Under the veil of shadows, there was a red cape that tattered in the wind. A rather young man wandering down the way of narrow passes of hollow bastion's more metropolitan areas. He'd been unhooded and seemed to take rather light, but slow steps towards the end before stopping. Raising his lazy eyes, he saw from the darkness two more silhouettes quickly move inside. First instinct told him to otherwise let them be and he continued walking.

Walking for felt like a weeks time, in search of the gathering spot on this world, only his third day on the job. The red-haired youth was prompted to find them, no real description of their faces, but he had a single location in mind. Trudging along, bat heartless seemed to fly past, quickly stopping and marveling over the teen as if they'd fallen in love. He possessed a potent and strong scent that they could smell, the darkness that wrapped around his heart completely distracted them from their master's tasks.

The mercenary turned his head, Ryoko would surely follow.

"Does that always happen? Seems the heartless have...someone in mind?"

Salforge's eye tinted and flickered bright red for a moment. The teen he and Ryoko had been looking at, hardly seemed like a harmless resident, the empire had a massive registrar of the locals after intervening on this world and building the factory. The heartless persisted, but watching the teen, the mercenary noted he put up little to no signs of bother or even resistance against the beasts. While they possessed or show no means of harm he just stood there, as if his rights were suddenly revoked. Then he did the oddest thing, he raised both of his hands and put them behind his head.

"Um...is this kid serious?"

"....." he said nothing, it only made this situation more awkward and equally as daunting.

Lifting his hands slowly, the mercenary could finally see it. A detonator switch, his eyes flickered again hearing a swift press. He spun around cupping Ryoko under his left arm and threw up his right to condense a quick three-layered wall the radius of the alleyway between them and the stranger. As if he were per a terrorist faction, his entire body ignited like a nitrogen bomb, there was a cool breeze and that spot went up and froze, though not passing too heavily beyond Salforge's barrier. The air quickly grew cold and the mercenary used those seconds to partially code Ryoko with his shells.

"I take it, this is one of the ones we're looking for. Fine." Salforge stood up and peered past his barrier, a pool of darkness swam, with a slight tint of blue. The teen's clad was flapping about in the now subzero temperatures, that was more of what Salforge worried about, but he unlike Ryoko was cold-blooded and could function perfectly fine, his extra coding would at least keep her up against the lowered temperatures.

"You're with The Empire?" his first words spoken, the red haired teen separated the veil of darkness and could now be seen. Pointing back at himself, "Gavin."

"Not much of a talker are you sport? Fine by me, long as I get to waste you that name is irrelevant to me."