Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alba shrugged as they walked. The mop he'd be using was supported over his left shoulder, and from his right hand swung a bucket that looked like it had been used in a kickball tournament. Twice.

The shorter trainee wasn't too thrilled with the situation either. Then again, what could he say to such orders? "I wouldn't say I've been here too long. Maybe a couple months or so now." Never mind that Alba tended to keep his head low, was content with volunteering for mundane tasks, and didn't put excessive effort into training his Pokemon, and so was probably a ways yet from moving up in the ranks. He shifted the bucket to his left so he could open the door and hold it open for them. This guy was newer at this, he guessed, so Alba offered a small reassurance. "I'll admit, there are better chores I'd rather do, but at least this beats cleaning the toilets. Among other things."

Alba couldn't help a small smirk at the young man's complaining. He set his bucket down as well, deciding to start from the corner. "Alba," he answered simply to the name question. He dipped his mop briefly in the water, and let it hang over the bucket for a few seconds to drain. Go figure his mopping supplies didn't include a wringer. Call him a germophobe, but he had a clear enough idea of just what all came in contact with a standard floor, and there was no way he planned to directly touch anything that was going to "clean" such a floor. Satisfied that the dripping had slowed enough, the mop head was dropped down to the linoleum.

"Think of it this way: this organization is always in need of skilled, promising, and loyal members." Alba scrubbed the corner-most squares as he spoke, then put his weight into the mop to quickly scrub along the plastic baseboards for about a yard. "If you can put in some good effort, show what you've got, do as your told, and don't get cocky, someone such as yourself should just about fly up the ranks. Ugh, ketchup. It's always the ketchup. Why does no one ever notice the ketchup..." Grumbling to himself, he grabbed a paper napkin from a table, and used it to pick up a burst ketchup packet someone had left stuck along the wall.

If Alba could have heard Aulus' thoughts, he would have quickly defended his head with, "It's not gray! It's light blond!" But, Alba was not psychic, and therefore did not say such things. Instead, he could only make a face as he threw away the piece of trash, and return to cleaning along the baseboard. This conveniently allowed him to keep his back to the room, and, of course, the only other person in it.

How was Alba to answer that? The kid didn't seem too bad, and someday might even do well for himself. Maybe he was still deciding if he'd made the right choice or not. That didn't mean Alba was ready to give much of an answer for himself, though. "Some stuff happened." He chuckled and tried to smile as he worked. "Then again, stuff's always happening. I guess I happened to go through some stuff that left me without many options left for other stuff." He shrugged. Did that even make sense? Dang, he really was starting to sound old.

"Heh. I guess that was a rather lame answer on my part, huh?" I killed a guy and my wife took everything in the divorce. Right, because that always went well as a first impression.

"I guess I got tired of moping around. I paid off my rent, packed a bag, left the keys to my other belongings with some friends to do what they liked with it, and caught the next ferry out. Didn't look or care where it was going, just so long as it wasn't that place. I can tell you this, though." Alba stopped his work, and half turned to look in Aulus' direction. His bemused expression was as if a realization had just occurred to him, and not a bad one either. "If I had to choose, between going back to that life, and cleaning up trash here forever, I'd say to shut up and hand me the mop," he said, tapping a hand on the mop stick a couple times and going back to work. Oh great. Now he just sounded melodramatic.

"Honestly?" Alba said quietly, and slowed to a stop again. He stood in thought for a moment. "Honestly, I don't really know. I mean," he shrugged, "I guess this does start to get dull after a while, even for an old timer like me." He grinned briefly at his own joke at himself. Aulus was far from being the first to comment on Alba's age as a trainee, so he was already aware of how many of the typically young trainees viewed him. The work resumed once more. "Interesting would be a nice change of pace. Who knows? Maybe I can get some kind of desk job when promoted, or see if I can get into one of the slower paced departments."

Something quiet. That sounded like the kind of stereotypical job Alba should've been aiming for. Technically speaking, he'd been invalided into early retirement. Wasn't that kind of person supposed to be haunted or whatever, and expected to stray away from all things action-y? Ignoring a few close calls, he hadn't even had a full on flashback since joining Team Rocket, now that he thought about it.

Who was he kidding? He missed action. He missed it badly. "Slow suits me just fine." Liar.

Keep his head down? "That shouldn't be hard," Alba said with a wry grin. "All I have is an oversized bell and a twitchy bird. Hardly intimidating material. Your team is probably a lot more formidable, huh?" That was only true when Spook the Chingling wasn't hungry. And Spook was always hungry.

If the other trainees didn't think him a boring old guy already, they most likely would now. This kid was probably going to go right back to his quarters after this and laugh it up with his buddies. What use was a guy with gray-- SILVER blond-- hair to an organization like this, if he couldn't even get away from the red uniform? Hmm. Hey, at least he knew how to mop right! That had to be something. That baseboard was starting to look right spiffy, thank you very much.

"Yep, you got it. A Chingling and a Pidgey. Spook-- that's the Chingling-- joined me in Ambergris not too long before I was recruited." He couldn't help a small grin at that memory. "Twitch the Pidgey, on the other hand, I got from another Rocket I happened to run into in one of the kitchens here. Spook got into a bit of a mess along with her Pikachu, and her Pidgeot apparently wasn't a fan of her having more than one bird." Oblivious to the fact that they both knew Claire, he thought nothing of saying her name, nor the names of her Pokemon. He wouldn't be showing much gratitude if he went around bragging about how he got a grunt's Pokemon so early.

"That's great that you've had your Absol since she was an egg, though. I hear Pokemon like that are a lot easier to train than those caught in the wild. Which makes sense, I suppose."