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Lucas had been feeling much better - thank Arceus. Problems with cognition were minimal and fleeting if at all present, and he was having a much easier time concentrating. He was plagued with random bouts of vertigo, but randomly passing out in transit was a thing of the past. These motions toward recovery allowed him to spend much more time out of bed and much more thought on recent events. One such event around which his mind seemed to hover was the matter of Liselle, the petite little honey and pink Eevee he had a tendency to coddle. Pairing her off against Lance's red Gyarados had reminded him something gravely important: Team Rocket was a criminal organization, and to coddle a pokemon was to render them useless.

It was this realization that found the man proceeding through the halls and into the pokemon gym with a small blue stone seated in his palm, reflecting in the lighter blue of his eyes. Liselle followed at his heel with a certain anxiety in her demeanor; she instinctively recognized the Water Stone and was quite aware of what its presence in her human's hand implied.

Lucas was roused from his musings when he finally noticed the human form that also occupied the room. "Oh, sorry, thought it was empty," he hurriedly apologized with a backpedaling step-- Oh, wait, this was that guy. Aulus. "Oh. Uh. Hey." Well, this was awkward.

Liselle's ears raised and perked forward when she noted the gentleness in Aulus's expression, though they quickly flattened back down when the scowl reappeared. She retreated into her human's shadow, peering out with a nervous olive gaze.

"Hm." He did indeed enter. It was important that he complete what he had come to do before another mission came up, before the little 'vee was thrust into danger once more. But ignoring the other man wasn't a part of Lucas's plans, "Actually, I'd like to have a word with you, if I could." Red uniform or not. Rank superiority had never held much importance to the man anyway.

With a quiet sight, he tucked his hands into his pockets and glanced around the room as he tried to find the proper words. He leveled an earnest and straightforward gaze on the other Rocket. "What I said in Ambergris was uncalled for. I apologize." Didn't mean that he particularly liked Aulus, but he had certainly been out of line in threatening the man's well-being for no good reason. "I was a bit stressed out, and it was sort of... the straw that broke the Camerupt's back, I guess." And 'stressed' was putting it lightly. It had taken a mission and concussion to finally drag him away from the suicidal thoughts, as little intent as he had to act on them. It had been an unpleasant period of time altogether.

He wavered slightly, moving to lean against a nearby piece of a equipment - a hurdle or something, it looked like - until the brief dizziness passed.

"No, I guess I can allow that," he said with a laugh and a grin. "Honestly I probably couldn't get away with killing you for any offense but treason. For one, higher-ups kind of frown on that sort of thing, criminals or no. For another, Claire seems to think of you as a friend," for some reason, "and I'm not about to take a friend from her just because of what I think is proper."

"Well... that's my piece." He toyed with the idea of explaining why he was as concerned as he was, but that wasn't really his place. Not unless Claire said something first, which he couldn't imagine. Instead he turned to the Eevee that continued to cling to his foot, leaning down to her level.

"All right, Lis," he said, addressing the pokemon in full. "You did well against the Gyarados, but I don't want to see you getting hurt again. You understand that?"

Liselle ducked her head in a hesitant nod. She wasn't fond of fighting, but she was even less fond of endangering her human with her own weakness.

"Okay. Here we go." He held out the blue, teardrop-shaped stone, and the Eevee touched her nose to it. The shimmering display that resulted left in its wake a Vaporeon, smaller than average just as the Eevee had been and marked with pink.

At mention of the labs, the newly-evolved Vaporeon gave a fearful cry and dipped back into Lucas's shadow, curling away from Aulus with her head low. "It's okay, Lissy," the man muttered, stroking her head gently. "He's just asking a question. You don't have to worry." He turned back to Aulus, "L-A-B-S is a taboo word with this one. That's where she came from, though, yes. She's an escapee. Wound up in Claire's room through the air vents." And a good thing, too. He couldn't imagine how she had been treated to be so fearful and timid and to react so strongly to the mere mention of the word.

"The cloning, for one. A lot of the cloned specimens are sold as designer pokemon to the wealthy, from what I gather. Beyond that, well... They're science facilities. They experiment. Try and find ways to make pokemon more loyal and more deadly." He thought back to the darkly-colored Lugia that had been used against Lance and his team. "I'm not sure if you're familiar with the concept of shadow pokemon, but it seems we're researching a way to bring that back as well. Getting pretty damn close, too, from what I've seen."

He ran a hand from Liselle's head down her back, attracting the Vaporeon's attention. "I don't think it's all absolutely awful, though. Lis seems to have a naturally nervous disposition, though the, uhh... 'science facilities' probably didn't help with that. It's certainly not sunshine, though. Evil organization and all."