landlocked [j]

[vertigo]

"i've spent more than a few months on poker games."

if stefan thought he had been doing something else all along after saving him from dehydration in the desert, he was right. the something else had involved J making a habit of the casino and poker tables, screw the one-week limit because he was one of the richest eos trainers for twenty miles much like iskander was the prettiest boy and zahir the prettiest girl.

J felt that he could probably get his way with the casino sooner or later. stefan was just something to help speed the process along. stefan with his tendency to get disliked by almost everyone, stefan with his dark-type pokémon that got mauled first turn into their first scourge fight together. he wasn't oblivious to all of those things, but merely hadn't gotten involved in the scowling between stefan and the rest of pax crew mark i. elias hadn't been much better in terms of facial expressions, but at least he hadn't absconded out of the place with a honchkrow while J went out to smoke.

he would have brought up the fact that he had quite literally dragged stefan away from the brink of death and quite possibly saved his life, but J did not. J was not a person who calculated things like that -- he asked for favors, and expected it not to be granted. if they were, well, it was an added bonus. see: able to take over the casino on his own without help.

J needed someone to be disliked while he looked like the approachable one. business wasn't a one-way street. people had to come, and while the casino was fine that way, the loan shark business didn't thrive on just casinos. (J suspected that if he were to start a cartel revolving around bitter powder, neither stefan nor he would find success, but that was a story for another time -- perhaps another six-month timeskip.)

"you're a step up from mordecai," J said, grounding out his cigarette. he briefly considered a new one, but decided against it. "casinos deal with money, not pokémon eggs. maybe he can supply them, but i don't really have need for him."

and that was a whole lot more than he had ever said to someone.

toska