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Frosted Cavern. It was a bit of a ways from their home base, but it wasn't a particularly dangerous dungeon. Located near the northern sea, it was a cave that tunneled down into the earth, and some say it even delved below the ocean floor.

It looked the part too. The area around it was all a snowy wasteland--- beautiful, but devoid of life as far as the eye could see. Their footprints left marks in the otherwise unblemished snow, and Nico could see his own breath coming out in plumes.

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The entrance to the cavern itself didn't lose out as far as that went. It was big, but the icicles hanging down from the top of it meant that the actual space available to explorers looking to enter was a lot smaller than it could have been.

Seeing the entrance and those icicles, Nico was glad everyone on their team was pretty small today. He didn't want to think about getting something like a Charizard or, legends forbid, a Wailord through that sort of gap.

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"Oh my..." Joli couldn't help but sigh in admiration at the sight of it. "It's so lovely. You know, I know we've been here before, but it just gets me every time."

"... Does it?" said Nico. He squinted at the cave entrance, trying to see exactly what was 'lovely' about it, but he missed the mark as far as that went. To him, it just looked like a mouth full of long, pointy teeth... but Nico kept that part to himself, not wanting to ruin Joli's enjoyment.

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Their third team member, Lupin, wasn't nearly so polite. Scuffing the snow with one paw, he huffed. "What's so great about this place anyway? It's just white white and more white. I'm sick of snow already." As if to illustrate his point, he began shaking the stuff in earnest off his feet.

Then again, he'd been doing that the whole way here. He hadn't had a very good time of it either. His short and thin legs made for hard going when the snow got deep, and it was always getting stuck between his toes.

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"Well," said Joli, his mood not dampened any by this comment of Lupin's, "look at this icicle, for example. Wouldn't you say it's more blue?" He spoke with the earnestness of someone genuinely trying to convince someone else of something.

If only earnestness made a difference when it came to Lupin. Nico had to bite back a sigh; he already knew how this was going to end.

"Who cares? It's all just so cold and stupid," the Zorua said. Joli looked a bit taken aback at that.

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Nico found that he couldn't help but sigh after all, in the face of that. "Come on guys," he said. "Let's just go in." The sooner they got this over with the better, he thought. Babysitting Lupin wasn't exactly Nico's idea of a good time on the best of days... Taking him through a dungeon was probably going to be worse.

Still, they had promised the authorities that they'd try to straighten him out. That was the condition for them not arresting Lupin. As it was, the Kecleon brothers looked as though they wanted to protest, but the police chief had been reasonable about it at least.

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Lupin was just a kid, they'd argued; he ought to be given a second chance. He just went down the wrong path and made a mistake, that was all... And he had managed to return a lot of the stolen property. Not that this appeased the Kecleons any, but the town had rallied behind Nico and Joli on that one.

If only they'd known what they were getting into. Or, well, that wasn't entirely fair; Nico had a good idea of what taking in Lupin would entail.

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But he'd gone along with it anyway, since it was the right thing to do. And now they had to keep Lupin busy and try to teach him a trade that was legal, all in the hopes of keeping him out of trouble. If anyone had a better, less work-intensive plan, Nico would have taken it, but sadly, there were none to be had.

This was where Lupin's training started. They'd taken him out on a rescue today, just a short little foray into a small dungeon, to see what he was made of.

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And to show him the ropes, of course. That last part had been Joli's idea. Nico had wanted to take him to a dungeon without any missions on top of that, to reduce the number of things they had to watch out for and worry about, but Joli had argued that if he was going to be a rescuer, he should see them at work doing the actual rescuing.

Which had been a fair point, Nico had to admit. If they wanted him to do this somewhere down the line, he might as well see the whole picture.

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It was just that he suspected Joli had some ideas about how Lupin would see the joy in helping others, and just how nice it was to return someone back safe and sound and receive their heartfelt thanks... which might have worked for Joli, or even Acheron, but it was probably beyond the scope of Lupin's small, childish, self-centered worldview.

Not that Nico voiced this either. Maybe Joli was right. Gosh, Nico sure hoped Joli was right; it'd make things a lot easier on all of them if that was the case.

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Nico just... wasn't much of an optimist on things like this, that was all. And he'd had enough conversations with Lupin by this point to have pretty well been soured on the kid.

The light dimmed as they entered the dungeon, but not so much so that they couldn't tell where they were going. "See how it got darker all of a sudden?" said Joli, clearly seeing a teaching moment in this. "Frosted Cavern isn't too bad, but it gets really dark in some dungeons, so you have to proceed carefully!"

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"Why?" said Lupin. "Isn't it better if it's dark? Then they can't see you, right?"

Nico was surprised. He'd expected another snide, dismissive remark from the Zorua, and... okay, this might have been that, but the way that Lupin had said it, it sounded more like an honest question than anything. Maybe he wasn't totally uninterested in learning anything about what they did after all.

Joli certainly took it as encouragement. "You're right--- other Pokemon can't see you very well, but you can't see them very well either," he said.

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Nico decided he'd give this a fair shot, so now he chimed in along with Joli. "Right, so it's a lot easier to run into an enemy without realizing, or to find yourself surrounded if you're not careful. It's important to always be aware of your surroundings," he said.

"Mhm! Plus, you know, if I saw some dark figure in the neighborhood and I couldn't make out what exactly it was, I'd get pretty scared! And the Pokemon in these dungeons are kind of riled up already, so if they get scared they might just attack without thinking."

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"Oh," said Lupin. Nico waited for the other shoe to drop, but it didn't not yet. "So it's kind of like avoiding the cops! Alright, I guess that kind of makes sense."

Joli's smile faltered, and Nico winced ever so slightly. That... wasn't really what they'd been hoping to hear. It wasn't outright ridicule, but...

Well, maybe he was being too hard on the little guy. He was just trying to relate it to something he knew, Nico supposed. It was understandable enough that it would take him some time to come out of his criminal's mindset.

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At least he was willing to listen to them if he felt like what they said made sense. That... was admittedly more credit than Nico had even given him at first, so there was that. The trip might not be as futile as Nico thought it was going to be at first.

"W-Well... Luckily this dungeon is still pretty well lit, so we don't have to worry about that for now! Just keep your eyes peeled, okay?" said Joli. "We're putting you on rear lookout. We're counting on you, Lupin!"