that they could have switched places at any time. And isn't that disregarding the fact that there was some issue with the assassination of another Grande Ile noble's daughter?" He shook his head and tutted disapprovingly. "Tsk, tsk...sounds like there's a bit of political power play going on behind the scenes if you ask me...and I happen to be an informant."

With another sigh, the dark-haired man closed his eyes and his features were erased of any show of emotion. "Keep telling yourself that, Rosie-chan, if it makes you feel better," he said. "But you're already far deeper in this than any average person would be. Even pretending that you don't feel more for Luke-chan than a friend, as I suspect, there are a million motives you could have for doing everything you're doing. Even if your intentions are pure, it doesn't matter because no one will ever be able to prove any of it. All that matters is the fact that the line dividing 'good' and 'bad' are more blurred than you or any of the others realize and that fact has only been reinforced by the things I've learned from observing Team Rocket." He opened his eyes.

"Because really...who's to say that you aren't helping people for your own benefit and gain? Who's to say you aren't getting closer to Luke Fon Fabre in order to take part in his future political power and wealth? Who are you to decide if Rockets are good or bad people; if they're committing crimes or helping others or sacrificing their lives and themselves for the right or wrong reasons?" He stared hard at the blonde girl in front of him. "The world isn't black and white, Rosie-chan. That's why, so often, innocence - merely another name for ignorance - is considered the worst crime of all."