#while rats swim by and the facility staff do nothing?

[ansburg]

white people who have never interacted with the justice system shut up about how you think your experiences are comparable to prisoners' challenge

[askbohemiancompany]

A Deal

Nigel was working on his soon-to-be-open and pending-to-be-named night club. All of the required necessities were in place. Several bars to be lined with booze, a kitchen to give the best food that would be appropriate for the club, and a sound system for pokemon to dance to. While Nigel was the only person in the room now, he knew there would be crowds flooding the room. With a bit of promoting and making some connections, he knew he would be swimming in more dough.

Everything was going perfectly. Nigel could not be more excited.

“Nigel Hampton. I need a word with you.”

A mature woman’s voice came from nowhere. The voice sounded distorted and slightly demonic. Nigel was freaked out, not knowing where the voice was coming from and that it knew of his full name. Not many knew his full name. This led to Nigel giving his standard response to anyone who scared him.

“W-who’s there?!” A long shadow made his way up to where he was standing. As the figure began to form from the shadows, Nigel began to back away, desperately trying not to soil himself. The shadow began to clear and it revealed a dark-colored greninja.

“M-Mariah! What do you want?” When it came to Mariah, the clefable knew better than to try and play the demanding role. “Well Mr. Hampton, I’m here to give you a deal.” This caused the club owner to raise his brow. Mariah was always someone who had a string of people doing her favors. Usually, it would involve them doing something for her down the road, but it came with some massive benefit. He nodded to hear the terms.

“I want the names anyone you sent pokemon to over the last four years. Not only that, I want all of the remaining pokemon you have in captivity in any facilities you are using.” So she wanted him to rat out his connections and sell part of his side business? If he did that, he would be on dozens of pokemon’s shit list. This sounded like he was on the short end of a deal.

“Woah hold on. I do all of my pokemon transport legally. I follow all of the laws. Besides, I have made so many deals with different aliases, I could not possibly name them all. And back to the stock I have, I gotta at least keep some of them.” The fairy interlocked his fingers, pressing their tips against the back of his palm. This objection was a breaking point for the fairy type, knowing this could blow up in his face if he worded anything poorly. “I was going to use some of them as staff. Give them the option of either providing room and board for them but live under my ownership, or they can live in the city freely and they would be on their own when it comes food and medical finances. I had a plan for either option. You got to understand. You do understand right?”

“Staff?” She could not help but feel disgusted at such a shameless euphemism. For a moment she looked like as if she would consider his deal, but anytime she tried to look at him, she looked away in repulsion for split seconds. “You have not had many people wanting to join have you?”

Nigel winced as the agent had hit the nail on the head. Deflating into an ashamed hunch, Nigel backed away from her. “It hasn’t been all that smooth.” Mariah shot him a smug smirk, wanting to see if he would admit to shooting himself in the foot. “I knew there would be those who were not going to associate with me due to my past actions...but there were so many.”

Her grin got even wider, confirming what she already knew. Nigel tried to avoid eye contact out of shame. “Well, there is nothing I can do with that. How about this though. You can keep at least a dozen or so of the pokemon you have with you as your staff and I can draw up the paperwork to make it all legal. Plus I will throw in an immunity deal to not tie you to your former associates as well as overlook the fact that you used aliases in your dealings, which is against laws around pokemon transport. I will also need you to do me some favors down the road if I so need you.”

This was a perplexing prospect. On the one hand, he could make somewhat of a clean break from his past, again, and could keep some of them as staff for his club. The drawback was that he was worried when Mariah would make him do something that would jeopardize his standing when it came time to pay the piper. “Alright. You got a deal. I’ll give you the names of anyone you want, and the alias I used when I contacted them.”

“Good.” Mariah formed another showed and pulled a pen, paper and a recording device, all to get this over with. Nigel could feel a pit form in his stomach. He knew only the short game and even he did not know what she would use him for in the future, but what other choice did he have?