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Well this was progress! Dith grinned and shrugged as she put on the hat. "I know that the word for not knowing the word you want is lethologica. Ironically I have never forgotten that one since I was first told." As he spoke Dith called Volga back to her pokeball; Dolly stayed out, laden with bags and things as she was.

"So you're heading for the northern trainer center, have you been before?" Dith asked after a half beat pause, setting off at an easy walking pace and still watching Ryuko carefully for signs of unsteadiness whilst trying to seem as though he was not. "It's a pretty cool place, the obstacle courses you know? I'm getting better at them, well most of the bits anyway. The whole crawling underneath things is still kind of difficult, for probably obvious reasons." Maybe he could draw the girl into some smalltalk, find out what she was up to out here all alone. He'd never got used to the idea of kids running around by themselves on their 'pokemon journey' and doubted if he ever would.

Dith chuckled and shrugged amiably; he found it memorable but probably only because the way it sounded kind of amused him, it sounded like it should be some kind of exotic fungal infection.

"I think they might have?" he offered re: strike bags, sipping at the water and then holding it out to his companion again. "I haven't looked to be honest; I go there for the field training type things, I can use the bags at the gym any time. You fight then?" The large man illustrated with a couple of light jabs at the air, demonstrating neat form and technique casual though the gesture was.

Dith watched the girl watch him and wondered what to make of what she said... well more trying to reach an innocent conclusion rather than an unpleasant one. "Perhaps not," he said after a slight pause, "but, da, I think they might have them.... Are you a visitor to Kodo then? Seeing the sights?" Alone, walking through the desert. Why would anyone walk through the desert just to get to a trainer center whose facilities they weren't all that interested in? This whole situation was ringing off more and more, and Dith was starting to have a niggling concern that he was walking into a trap of some kind. A few years ago such a thought would never have crossed his mind, all of his concern would have been directed to the young woman, but a few years ago he'd had fewer scars and more eyes.

If she lived in Kodo permanently and had no interest in the special features of the northern center then why was she out here? The question bounced around inside his head like a bug trapped in a glass and was just as ineffectual, he had no answer and he wasn't sure how to tactfully go about acquiring one.

"Ah, I see," Dith nodded, "I came here as a tourist uh... what three years ago now? I ended up nearly being crushed by an Aggron and decided to stay." Maybe he could get a laugh out of her, or a smile or... well, a something? He certainly wanted to see how she reacted to the weird abridged story of how he'd got his life entangled with Kodo's unfolding saga with Team Rocket, not that he'd mentioned them yet. He would mention them though because he definitely wanted to see how she reacted to that.

"Ehehe, yeah," Dith grinned again and rubbed the back of his neck, at least a little reassured by her normal reaction to his weird statement. "Well I went to see this contest and Team Rocket attacked it, a little bunch of young trainers and I tried to stop them but they escaped and I nearly got crushed by one of them going past on an Aggron. After that I just kind of got sucked in, got to know people in the area, and then there was a job at the hospital and that was that," he shrugged, still grinning, and raised his eyebrows. "I suppose as mid-life crises go it's an interesting one? Fewer sports cars, less botox, more scars and explosions." A bit of self deprecation could go a long way sometimes to putting people at their ease.

Okay, she seemed interested in this but not... not in a weird way? He wasn't put on edge by her look or her query at any rate. "Боги, let's see," Dith muttered, distractedly rubbing his chest over where the lines of scars started as he worked it out. "That would be almost exactly three years," he continued soon enough with a nod, sipping at the water again. "It was the start of July, the contest, back in twenty eleven."

Frustratingly he knew little more now about Jack's involvement with Team Rocket than he had found out from that damn kid on the Aggron; he'd had it pretty well confirmed by 'Lucy' but no more detail. He wasn't sure anymore if he even hoped his friend was well or not, after all Team Rocket had done to him and those he loved he.... He'd always known Jack was cold to those he didn't care for but he hadn't imagined in a thousand years that he would go so far.

Humm, she was interested then! Well he was happy enough to share, even on the off chance that she was involved with Rocket he couldn't see how anything he could tell her could be a problem and if she was not - he didn't really think she was at this point - then it was no harm at all. "You could say that," he replied with a wry smile, now gesturing to the scarred side of his face and the eyepatch that covered his empty right eyesocket. "When their base was discovered out here - where the trainer center is now - my friends and I were one of the strike teams that went after fleeing rockets to try to make arrests. We encountered a group in the desert and we engaged them, managing to take some captives including an elite. Unfortunately another elite escaped and blew up the jeep they had been in, which is what happened to my face."

Ryuko's comment about destructive tendencies got an inquisitive c**k of the head from Dith but for now at least he didn't probe more; her manner seemed genuine and though he was occasionally paranoid these days on the whole Dith still tended to believe the best of people. He did still want to know what she was doing out here though.

"It is," he agreed, "which is why I'm still here on this island. People have to stand up to them you know? There has been no activity I've heard of recently but I don't think for a minute that they're gone, so when they come back we will be ready. That's why I like to go up to the northern center, I don't have time to be an officer for the KSO with my work but I am training up to be a proper volunteer. Hopefully I can get myself all officially signed off soon so I'm on their ping list when things go south again." Luke was a proper officer now which meant he would no doubt be heading in when the Rockets showed up again, and that meant he wanted to be too. Oh he knew he couldn't for a moment even pretend to hold a candle to Luke's skill as a trainer but that didn't mean he couldn't be of use in other ways, namely in keeping people alive if things blew up again. Anyway, if his friends - or some of them - were heading into danger then he was going too because... well just because, that was all.