[A/N: Well, here it is, my very first Pokémon fic! I guess it's passable. Don't kill me!!!]
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A Little Change
Chapter 1
Jessie, James, and Meowth were fidgeting in front of their boss in the Team Rocket headquarters looking distinctly uncomfortable. Butch and Cassidy looked on from the sideshadows with rather smug expressions on their faces, not helping their nervousness at all. Giovanni's Persian rubbed against his leg.
"You think he'll kick you two off?" said Meowth nervously.
''If he's doing that then why would Butch and Cassidy be here? It's always been a secret thing," Jessie said. "Remember when Eric and Danielle were kicked off the team? One day they left for Mt. Moon, then they were gone!"
"But if he's not, why are they looking so happy?" asked James.
"How am I supposed to know?"
"I'm not kicking you off," said the boss into their conversation, a slight smirk passing across his mouth near the end. "You might consider it worse than that."
"Is he cutting our pay again?" wondered James, at which point Jessie whacked him on the head with a conveniently located paper fan.
"Not yet, but if you don't shut up I'll do that too! It has come to my attention," he continued, "that no matter what I do, the three of you NEVER WIN! Now why could that be?"
"Um, I don't know?" James asked in his most nervous tone - which was saying something.
The boss smiled thinly. Even the more-than-slightly-smug Butch and Cassidy squirmed a little. The Persian wound between his legs. "I think," he informed them, "that one of you four isn't cut out for Team Rocket." You four. "I intend to find out which."
"How?" Meowth wondered.
"Jessie and James, you are now split up."
"What?!" they demanded, utterly shocked. Cassidy raised her eyebrows fractionally: This certainly hadn't been expected.
"But, um, won't we need partners?" James asked haltingly.
"Of course," the boss said, a smirk playing about his lips. "Butch, you will partner Jessie. Cassidy, you will partner James."
This news did a fairly good job of wiping the self-satisfied expressions off Butch's and Cassidy's faces. They now wore looks of horror identical to Jessie's and James'.
"But - but - but it's not our fault they're incompetent!" Cassidy sputtered.
"Well, um," Butch said in a halting manner, which was prudent when dealing with any of the female members of Team Rocket, "maybe it won't be all that bad, I mean it should be over in a week or so--"
"NOT THAT BAD?!" Cassidy roared, smacking him upside the head with a conveniently located paper fan. "NOT THAT BAD?! YOU'VE never gone to SCHOOL with that INEPT FREAK!!!"
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING AN INEPT FREAK!?" Jessie demanded. "YOU'RE the only inept freak I see around HERE! Well, except maybe Butch," she added as an afterthought.
"Then maybe you should look in the MIRROR!" Cassidy retorted. "Not that you don't spend enough time doing that already!"
"What, and you don't, Ms. All-Supposed-Looks-And-No-Brain?!"
Cassidy looked as though she might throttle Jessie. Jessie didn't look too terribly friendly either. She was looking at Cassidy like she wanted to smash her head open on any handy rock.
About then they realized the boss was looking like he wanted to kill both of them.
"Um, sorry," Cassidy squeaked.
"Sorry," Jessie said. "We'll.. we'll leave now. As in, now, partner.."
Chapter 2
James was glad he'd gotten to stay with Meowth. Cassidy had been looking nothing short of murderous since the boss had told them they'd be partnered up.
"Why me?" he muttered under his breath.
"What was that you said?" Cassidy asked instantly.
"Nothing!" he said, more for the purpose of not being hit than any other reason.
"Good, now shut up and let me think."
You don't seem very good at it, James thought resentfully.
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Ash reached the top of the hill. He was too ticked at being lost yet again to care that Brock and Misty were lagging, he didn't even care that Pikachu was a few yards behind. He didn't really notice when he stepped into the rope circle.
However, he definitely noticed when the bent sapling sprang upright and the rope contracted, snaring his ankle. He smacked his head on a rock as the trap hung him upside down by his ankle from the tree. A small cut on his head leaked a few drops of blood onto his hat, but he didn't notice.
He was already unconscious.
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"How thick can you get?" whispered Butch elatedly as Ash blundered directly into his and Jessie's un-camouflaged trap.
"Careful. He's been VERY lucky so far," Jessie cautioned.
"Where's his Pikachu?"
"I don't know, it should be.. there it is."
Pikachu rounded the top of the hill. He froze for a moment, looking around, probably not quite believing that his trainer was hanging unconscious from a tree. Butch and Jessie burst out of the brush and Jessie opened Ash's backpack while Butch tied a sheet of rubber around the lower half of Pikachu's face, nearly getting electrocuted in the process, but he was just fast enough. Jessie removed Ash's Pokéballs from the backpack.
"Wow. That was easy," she said.
Unfortunately, at that moment, a certain water trainer crested the hill.
"Ash!" Misty called. "Wait up, Brock twisted his ankle and.. what the.."
"Prepare for trouble!" Jessie called.
Butch sighed, then joined in. "And make it double!"
Jessie glared, then continued. "To protect the world from devastation."
"To blight all people in every nation."
"Urgh!" Jessie yelled, frustrated.
"This isn't working," Butch agreed. "You aren't as good at it as-"
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Jessie snapped, smacking him upside the head with a conveniently located paper fan. "You were the ones who changed it around!"
"Jessie?" Misty asked, beginning to regain her figurative balance. "And Butch?" At which point she snapped out of her understandable confusion completely. "So you're the ones who did that!" she snapped, gesturing to the tree that Ash was still hanging off of. "Brock! Hurry up!"
"Very good," Jessie mocked.
"How do you ever manage to lose to these people?" Butch asked incredulously.
However.. "Starmie, go!" Misty called, putting Togepi down behind her so as not to get it in the way. But, as often happens in such cases.. "Oh, you stupid duck!"
"Psy?" Psyduck asked in his perpetually confused tone.
Butch snorted. "A Psyduck?" he asked. "That's what we have to battle?"
Misty glared.
"Fine then, you battle it," Jessie retorted. "Although, it is a bit easier than usual, I admit.. The brat's usually conscious."
"All right then," Butch said in a half-amused tone. "Sandslash, go!"
"Psyduck, um.." Misty couldn't think of any attack Psyduck could possibly make.
Unless Butch's Geodude made the first move.. and he didn't realize.. but that wouldn't work.
Would it?
Chapter 3
Butch had had the initiative handed to him. He decided to use it. "Sandslash, tackle!"
Misty bit her lip. It all depended on how they landed..
"No, don't hit-" Jessie began, but too late. Sandslash launched itself at Psyduck, knocking the wide-eyed water Pokémon to the ground.
Where it hit its head on a stone.
"Psyyyy yiiii!!!" Psyduck yelled as the pain in his head intensified.
"Yes!" Misty said under her breath. "Psyduck, confusion!"
"Psy!" Psyduck called as a blue glow filled his eyes and outlined him.
Sandslash rocketed (pardon the pun) back and forth- until smashing headlong into Butch, knocking him into Jessie, and all three of them into the air.
"Oh, shoot-" Butch began.
"Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again--!"
When they landed, both of them were feeling resentful.
"A Psyduck defeated us. That's just sad," Butch said.
"Correction: A Psyduck defeated you. I hate to say 'I told you so,'" Jessie continued, in a tone that belied her words, "but.. I told you so."
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Misty un-looped Ash's ankle from the rope hanging from the tree, careful not to hit his head again: the last thing she needed right now was to give Ash a concussion.
"Urgh.." he groaned. Misty figured he was waking up.
"Hi, guys," said Brock as he rounded the top of the hill, favoring his right leg just a bit. "Did I miss.. any.. thing.." He trailed off as he saw Ash unconscious on the ground, Misty looking very shocked, Pikachu with rubber on its face, and Psyduck out of its Pokéball and holding its head. "What happened?"
"Ugh.." Ash said, conscious again. "Jeez, I must have tripped or something. No, wait! I stepped on this rope, and I was in the air, and-"
"Ash, relax! It's already over!" Misty said irritably.
Ash blinked. "It is?"
"You got caught in a trap," Misty explained. "I was hurrying over the top of the hill, and you were unconscious and hanging by your ankle from that tree. Pikachu had that rubber on its face, and your backpack was on the ground, open. Then Team Rocket said their little rhyme thing, but something was different."
"They finally changed their rhyme?" Ash wondered.
"It wasn't Jessie and James."
"Butch and Cassidy?"
"No. It was Jessie and Butch together."
"What?!"
"But they hate each other, Misty," Ash said in the tone of someone explaining how to add two plus two.
"I know," Misty snapped, hugging Togepi a little tighter as Brock unraveled the rubber from Pikachu's face.
She had a feeling Butch wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
"I don't get it either.."
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[a/n: Well, that was my lovely (pathetic) attempt at a Pokémon fic. Thanks go out to my younger sister, Poké152, who was only too glad to cure me of my ignorance of all things Pokémon, and my beta readers Cairnsy, Draven, and court28. Thanks, guys!]