[PRP] The Do-Gooder Club

[Suudonym]

Although things in Kodo were fairly quiet in terms of Rocket activity, only the uninformed or blindly optimistic would have taken it as a sign that the organization had vacated the region. Luke knew as well as any, if not better, that Team Rocket's heightened invisibility did little to assuage the threat to the island's trainers, residents, and pokemon, and though he always put in all due effort in the KSO office, sometimes he felt that they were making more of an impact at the northern trainer center, holding lectures and workshops like the one he had been assigned to give today.

With his somewhat short stature, soft expressions, and reserved tone of voice, some might have thought that the young man standing in the northern trainer center was out of place wearing the KSO uniform jacket. The small pouch identifiable as a gun tote at his leg, the sheathed sword worn at the small of his back, and the assortment of scarring that littered his visible skin, however, would do much to dispel such doubts. As he spoke throughout the workshop, Luke's voice carried a wisdom that suggested that his words weren't mere theory but rather the result of firsthand experience. Preparing a pokemon for the possibility of the enemy trying to hurt it was a heavy and difficult task, but he shared his experiences and assisted the attending trainers to the best of his ability.

When the event ended and the trainers began to disperse, Luke raised a hand to pat the shoulder of the large white and gold Aggron beside him that he had asked to help demonstrate a few things. He'd been told by those that had done the presentations before him that it was prudent to wait around for a while, since there were sometimes trainers who had questions that they were too shy to ask in the midst of a crowd, and so he dutifully waited - he didn't have anywhere to be right away anyway, after all.  

[Kadota-banchou]

(( Awesome! Dying at the title over here. .... Hey, does Luke have a journal? I can't find it. ))

A year ago, the chances of Kadota actually attending a workshop like this one would have been next to nil. He'd always been pretty good at taking care of himself. But with three young Pokémon coming into his life rapid-fire in the past eight months, one of which had some sort of early-life trauma, he'd thought it over and decided it was best to go.

In the end, it had been a good choice. All four of them had learned something, and Kadota had been quietly impressed at the strict realism Luke had demonstrated. It fit pretty well with what he'd experienced through a lifetime of street fights and gang warfare. Only the Rockets seemed to have subsumed most of the other gangs in the area, and were far more organized than the average gang, which made them something to be more cautious about.

Georgia had insisted on staying out of her Pokéball afterwards, perched on his shoulder for reassurance. The Togetic cheeped worriedly in his ear, and he reached up to pet her. "'s okay. No one's gonna hurt you while I've got anything to say about it, and not while you do, either. Let's go say thank you."

The rest of the class seemed to be disappearing out the door in twos and threes, and no one had bothered to grab the instructor's attention yet, so he ambled over to where Luke was standing. They made quite the odd couple, the sturdily-built ex-gang member and the petite heart-splotched Togetic. "Hey, thanks for the lesson today." Kadota offered Luke a handshake, with a nod at the Aggron as well. "We learned a lot."

Given the way Luke wore the gun and sword, Kadota had no doubts that he knew how to use them. There was always a certain air of confidence about someone who knew how to protect themselves, and was willing to protect others. Luke had it in spades. "I noticed you guys have been holding more of these classes recently. You expecting some sort of action soon?"  

[Suudonym]

((He does! It's here. I haven't updated it in a while but it should still be at least 95% accurate.))

Luke noted that one of the attendees was headed in a direction other than the exit, and he turned his attention to him in anticipation of the interaction. Indeed, a hand was extended to him, and he returned the gesture in kind, the Aggron beside him rumbling a greeting. "You're welcome, and thank you," Luke replied, a slight sense of relief in his features. "I've never done one of these before myself, so I wasn't sure how it would go. I'm glad you thought it was useful."

Luke didn't recall if he'd seen the person around before - not that that was unusual, with the region being as big as it was - but his initial impression was that he didn't come off as a bad person. The pokemon at his shoulder seemed to trust him; that in itself was often telling of a person's nature, even if not as a rule. Luke hummed briefly in thought in response to the question before giving his answer, "Not in the sense that we have any kind of specific information, but with the region getting more popular because of the trainer centers, we want to make sure we can get as many people as we can prepared for the possibility of being attacked by a Rocket. I can't imagine they're going to lay low forever - there have already been isolated attacks since they lost their base, after all."  

[Kadota-banchou]

(( Great, thank you! I had been wondering if he was fon Fabre ... wink ))

Kadota folded his arms thoughtfully, mulling over Luke's response. It was true that it had been quiet lately. Or maybe he'd just been used to the constant background noise of the gang war? ... No. It had been too quiet lately. "Probably not. I'd put down those attacks to some of their goons getting impatient with upper management, or feelers to see what they can get away with right now. The organization's too big to have been taken out that easily."

There was something about how Luke phrased his response, though. Kadota turned it over again, looking for the words that had triggered his curiosity. "No specific information?" That was it. Maybe the KSO was tied in with the police, maybe they did their own information-gathering. Hard to say; they didn't have much of a rep yet, as far as he'd heard. "You do more than just these training sessions." Although it was phrased as a statement, his raised eyebrows indicated that it was a question.  

[Suudonym]

Luke's expression became somewhat sheepish, and he shrugged mildly, "Well, at least a couple of them were just plain bad luck... But that's a long story." The comment led him to wonder how many people other than himself had suffered the misfortune of an encounter with the criminals. He very much hoped it was not too many, or at least that his own experiences had been the worst of them.

He nodded his confirmation, adding, "We've got things like new names and faces, known locations of where individual Rockets have been, but nothing as useful as, like... a lead on where their next major strike will be." There was that incident in the Decolore region that took place a while back, but as far as Luke knew, no concrete evidence had ever surfaced that Team Rocket had been the perpetrators of the event. And even if there had, if didn't tell them a whole lot about the location of their new headquarters, or anything else that they could use to help Kodo.

"Yeah," Luke verified, "these things are sort of like... Uh, I'm not sure what the right word would be, but our main focus is trying to learn more about Team Rocket's activities so we can intercept them whenever possible. So far, I guess we haven't been very successful - but we're bound to get something eventually if we keep at it."  

[Kadota-banchou]

"Huh." The tall man fell silent, contemplating this piece of information. His Togetic chirped questioningly at him. It was a long moment before he looked up, with a lopsided smile. "I won't ask how you do it — not yet. You could get into trouble if you handed that information out too freely, or your friends might, and there's no reason for you to trust me with it. Those guys aren't exactly known for being generous to their enemies." He didn't presume to know the full details of what had happened with Lance, but it had been all over the news for a long time.

A thought occurred to him. "In fact, if they were smart, they'd probably find someone to slip you information that was just truthful enough to be a trap. So maybe it's a good thing you haven't found too much out yet." He shook his head, chasing that unpleasant thought away.

"Still ... " Kadota's grin broadened. "Intercept? So what exactly does that mean, for you?" He certainly had his own version of what that meant. After all, kicking a** was his preferred form of exercise.  

[Suudonym]

"I think the trainer centers are actually pretty safe. If the reason Team Rocket is laying low is because of League activity, then the trainer centers are the last places they'd want to approach," Luke offered, cautiously optimistic about his own words. His company wasn't a child by any stretch of the imagination, but he still wanted to give some assurance that the trainer centers could be seen as a safe haven. There weren't many such places left in Kodo, after all. "But even so, you're right. No harm in erring on the side of caution, even in a place like this." He gestured loosely to their surroundings for emphasis.

"For me?" Luke raised his eyes in contemplation before giving his response, "An ambush, I guess? Or sabotage followed by an ambush, if possible. Knowing their movements in advance would also give us a chance to make thinks safer for civilians so there'd be no getting caught in the crossfire."  

[Kadota-banchou]

(( Hoping I have my history right, here — as I recall, both Trainer Centers are built out of the remnants of Rocket bases? I don't know if that's common knowledge, but my assumption is that Kadota knows this because he was involved in both builds. ))

It was nice of Luke to stay optimistic. Kadota tended towards realistic, but it was always worth hoping. "I worked on this place, y'know?" A small note of pride colored his voice momentarily as he looked around the training room. "I don't think they'd be stupid enough to get revenge by trying to take it back, but we didn't have to do much to retrofit it for public use. If they really wanted to get in here and cause problems, it probably wouldn't be too hard for them to come up with a way. The front-line security's pretty good, though, so I figure there'd at least be some warning if they tried."

He raised an eyebrow speculatively at the mention of ambush — clearly the KSO op had his attention. "Heh. I like the way you think. What do you plan to do with them after you ambush them? Hold them for the cops?" Kadota didn't necessarily trust the police — they'd been noticeably absent when the gang wars had ravaged the south side of Camphoreon a few years ago. On the other hand, the Rockets were big enough and nasty enough that a solid beating of the appopriate parties wasn't necessarily going to deal with the problem the way it might with a smaller group. On a third hand (wait a minute, that was too many hands), the KSO might have police-level powers for all he knew.  

[Suudonym]

((Half right! O: The trainer center they're in now is repurposed from the remains of the old headquarters, but the eastern center was new construction.))

"That's true," Luke agreed with a nod, "if they really wanted to get in, they would find a way. I think the time for them to strike may already be passed, though. If they wanted to retake the place, they probably would have done it right away - to prove to the whole region that the League can't stop them. I think the fact that they've left it alone for so long can be interpreted to mean that they don't intend to do anything about it." He paused for a moment, then gave a partial laugh, "Or maybe that's too idealistic. Never hurts to be on guard, one way or another."

"The legal term," he said, "is 'citizen's arrest,' which technically means that we're only supposed to restrain them and then wait for the police to come to make a formal arrest. Because of what the KSO is, though, we actually have the jurisdiction to transport them ourselves. We let the police handle formalities like criminal records, but because the League is taking responsibility for Team Rocket, we typically end up holding and interrogating them ourselves. Pokemon training only recently became popular here, after all, so the regular police aren't really trained or equipped to deal with criminals who work with pokemon as heavily as Team Rocket does."  

[Kadota-banchou]

(( Ah, okay! Good, what I wrote still works, then. All of this conversation reminds me — might you have a suggestion of a thread for me to review that would show a standard Rocket attack in progress? I'd like to get the feel for what sort of fighting is appropriate in the game at large, since I haven't seen any serious action yet. ))

"So you're restraining them — aboard a moving vehicle, is that it?" Kadota flashed Luke a conspiratorial grin. "I hear ya. Makes sense." He looked the smaller man over again, evidently weighing his command of the subject, and the respect his Aggron obviously had for him.

"So how'd you get involved in all of this, anyway?" he asked, after a moment. It wasn't that Luke didn't look the part. But mild-mannered as the other trainer was, he didn't seem like the overly-heroic type to Kadota. More like the kind of guy who ran afoul of something nasty once, and decided he wasn't going to let that happen to anyone else.  

[Suudonym]

((Hmmm, I'm not sure there's anything I would call a standard attack... How Rockets act is pretty variable depending on the kind of situation they're in. As a general rule, all Rockets are under orders not to go around killing people, and if someone's found to have committed a murder, they could get in serious trouble for it. Beyond that, pretty much anything goes. There's been injury in RP from being shot, stabbed, exploded, punched, mauled, burned, etc. This raid is probably one of the most violent/fighting-intensive that we've had, for a rough example, and this and this are two examples of one-on-one pokemon theft, though when possible Rockets usually take the stealthy route rather than use outright force.))

"You mean in the KSO?" Luke clarified, assuming from the subject at hand that his company was asking that rather than about how he became involved with Team Rocket in general - although they were terribly closely related. He raised a hand to the back of his head and ran it thoughtfully through his hair. "I guess it just seemed like such a natural choice. My friends and family have suffered a lot because of Team Rocket, and when the headquarters was discovered and I volunteered for the incursion, it sort of felt like the first time I was really doing something worthwhile for the fight. All the individual scuffles up to that point hadn't seemed to accomplish anything, but that day, we made a lot of arrests, and we made a lot of progress. It took a while before I was able to start training to become an officer, but now that I'm here, it just feels like the best place I can be."  

[Kadota-banchou]

(( That's exactly what I was looking for. I haven't read through much of the raid yet, but I have finished the other two links. Thank you! ))

That had been the right assumption, and Kadota nodded once thoughtfully, as he absorbed the other man's story. "Gotcha. Works better when you can bring more force to bear. Better company, too." A small clouded expression flitted across his face. He didn't really like running solo. Never had. But with the way things had gone the past few years, the buddies of his who'd survived were keeping as low of a profile as he was, if not more so.

Maybe it was time to change that.

"So. How do you get involved in something like this?" Almost the exact same question — but with a totally different inflection.  

[Suudonym]

Luke nodded his agreement, "Exactly. More hands, better chances. Even the best trainer can benefit from some back-up. We're fighting against Team Rocket, after all." Even just in the battle of numbers, though, it felt like the trainers were fighting a hopeless fight. So many of Kodo's residents were too frightened or cautious to take up arms, and then there were also the ones who somehow felt that it wasn't an issue that concerned them. His thoughts went briefly to Yuri, to the dear friend who'd abruptly deserted the region with the belief that Team Rocket wasn't his problem. Even now it made so little sense to Luke that he had to think that there was more to it than he knew, and maybe ever would know, and so he set the thought aside.

The next direction the conversation took did much to bolster the young man's faith in the region's trainers, and his features brightened slightly with the expression of interest. "There's not a whole lot to it," he explained. "At the League office in Camphoreon, there's a floor for the KSO, and if you go there you can sign up to become a volunteer or officer trainee. Volunteers only have to pass a physical fitness test - they hold them pretty regularly. Trainees take the test too, but only after a couple months of training."  

[Kadota-banchou]

The sharp nod Kadota gave Luke indicated that he knew exactly where that office was. "Sounds simple enough. Think I'll swing by there later." He had no concerns about passing a physical fitness test.

There was a beat, and then he smiled, finally offering his name as if it sealed the deal. "I'm Kadota. Guess I'll be seeing you more often, Luke."