Disclaimer: I am not, now have I ever been, a disclaimer.

A/N: I just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who's been reviewing! It always brightens up my day when I see a new review in my feed, and I appreciate that you all are enjoying my story so much. :D

It was a much smaller dorm than Proton had been expecting. Petrel's had been more like a suite or some sort of posh apartment; two rooms, two bathrooms, a decently sized den and a kitchenette to match. Compared to the old camper Proton had lived in with his mother, it had practically been a palace. This new dorm was more like a grunt dorm or a studio apartment. One big, open space, and one itty bitty bathroom. There was one double bed waiting for him the day he moved in, along with one bedside table, a small dresser, and an equally small closet. That was fine; it was more than enough space for his single uniform and his few civilian clothes. He also had no kitchen, though he really didn't have any idea how to cook. Archer had been nice enough to have someone put in a mini fridge and a microwave for him, so it wasn't much of a problem.

Despite all of this, its small size and single occupant, it felt... empty. It was still when Proton woke, without the smell of freshly brewed coffee or the sounds of Petrel preparing for the day. Far too still. He didn't have a TV, so as he dressed himself and tried to tame his hair, he couldn't even have the white noise of the news on in the background. The only thing to break the monotony was Twitch, who flew in through the window not long after Proton woke up and decided to hang from the rod in the closet to settle down for sleep. Proton gave him a nice, long scratch behind the ears before zipping up his uniform shirt and jamming his cap tightly on over his hair. He was eager to get out and have some fun, for once. His team was operating on their own, and he was finally able to turn his attention to his projects. All he would have to do was drop in to make sure everyone was on-task, and then he could spirit himself away to his office and begin work trying to salvage code from Pirouz's broken pokeball. He checked his watch - it was still early. Just enough time to go check on Petrel's dorm like he'd promised.

It was almost a little bittersweet to return to Petrel's dorm. The walk wasn't quite foreign to him, yet; his feet moved on their own as he retraced his steps from the previous night, his mind lost to his plans for the day. He nodded a greeting to a few patrolling sentries as they passed each other by and paused briefly to unlock Petrel's door. He wondered how much longer he would have access; probably only until Petrel returned, he reasoned.

The darkness of the dorm was both surprising and expected. It was strange for everything to be off, and Proton could remember quite clearly the light always on the kitchen in the mornings and evenings. It was colder than usual, too. He wished he had brought his jacket with him, because it felt like the heat wasn't even on, at all. He paused briefly at the door to kick off his shoes in the empty space, then quickly looked through the kitchen appliances to make sure what needed to be off was off. When everything was accounted for, he pushed further into the den.

It was probably the first time Proton had spent any real time perusing Petrel's things. The books along the shelves next to the desk were overwhelmingly related to medicine. There were a lot of books with obscure titles he couldn't pronounce, languages he couldn't read. How pretentious. There was an entire bookcase dedicated to notebooks and binders that apparently dated back as far as ten years; at the top shelf were well-worn binders, labeled clearly with the others' names, Giovanni's among them. A much newer binder was at the end of the line, "Proton" written across it in bold black marker. Curiously, Proton reached to take it off the shelf and began to flip through. There were dates, notes scrounged from his previous trips to the infirm with Petrel's torchic-scratch covering the pages. Every now and then Proton would see more of the foreign languages scribbled into the margins with arrows drawn to their associated weren't many pages filed, but the most recent one was from the hitmonlee incident, with a page of write-ups and a crude diagram of Proton's injury. Clearly, Petrel wasn't much of an artist. Proton put the folder up. His eyes lingered on the others' folders until finally, he turned towards the rest of the room.

Books weren't the only form of entertainment Petrel had; there were VHS tapes and a few DVDs on some of the lower shelves, but what Proton was particularly drawn to was the Playstation tucked neatly away in the TV stand. Petrel had a handful of games that Proton only barely recognized. There was one he knew was about some epic quest to find four elements and save the world, and another whose box he had to study long and hard to understand. It apparently had something to do with rolling things up. There were some fighting games, some racing games, and a couple more games that also seemed to have to do with epic quests. But in a place of honor and on its own shelf to boot was a game that looked to be about raising virtual pets, seeming an awful lot like mutated pokemon, and upon further inspection, Proton found the box to currently be empty. It must have been in the playstation, he reasoned. He wondered if Petrel would ever let him try playing.

When he had seen enough of the den, Proton decided to check Petrel's bedroom, but unfortunately, the door was locked. He gave up jiggling the handle pretty quickly and began to return to the front door, pausing as his eyes fell upon the guest room. After a moment of deliberation, he approached, pushing the door gently open to peer inside. Not a lot had changed, to be honest. It was still mostly crowded with Petrel's library overflow, but somehow seemed empty without Proton's few things inside. He pursed his lips as he eyed the bare mattress and pillow, further as he looked upon the now-unused desk. It shouldn't matter. He had his own dorm, now. He was happy. Or, he would be, once he settled in. Yeah. Got used to the solitude of his tiny new dorm. After all those years of putting up with his squad's noise, having his own space was a good change of pace. He quickly shut the door and left Petrel's apartment, taking care to lock it behind him.

There was a fresh stack of paperwork waiting at his inbox when Proton arrived downstairs, and instead of secluding himself in his office to work as he had originally planned, he took as much as he could carry to the break room, where he claimed his usual seat at the tall table and began to work. It was budget stuff - yuck - but if they wanted supplies that year, it needed to be done.

"Hey, Proton," Heim greeted as he passed by her, and Proton nodded warmly to her in return.

"Hey, Heim," he replied, "you free? I need someone to start a report on the inquisition." Heim grimaced.

"Can't you get one of the new guys to do it?" she asked, "I'm meeting Peng here to coordinate our dip into the ground-floor sentries."

"I thought I put Carillo on that."

"He said he needed to deal with the wall sentries." Proton heaved a gigantic sigh and ran a hand through the ends of his hair.

"Yeah, alright," he said tiredly, "maybe I can get Decarli to do it. He's such a push-over."

"Decarli's out," Heim told him.

"What do you mean he's out?" Proton demanded, and Heim shrugged.

"He said he was taking the day off. Something about that girl he met in Vermillion," she offered, and again, Proton sighed.

"Fuck me," he grumbled, "it's like you idiots want Boss to crack down on us."

"It's just one day," Heim reminded him, but Proton scoffed.

"One day is all it fuckin' takes. Now go on. Get to work."

"I remember when you used to be fun," Heim lamented as she hopped to her feet and headed out the door. Proton only grumbled in reply. Maybe this was why Petrel was always a pain in the ass. Maybe flippant grunts and admins were the problem. He'd probably ask him about that when he got back.

In the meantime, Proton tried his best to focus on his paperwork, but it was difficult. There was nothing he could imagine that would be more boring and dry than trying to figure out all of this finance taurosshit; it wasn't that it was difficult, though. The math was easy enough, simple formulas that Proton could have followed in his sleep. It was really the content, the tediousness that did him in, and he frequently found himself becoming distracted by random, extraneous events arouns him. Desta came in without Shufen. She'd caught a cold. Proton asked her if they needed anything while she got better, spent maybe fifteen minutes talking with Desta about weird home remedies his mom used to make for him, and maybe they would make Shufen feel better, too. She left eventually, and Proton got hungry. He tried to get some shrimp snacks out of the vending machine but they got stuck, so he spent more time trying to shake them out. Carillo showed up wanting snacks, too, and the two of them worked together to shake the machine until finally the bag fell. Proton ate his shrimp snacks, Carillo got his cream bread, and everyone was happy. Or, as happy as Proton could be with that stack of paperwork still staring at him. He couldn't stay here. The break room was too distracting. This was why he got an office in the first place - he may as well head back.

It was, at the very least, empty; no grunts or admins to talk to or free tasty snacks with. All Proton needed to do was find his motivation and he would breeze through the rest of the papers by the time shift ended. Taking a seat at his desk, he booted his computer and scrounged through the drawer for something interesting. Maybe one day there would be something useful, but for now, all Proton could find were the few chips he'd managed to salvage from Pirouz' broken pokeball. That was it. That was his out. Carefully, Proton connected the chips to his computer and ran a program to rip and save whatever information had survived. While it ran, Proton turned back to his papers and set to work, mindfully watching the progress bar out of the corner of his eye.

His paperwork went pretty quickly after that. Somehow, once his hand got moving, it was that much easier to stomach the boring text and even easier to scrawl out his reports. All the while, code flew by on his screen. There were large chunks missing, strings and functions calling on other strings and functions that not longer existed, and errors printed in bold red text. Every now and then, when Proton glanced up to fully gauge the process, he would see bits and pieces of things he sort of recognized. Some code was related to the compression mechanism, which was probably the piece he was most familiar with, having researched its science once for a project in high school. Was it science fair? He paused to think. Must have been. That headhunter from Blackthorne Uni had seen it. That was where his scholarship had come from. Melancholy draped over him like a heavy blanket. Things seemed so much brighter those days. He wondered if, in another universe, he went. If things would have turned out any better than throwing it all away to come here.

The beginnings of his spiral were cut short when another broken piece of code scrolled by. Proton frowned and leaned forward, studying it closely as it approached the top of the screen. Something was wrong. The decryption process, unfortunately, locked him out of the rest of the software, and he wasn't sure if he was willing to halt the entire process. It would vanish through the top if the screen before long, and then... well, then he would have to wait. Proton quickly looked around his desk for a notebook, a loose sheet of paper, anything he could write on, but came up short, and the code was rapidly advancing up the screen. He didn't have time to go off and find any.

This was happening now.

Without hesitation, he grabbed the top sheet of his paperwork and vigorously began transcribing the strange code into the margins, finishing just after the last line of the fragmented function disappeared. Proton sat back when he was finished, frowning as he raised the paper to the light to study it. The function was supposed to call on a string of numbers, but there was another bit of function, crude-looking and out of place. Proton couldn't imagine anyone at Silph had done this. It looked like something he or one of his classmates would have done in high school. There had been no comments, but whether or not that had been die to the severe data loss from the pokeball's meltdown remained to be seen. Proton squinted.

"It's a trainer number," he suddenly realized, speaking to the air and leaning forward again as he nearly pressed his nose to the paper. "So that means this is..." Abruptly, he shot straight up, jumping to his feet and sprinting out of his office, the rest of his paperwork forgotten in his mad dash upstairs.

Archer was surprised when he answered Proton's persistent knock, for a minute simply taking in his heaving chest and wind-blown hair before standing aside to let him into his office. Proton plopped down into the guest seat almost immediately as he tried to catch his breath.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Archer asked him as he resumed his own seat behind his desk.

"Cipher," Proton managed between gasps, "they - they're doin' somethin' weird with their pokeballs - got the code!" He waved the paperwork in front of him and dropped it onto Archer's desk unceremoniously.

"Would you like some water?" Archer asked, ignoring the paper entirely, and before Proton could so much as nod yes, he whirled around in his chair to dig through his mini-fridge. What Proton caught glimpses of were a little bit surprising: with the few waters and what appeared to be Archer's lunch were tall cans of energy drinks and very unhealthy-looking microwavable snacks. Before he could comment, it was shut, and Archer passed him the water bottle. Proton cracked it open and began chugging as Archer finally took the sheet and eyed the code Proton had written down.

"I'll be honest," he admitted after a second, "I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at." He paused again, scrutinizing the paper before rolling his eyes. "Well, besides your finance report, anyways. You know I need it today, right?"

Proton resumed his gasping as he finally put the water down, slowly regaining his breath. "I'll fix it later," he promised, "that's part of a call function that's supposed to identify a trainer code."

"And?" Archer prompted, "I assure you, we were all well-aware that trainers from Orre had license numbers."

"No, no, no - I mean, yes, but no." Proton leaned forward, motioning to the various bits of the code as he hastened to explain. "They've altered the code to avoid checking for an OT number and to register a dummy ID instead. I think - I think they're bypassing the antitheft."

Archer's frown deepened and he looked back down at the code. "Bypassing it?" he repeated, "what, you mean they're using pokeballs to steal pokemon?"

"Exactly!" Proton cried. He leaped to his feet and reached for Archer's pen so he could explain properly, but Archer seemed to sense what was coming and quickly pulled all of his things out of reach.

"Well, this is an interesting discovery," he continued, "I'm sure Master Giovanni will be keen to hear your take on the matter. Now, is that all?"

Is that all? Is that all? Proton scowled. He wanted to grab Archer, to shake him. This was important information. If Cipher could bypass the antitheft (with such a crude, unrefined workaround to boot!) then quite clearly it meant they had some vague notion of how to mod a pokeball. There was no telling what else they would do. And of course, this was far from everything strange about the stupid thing; there was still the matter of the intentionally warped guts, not to mention that huge fucking hitmonlee. The larvitar, too. Something was up. Cipher was doing something big. Proton didn't know what, yet, but it would come with time, and it would especially come with more research into their strange pokeballs. If only he had more of them.

But he didn't say any of this to Archer. There was no proof. Just his hunch. Shoulders sagging, Proton had to admit defeat, if only for now. "Yeah. That's all," he grudgingly replied. Archer nodded in satisfaction and stood, motioning Proton towards the door.

"Wonderful," he said, "I'm sure your follow-up to this will be interesting, indeed. Unfortunately, I have to do, so..."

"Yeah, whatever," Proton huffed, "see ya." Archer pushed him out and shut the door behind him with an audible click. Proton didn't need him, anyways.

When he got back to his office, it was to the sight of his computer's blue screen of death, and with a hearty groan, he forced an unexpected reboot. Talk about bad luck. Deciding it better not to try using those stupid damaged pokeball chips again, Proton merely settled back into his paperwork groove and filled out as much as he could before shift ended. It was mundane, monotonous; he barely remembered half of it. All the while, his eyes would flicker to the half-burnt pokeball guts, and his mind raced in every attempt to discern the significance of that shoddy code.

When shift was finally over, Proton went to drop his paperwork off in Archer's bin, then took his time strolling back to the sixth floor. There had to be an easy way to smoke out a few more Cipher moles. Pirouz couldn't have been the last one, could he? Proton had thought that maybe when he set his inquisition in motion, there would be idiots scrambling to hide their tracks, but maybe getting sloppy and fucking up, too. He'd imagined they would have already had at least one by now. He didn't know what, exactly, Giovanni might have been expecting of it all, but that would have at least been a good start, right? But they hadn't even caught one damn traitor yet.

When Proton finally looked up from his feet, he had to stop and do a quick double-take. In his obliviousness, his feet had steered him back to Petrel's dorm instead of his own. It was a familiar door; it was comforting. If Petrel had been there, maybe Proton could have asked his opinion. He'd lived here a long, long time, after all. Maybe he knew some tricks the old guard used to smoke the traitors out. At the very least, maybe he would have made dinner, and at that moment, Proton's stomach was protesting loudly. Well... Petrel had asked him to check up on it, after all.

The first thing Proton did when he entered was to remove his shoes by the door, then to beeline for the fridge. There were a couple tupperware containers full of leftovers, and Proton's eyes brightened as he pulled one out that seemed to be full of cabbage rolls and chicken. He heated it up for a few minutes in the microwave and then headed into the den, plopping down on the couch as he flipped on the TV. There was some dumb soap playing, and he was too lazy to change the channel. That was fine. He stayed there for a long time, even after his dinner was finished, watching TV and pretending Petrel was just holed up in his room. He didn't want to go back to that small, cold little dorm Archer had stuck him in. He didn't want to be alone. Not again. If it hadn't been for his zubat, Proton probably would have stayed there all night. Instead, knowing poor, little Twitch needed him, Proton eventually turned everything off and headed home to snuggle with his little buddy until he fell asleep.

The next day was much of the same, and so was the day after that. Proton woke up, got dressed, and checked on Petrel's dorm, the headed downstairs to direct his admins and take care of the paperwork. Peng claimed that he was hot on the trail of a filthy traitor, but he also believed the chupacabra lived somewhere in the mountains around HQ, so who knew with him. Otherwise, Decarli was being pretty productive, and Forhan and Heim had cleared all of their camera watchmen. Carillo was still checking the wall sentries. Everything was going according to plan, and Proton couldn't have been more bored if he'd been tied to a chair and forced to watch a chick flick. He milled around his office doing paperwork on autopilot, waiting for maybe a single damn measure of good news, and at the end of the day, he would pack up and spend the evening watching TV on Petrel's couch before finally returning to his own dorm late into the night.

After maybe the fourth or fifth day of the horrible monotony, something crashed into the routine. It was maybe three in the morning, and Proton had been tossing and turning in his bed. The dorm was so small. He felt like he was suffocating. He could only fit one of him between the bed and the fsr wall. This was clearly not a dorm meant for an extended stay, even though he was sure the admin barracks had been roughly the same size, with even more people stuffed into them. Fuck. He needed room to breathe. And as Proton was contemplating this fact, there came a buzzing from the overturned box he was currently using as a night stand. With a groan, he dangled his arm over to grab his pokegear, resting his chin om the edge of the mattress as his eyes burned in the screen's light. It was a text message. His eyes drifted over the words, brightening as he pushed himself up just a little bit more.

[Petrel]

Back in town. Too much coffee. TV?

Quickly, Proton tapped out his reply.

C=C=(•ー•)

He rolled out of bed, paused to stretch and work the kinks out of his neck, then pulled on a t-shirt and wandered out of his room and down to Petrel's. He didn't know why the prospect was so entertaining to him. It's not like he and Petrel had gotten on the best, before. But... somehow, the prospect of hanging out and watching TV with him at three in the morning wan enticing. He didn't bother knocking when he arrived, merely let himself in, and Petrel looked over from the couch when he entered.

"Eeeeyyy," Petrel said, raising a glass of wine as Proton approached, "I'm back, bitch! Thanks for watching the place while I was gone."

"Yeah, no problem," Proton replied, leaning over the back of the couch, "how'd it go, anyways?"

"Like shit!" Petrel announced with a laugh, "but I got the deed, man. Target's still alive, but overall I'd say mission success. Check it out." Proton followed his directions to the TV screen, where the news was playing a story on the robbery of the man who'd beaten Archer out om the Goldenrod bid. He was some old, fat bureaucrat with a wart, and Proton's nose wrinkled at the sight of him. But he was giving a description of the person who had assaulted him and... Across the screen, a sketch that looked suspiciously like Petrel appeared. Petrel laughed aloud again. "Shit! Archer's not gonna like that. I'm fucked."

"Giovanni, either," Proton agreed. He went to raid the fridge for one of the beers he'd left in there, then returned to plop down next to Petrel. "You gonna be alright?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Petrel chuckled, "this isn't my first rodeo. I figure worst case, Boss kicks my ass around his office for a few minutes. Dunno what they're gonna do about that idiot living, but it's not my problem anymore."

"Yeah," Proton agreed, "I feel bad for the poor fuck who's gotta clean this mess up."

"Dude, they're gonna be fucked just as bad. Bet you anything he hires a couple bodyguards after this. Hey!" Petrel shifted in his seat, turning his attention fully to Proton. "Listen, I was thinking about marathoning a few movies Thursday night. You wanna come hang?"

"Yeah?" Proton pressed, "what's brought this on, all of a sudden?"

"I dunno." Petrel shrugged. "You've moved out. It'll be weird if you're not here eating my food from time to time. I kinda got used to it."

"You know, it's weird. Me too." Proton shook his head. "What the hell? Let's do it. Thursday can be movie night from now on."

His phone chimed again. Frowning, Proton looked down. It was a number he wasn't familiar with. Petrel, om the other hand, despite having no understanding of boundaries or personal space, recognized it immediately.

"Oh, shit, Archer's messaging you," he said, "I didn't know he had your number.

[Archer]

Did you see the news?

"You better answer him," Petrel advised. and Proton hastened to do just that.

Yeah. Why?

You need to finish the job.

"Shit," Proton swore.

"What?" Petrel pressed.

"He's sending me to Goldenrod," Proton answered, then paused to skim another new message. "Fuck me! He wants me to off the guy, he's sending me off first thing!"

"Oh, come on," Petrel whined, "Thursday's movie night, I've got Men In Black and everything!"

"Well who's fucking fault is it?!" Proton snapped in reply, shoving himself to his feet. "Thanks to your incompetent ass I've got to go clean this shit up! Fucking hell, I don't want to go to Goldenrod!" Viciously, he snapped his gear shut and continued to swear colorfully under his breath.

"Oh, come on, it sucks, but don't be such a drama queen. You're a big boy, Proton. You can handle a couple cops."

"This isn't about the cops, dammit."

Petrel frowned. His usual plastic expression had been replaced by one of vague interest, but damn if Proton spilled put his soul to him. He didn't need to know where Proton's burning hatred of Goldenrod came from. No one needed to know. All anyone needed to know was Proton would rather shoot himself in the crotch than go back to Goldenrod under any willing circumstance. Unfortunately, when Team Rocket was involved, there was rarely such a thing as willing.

"Whatever," he grumbled as he straightened himself and headed for the door, "I'm gonna go see how he wants me to handle it."

"Don't let the door hit you on the way out," Petrel called after him. Not for the first time, Proton considered throwing something at him.

This was gonna suck.