" Giovanni is gone and our hideout has been abandoned. Do you know what this means?"
" I'm sorry, but no, I don't."
" You are our new boss now."
Crystal didn't even try to answer. She stared in horror and confusion at the two men in front of her—two relatively young grunts—and mentally asked Arceus what, exactly, had she done of bad enough to earn that punishment.
Team Rocket might have looked like a serious and scary organization, and maybe that was what it had once been, but after having another young trainer dressed in red had defeated the leader, it had fallen down. Four executives had taken the lead, but their attempts to bring the group back to its old splendour had been messy... and brought to a premature end by her own self.
In all honesty, she had expected the members to be angry, vengeful, not to come at her like confused puppies. But maybe she had overestimated them. After all, what could one pretend from people who tried to conquest the world using rattata?
That was more or less what the brunette was thinking, still eyeing the two strangers in silence. They looked happy and impatience like children in front of a candy shop, which made the whole situation even more absurd.
" Are you sure I'm the person you want to follow? I think I made it clear I didn't approve your criminal activities," she finally said, trying to sound reasonable," if you were to follow me, there would be no more stealing... Are you sure it'd be worth it? "
" We must become good trainers," one of them answered after a brief pause. " Only this way we'll be successful grunts."
" And we need a new leader!" Announced his companion from behind.
With a sigh, Crystal ran a hand through her hair. Was it safe to allow them to follow her? What would have happened if she said no? The brunette assumed they would have looked for someone else, or wandered around like lost ghost pokemon, unintentionally bringing chaos.
She suddenly imagined them like that, running after bug-catchers in a lose attempt of imitating them, somehow trying to make their teams even more useless, adding weedle and Kakuna like they were the answer to any problem in the world. She could see them challenging trainers with their usual arrogance, send their pathetic bugs, and be completely humiliated. Unless, one of those weird shorts-obsessed, rattata lovers youngsters found them first...
Suddenly, Crystal felt very sorry for the grunts.
" Fine..." She eventually whispered. The two men's reaction was surprisingly energetic: with a joyful laugh, they basically hugged each other and screamed a concise and proud: "yes."
"We can start, uh, tomorrow. We can do something simple, just to know each other... What about you show me your teams, and how you make them fight?"