All right, here we go! The real start to Layla's story, sorry for the meltdown, but it needed a change. I'm not going to tell you the change, you're going to read about it. Thank you for sticking with me and welcome to new readers, enjoy!

Dom stormed into his office with an angry glare squishing his face. It took him a few moments to cross the large building after touching down on the helipad. In those moments, he mumbled to himself and his face changed to match those who passed him. No one dared speak to him or even greet him. Grunts cleared the way and executives merely glanced for just a moment.

Team Rocket's main base stood in the middle of nowhere within a rocky canyon, and was a rather large building. Somewhere in northern Kanto, it was the longest standing base they'd had, and it was the hub of all things Rocket.

Files upon files, paper or digital, were stored there. All of them detailed every mission, any possible outlets for money, wealthy contacts, or persons of interest. Giovanni was adamant about keeping them. Despite his mother's focus on just money, he always had a bigger vision for Team Rocket.

"Damn that man; he won't get away with this," Dom snarled as he slammed his door shut and collapsed onto his work chair.

His face, and body, had settled into one he'd had a great fondness for, and one he assumed was closest to his real face. It sort of created itself over the years, and he'd found no need to change it. His skin was an enriched brown with darker stubble on his chin and jawline, with hard cut eyebrows to top his deep brown eyes. His hair was nearly gone in a close cropped cut.

The more he thought about it, the more he remembered his skin never being this dark or ever being so well fit. His true appearance was buried under all of those he had ever pretended to be. He could always make a generic make of himself. He would just have to look up the appearance of those descended from a nameless clan from long ago, thought to be the first to live in Johto...

"Focus," he muttered to himself before shaking his head. "Actually..."

Twisting in the chair to slide to his desk across the cluttered room, Dom lifted up a wooden crate and dropped it on his metal desk. It hit with a clank, scattering a few knick knacks on his desk and causing some pens to hit the floor. He rifled through the files inside, his eyes scanning each paper until he came to one in particular.

"Perfect!"

The clan had been most recently researched within the past few years, leaving him with a list of abilities the members had harnessed.

Back then they worshipped the Unown, strange psychic pokemon, and were able to adapt to live in their presence. It was unknown why they had to, or did, and what made the pokemon leave in the end. It wasn't the reason that mattered, but the abilities.

It was a well known fact that some humans are capable of what was once assumed the impossible. Mind control or reading, telekinesis, teleportation, telling the future. Few have honed these skills, but the numbers of those who did indeed have them were rising.

Dom believed that they should be a majority; that they were more likely to survive in this world with pokemon running amuck. He laughed at those easily tricked by his illusions. A simple change of the face and suddenly they couldn't locate him anymore. He could be anyone he wanted and get anything he so desired.

That wasn't what he needed, though. No. To be in Giovanni's favor, that is, to get endless amounts of funding for research, he needed to find a way to control Mewtwo. He already had a machine to do that, but it was clunky and outdated. It used pain to coerce the subject to do what needed to be done.

He needed to be smarter than that old contraption he built years and years ago. Another Rocket scientist was working on the same project using the brain, but it created rage and caused a state of fury. At that point, it would be hard to control the subject, for fury wasn't a controllable emotion. It was blind and reckless. The opposite of what Giovanni was looking for.

"'Telekinesis... Illusion manipulation...'," Dom read aloud. "Where is it? Ah!" Jabbing his finger onto the paper, Dom reached for a highlighter from a mug on his desk and marked the paragraph he wanted. "Compulsion. Perfect."

Next to the crate, beneath a few papers, Dom grabbed his laptop and returned to sitting in his chair. He opened the lid and typed in a password. As soon as it was booted up, he accessed Team Rocket's files and typed in 'Other' in the search bar. Despite his protests to make him and others like him their own category, no one else really cared and simply tossed aside his suggestion. It enraged him, but he knew they would get their karma soon, he was going to make sure of it.

"Compulsion," he spoke as he typed and hit enter, looking proud of himself.

Instead of the long list he was hoping for, a meager list comprised of no more than five names popped up. He scanned the names, reading the info bar to find that two must be dead of old age and that the other three were shots in the dark. As updated as the files were, he alone worked on those with powers, and he'd been too busy.

He clicked each name and read up on their files, one at a time, to gauge their abilities. The first two seemed adequate, able to control someone to do their bidding for a short amount of time; they were worth a look through. However, the last one was interesting. They were actually famous for their ability. How strange.

"Juniper..." he murmured under his breath. What a beautiful name.

He clicked for more info and a page from a magazine popped up with the woman on the front smiling while holding up her hand. Across the front the title said, 'The 'Natural' Pokemon Ranger!'. He realizes the hand she was holding up should have had the styler clasped around it, and he felt even more intrigued. She just might have been exactly what he was looking for.

"'...No need for a styler... 'persuades' pokemon to help... safe for them... they always have a choice..." At the last snippet, Dom grinned and clapped his hands. "Meaning she can take away that choice. I've hit the jackpot!"

He printed out the page and cleared off a wall, pinning it to the middle. Juniper's face grinning down at him as he stares at her. Compulsion - a beautiful ability that he hadn't had the luck to come across or have in this life. The ability to force someone to do something for you by different means. Touching them, speaking to them, or entering their mind and, to put it as she did, 'persuade' them.

There was something in her brain that allowed her to do this, and he could find it. Years of work had led to this moment, and he was not about to let her get away.

Turning back towards the laptop, he saved the other two names to get to first. He had to test out his equipment on one, make sure it could detect the brainwaves, keep track, make adjustments, and so on. He would perfect it and try it on the second.

Then came the game of Juniper.

He needed to find her whereabouts to see if she was still able to use her powers. The article was written long ago, so who knows what had changed. Hell, he needed to see if she was even alive still. Being a Ranger was a tough job.

Dom checked the time and took a deep breath. The list of things to do was longer than he would have liked, but he needed to start somewhere. First he had to find data on Juniper. The most detailed files were on paper downstairs.

He whipped open the door to find a man standing there with his fist poised to knock. Dom's eyebrows lifted, and a harsh grin formed on his face. He was exactly what Dom was looking for when it came to finding a new target.

"Archer. Just the man I wanted to see."