"Smooth Criminal"

A/N: Spontaneous idea I had when I realized that Sabrina x J exists, and is, in fact, called MorganeShipping. Three-parter, with a sequel being in process. J here is the *teeniest* bit based on the J from "Pkmn2k10" / "Blood In, Blood Out", but no worries, no inhuman, cold-blooded torture taking place.

Not yet, at least.

About the timeline: Takes place during the anime D/P series, sometime between DP020 and DP045 (so between J's first and second appearance.)

When one thinks of ideal places for a first date, an affection seeking person has many options to choose from. Fancy restaurants, quiet parks, the beach, or, for the more simple-minded folks, the own apartment is also one.

Usually, a prison cell is not among these options.

Yet when your breadwinning occupation is besides the range of legality, one tends to meet a lot of similar minded individuals there anyway, and sooner or later, one was bound to find a compatible soul among those that had negative experience with the police.

Usually, the middle-aged woman with the short, powder-blue hair would have scolded at the reminder of her occasional incompetence, and objected being associated with those petty criminals that were dumb enough to leave trails of proof or living witnesses of their misbehavior behind. Usually, she was above these humane mistakes, as she considered herself without pride one of the more competent villains that Kanto had ever had the misfortune of housing. Even she, though, would have to admit that these statements held at least two grave mistakes. First, she was anything but a villain. She was a business woman. It just so happened that her business was acquiring Pokemon that, unfortunately, already had dunderheads that claimed to be their owners, for her clients. Secondly, Kanto was and had never been her home. That hapless title still belonged to the colder continent of Sinnoh.

But as fate liked to lick its fingers in anticipation of chaos, and the events that had let to her imprisonment had involved at least one another person that was at least as far away from the norm as she herself usually was, Jean Hunter, or Hunter J, as she liked to be called nowadays for something akin to a beneficial unawareness level, had decided to cross the adjective "usual" out of her dictionary.

She would soon come to the realization that this was one of the sanest decisions she had made that day, but we're not yet at the point where we can raise ourselves above our poor, chained criminal and dare to make a judgment of what she should or should not have done.

Outside of her cold, wet and masoned prison cell, which seemed to have come right out of the latest fantasy movie pretending to take place in the middle ages, was a similar plain and boring corridor, which let to the undoubtedly more costly furnished police headquarter of the city of Saffron. She was held in investigative custody, but it was all a farce, a lawful farce, for no one with a sane mind doubted her participation in the attempted theft of the Pokemon of Silph Co. anymore. It wasn't as if she could claim she had just burrowed the huge airship that was strangely equipped perfectly for stealing Pokemon from a friend, and had, accidently, parked it on top of the Silph Tower while also hitting the button on accident that would disable all security systems from outside. No, J might have been heinous and uncaring, but she was not as harebrained as to claim innocence. She knew when it was time to just shut up that thin line of a mouth she had, and just sit out what there was to come. It wasn't the first time she had seen a prison from the inside, though she had to admit that it had been a while since she had last been forced to sit behind steel bars. Nonetheless, it was nothing to lose her sanity over. A few weeks lost, of course, time's money, a few weeks of otherwise profitable income lost, that's what it was. She didn't mind losing her freedom that much- it would be hypercritical of her given what she had done to hundreds of Pokemon over the course of her impressive career, but she regretted the missed opportunities.

She had no idea what kind of opportunity would soon present itself to her in a most unusual proposal.

She could hear the talking of the various, similar if not outright copyrighted looking officers, and would have rolled her eyes if not for the indignity of such an action. Did they really think she wouldn't hear their whisper, their hushed accusations and murmurs? She would never outright admit that she was proud of the reputation she had worked herself up to, yet it was obvious that she consciously listened to the Jennies outside mesmerizing and analyzing the fact that they had brought down one of the most feared criminals of Sinnoh known to strike fear into the hearts of foreign league attendants and even daring to take up a fight with the Sinnoh Pokemon Champion.

Of course, if the officers had even the slightest bit of self-assessment, they would have admitted that it was not their achievement only, but a combined effect of their forces reacting fast enough to chain J before their gym leader could have torn out the older woman's bowels and use them to decorate the street lamps. As every child in Saffron had learnt for the past twenty years, it was a very bad idea to enrage their gym leader, not matter what kind of high end technology one owned.

In that regard, J's capture didn't fill in the bill of being "usual" as well. The hunter had, admittedly, never experienced the strength of a psychic user before. They were just pretty rare, and the lone exemplar of their species in Sinnoh, Elite Four trainer Lucian, was anything but a prime example of eagerly energy. If anything, his specialty would have been to act as an effective sleeping pill on her without the use of hypnosis. He was the type of guy she would expect to know "War and Peace" by heart.

With that in mind, the thought of being bested by an esper didn't hurt as much anymore. J even found the chance to think of possible future counter-measures. After all, there was the obvious weakness of psychics to darkness, and she was sure there had to be artificial ways to reproduce that effect by now that could be incorporated into her ship.

For a moment, the calm and professional J had been so captured by visions of future endeavors that she had failed to notice the sudden silence that had overcome the police headquarters. The quiet murmurs of the officers had stopped altogether, and all that was left to be heard instead was the stomach-piercing clacking of stiff stiletto heels on shivering stone flooring, as if even the boarding decided that this woman was too much to take.

There was not a single resident in Saffron that hadn't experienced the eerie and upsetting event of the gym leader suddenly materializing somewhere she hadn't been before mere seconds ago, and there was hardly a living soul occupying the city that wouldn't admit being scared at least once by this spectacle.

Sadly, the same couldn't be applied to undead souls, as a certain ghost loved to turn the tables on his involuntary trainer.

It was telling that by now, Sabrina didn't even need to teleport anymore to make the police fall silent at once.

J, who so far had refused to take a seat at the more comfortable wooden pallet, dared to glance up when a shadow fell unto her hunched form. It was only the second time she met this woman, and already she could feel herself developing a lasting grudge for these uncaring endless pits that were her eyes. J was used to see fear, panic or at least a greater deal of respect in the eyes of her enemies. She herself savored to observe her victims from behind her goggles, and take in all of their emotions like a dry sponge. She would not openly gloat about that, as she would appear to ignore her enemies as long as they didn't get in her way, but the truth was that when other, saner individuals counted sheep at night to get a good dose of sleep, she recalled the faces of these cowards, as they trembled in fear of her and her alone, and that made her smile and sleep soundly.

So it clearly upset her to stare into the face of someone who objectively showed no emotion at all, and who had taken her down without so much as a bat of an eyelash.

Which was only logical, as most psychics used their eyes to channel their powers, and keeping them closed was quite counter-productive.

The psychic, on the other hand, regarded J with something akin to pity. Pity in regards to not only what had conspired before, but more strongly to what would conspire not much later. And, truly, being pitied by a seer was one of the easiest ways to become an early victim to depression. But thankfully, J had no idea about the inner workings of what she was dealing with, so she was blissfully unaware of the mechanics behind the machinery.

Sabrina ceased her glance over J for a moment, and turned aside to face the several officers that were hunched together in the doorframe, silently gasping and wordlessly fighting and crawling over each other to get a better look at their local celebrity. She lifted a single finger at her side, without raising her hand, and the four women that were daring to interrupt this first moment of privacy were swiftly thrown back into the entrance hall, the iron door closing with a metallic pang behind them.

They were now alone, and neither of them was afraid of it.

"Stand up."

Normally, J was not one to obey orders. There hadn't been a single person in her life that could pull orders on her successfully. Not even her parents had that kind of authority over her, neither had any other relatives or teachers that had been trying to break the young girl from early on. And still, she stood up. To her defense, she didn't see it as compliance as much as a simple desire to stand up by herself and see her new and old interlocutor face to face.

In an attempt to get that across as clearly as she could to that humane imitation of a stone statue, J crossed her arms over each other, ignoring the fact that, dressed in the plain and simple attire an inmate was allowed, she looked as impressive as a muzzled up Houndoom.

Yet even a devil's dog shut up in such a way still posed a threat to a psychic user by exerting its simple presence, and as such, Sabrina kept her defense up. She knew as well as J herself did who she was dealing with, but fearing the hunter was outside of her repertoire, as were most emotions a normal human could experience and express.

She was simply doing as the law proposed, yet it remained to be defined if she was thinking about the law of state that every citizen should obey, or if she had an entirely different kind of law in mind, the one that stated that it was always the powerful that made the rules, and that therefore automatically put her in position of unbound power. When one was obeying no other rule but its own, gutting an enemy and swinging their intestines around a hydrant wasn't a severe case of breaking one's right to remain intact, but a job for the city cleaning.

Following a greater law was the reason why she had stopped J from interfering with Silph's plans to create the fourth generation of artificial engineered Pokemon as well as the reason why she had come to the police headquarters unheralded. She didn't need to be a mind reader to know that what she would soon propose to J would break any kind of law both she and the middle-aged woman in front of her knew, as well as probably breaking a few brain cells in two, and not in the nice, schizogenesis-kind of way. If anything, it was more of a schizophrenia-like way of dividing cells, a clear example of how psychics might have bigger brains than the usual human by simple, objective measurements, but without the benefits of being any saner.

She closed her eyes for a split moment, wondering how she should formulate the following words so as to not scare J away from the very beginning. She wasn't known for her tactfulness, if anything, she was known to be so blunt it bordered on offensiveness, and dealing with the more delicate duties of a gym leader was something she gladly left to her subordinates in general. But sometimes, matters took on such a level of privateness that she was forced to take them into her own hands and, quite literally, hope for the best.

There was still the matter of mind influencing, but if she could have it any other way, she would rather stay away from taking over a stranger's mind. It wasn't as if she couldn't, or found it too unconscionable. But other minds could be as alien as another planet and therefore, just as dangerous as questing through foreign land.

She wouldn't be the first psychic to die of the poisonous stinger of a venomous soul.

When she opened her eyes again, the criminal was standing directly in front of her, arms still crossed, eyebrows drawn together into a deep frown, but grey eyes observing her closely nonetheless. Her lips were pressed together into a thin line of light pink, with no teeth showing behind. Inwardly, the psychic sighed. She could work with that, she supposed…

After all, it was better than being forced to take her former rival Kiyo, or heaven and hell forbid, a human turned Haunter...

"So…" J broke the unannounced staring war first, starting to feel irritated by the dark purple eyes that just wouldn't leave her face, or blinked anytime, for the matter. If she hadn't known any better, J would have guessed that one of the prototype robotic Pokemon that she had intended to take from Silph had escaped and now wanted to thank her in person.

"I came here with an offer to you." The psychic finally answered, not taking her eyes from J any moment. Again, this action puzzled J, as much as the statement itself did. She had not expected the psychic to visit her with any kind of proposal except for the choice between being gunned down or hanged or having her brain fried out from under her. She was also very much used to her opponents staring at her for uncomfortable long amounts of time, but when they did, it was mostly out of fear of being ambushed by her or her Pokemon, and not because they didn't seem to be physically able to take away their gaze. It was unnerving to a critical level.

"Okay. Shoot." J tried to lift the corner of her lips in an attempted smile, but that broke off of the psychic's stoic aura as easily as rain drops did on a Teflon pan. It was only natural, J guessed. Shooting was probably the last resort a psychic relied on, the moment their power had fizzled out, or they felt particularly bored by their usual methods of torture.

Sabrina took in a deep breath. Not that J noticed, or that anyone else would have noticed. It seemed irregular to think of her as a breathing being. And living with Haunter had certainly told her that for some beings, breathing was indeed just a cumbersome additional business.

Still, she had the rare moment of intentional feeling that whatever she said next would determine how her whole endeavor went off.

"I assume that you want to leave prison as soon as possible."

J shifted from one foot to another.

"And what if that's the case?" She said, instead of directly answering the question. It wasn't as if she wanted to come off as exceptionally cocky- at least not only. She was waiting for the punchline, for the revelation, because no one sane could honestly assume that she was glad to be behind prison bars and would rather chain herself to the bars than to be dragged out, because prison food and being raped in the showers was just the ideal way of life, right?

Unbeknownst to J, Sabrina totally failed at the traditional kind of punchlines that didn't involve bombs or gag mittens, and had J continued to wait for any kind of punchline, she would have long been skeletonised before anything worthwhile would have happened.

"Then I would like to invite you to the annual gym leader's winter ball as my date."

J was too paralyzed to assume that this might have been the punchline.

But then again, it wasn't the punchline, so she could hardly be accused of being inattentive.

"What?"

And before we let Sabrina answer this question in a rather diplomatic and long-winded way, we'll go back in time a day and see how this unusual scene had been arranged…

~*~Flashback~*~

Despite its honored and traditional outlook, the united Pokemon league of Kanto and Johto had seen a lot of innovations in the recent years. Using a modern intra-net to connect the far-flung gym leaders was one of them. Using simple e-mail addresses and guided internet telephony might have been cheaper and easier to implement, but the public money didn't like to spend itself, and claiming that you had something all the other countries did not have yet always sounded smug and cool, whether it was a female champion, a rare Pokemon disease or a private internet connection that was mostly used to share gossip about and between colleagues.

And occasionally, between all the spam that naturally piled up in the private mail boxes, a message that turned out to be rather important and momentous was found.

As the gym leaders' ball took place once a year, and its date was settled, one would have assumed that the invitation mail complete with the request to name their entourage didn't come to any gym leader as a surprise.

Far wrong.

Some gym leaders liked to pretend intensely that the ball did not exist, and therefore, they had mastered the difficult technique of completely shutting out the possibility of attending until it was far too late to recline. Only to totally lose their minds then when it came to finding someone boisterous, or plain suicidal enough to risk accompanying them. There was a reason the letter said that just picking or bribing a random person off from the streets was not polite and unrepresentative of the gym leaders as a whole.

Not to mention that it cut off Forrest's excuse of kidnapping the nearest Joy or Jenny.

There had been a time not too long ago, when the solution in the case of the odd gym leader of Saffron had been fairly easy: Simply not to attend the ball at all. And the even easier reason for that had been that she had never been invited. The psychic supposed that she could see the reasoning behind: Why invite the freak with the talking doll when you wanted to wake up the next day, alive, in your own body, not the size of a spoon and preferably in your own house (or in the house of the person you were leaving with the last night, as we're not that picky in that case)?

As soon as word of her reportedly healing had gone around and reached Indigo Plateau, though, some kind-hearted and, debatably, goody two shoes souls had decided that she deserved the chance to disgrace herself as much as any other gym leader did, and therefore, she was invited.

Apparently, no one had decided to inform her beforehand of this decision and therefore spare her the sudden, intensive feeling of dread that rose in her stomach, combined with the painful realization that she had no one she could safely invite to the ball. There was, sure, the option of inviting her father as some unfortunate girls did when it came to their prom ball (as it seemed even less socially acceptable for boys to invite their mothers)but Sabrina correctly assumed that in case of a gym leaders' ball of legally adult persons of a more or less adult mind, this was not possible.

Which left her with just few other options aside from resorting to imprisonment. She could ask some of the staff of her gym, but a lot of them had similar behavioral oddities as she used to, not to mention that for some reason, she was seen as an unapproachable goddess by some of them in such a way that openly asking them to accompany her to the ball would likely cause gasping, arrhythmia or spontaneous fainting from them. That, she also supposed, wouldn't pose to be the best background.

On the other hand, it also seemed cheap to just employ someone who already worked for her for such a feature. After all, she was paying them money for their handiwork, and paying them for forcing them to spend even more time with her made her kind of look like a cheap escort lady.

Just like J would decide not a day later that it was fate's fault she would never even dare to think of such a thing as banality existing anymore, Sabrina's sixth (or rather seventh) sense began to shrill that very moment, just like her mobile phone did. She supposed that it was finally time to change that obnoxious dingle of a factory pre-installed ring tone, but the general urgency of the event prevented her from acting it out right away. Instead, she answered the phone first, not even waiting for the voice on the other hand to finish its pressing demand.

"I'll be there, Officer." In fact, she would have appeared on the spot of action sooner, had the upsetting invitation not put a sort of imbalance to her daily routine.

She paused for a single moment, though, before teleporting away to the usually tightly secured skyscraper of Silph. And as we already adumbrate it, the well-beloved adjective was again nothing more than a disguise, for the security of Silph was not a tough nut to crack for either Sabrina or J. In fact, had she possessed anything like a functional sense of humor, Sabrina might have found it amusing to teleport through the corridors of the research and development department of Silph's. Industrial espionage was not her prime interest, but it would make a good secondary employment should Goodshow ever decide it wasn't lethal anymore to suggest cutting her salary.

She paused, letting her mental eye wander around the city for a moment, and high above it. Without moving from her spot, she analyzed the inner workings of the enemy she soon had to deal with. But it wasn't secret entrances to a wide open soul she was looking to break in. She was looking for an entirely different sort of door, a kind of openness to differences and alternation she was looking for. Obviously finding what she was looking for, or at least a manageable way to make it work out for her anyways- one that may or may not have included a negligible amount of psychic manipulation, she was soared away in an untraceable breeze of wind.

She supposed that it wasn't kidnapping an unsuspecting passerby away from the streets per se, even if it was close enough to the definition that she might have had to take precautions in case she was sued anyway. Not that anybody in Saffron was dumb enough to sue a psychic in control of most of the judiciary of Saffron anyway, but when she was considering J, she wasn't talking about a Saffron native.

Something which, she mused with the tiniest amount of malice, actually made the task of asking her out considerably easier on her.

Not on J. Not the tiniest bit.

~*~Present day~*~

And so we are back to the actual reaction of the involuntary date, whose first instinct was to croak her head so as to get a chance to look above the head of her counterpart and check if she hadn't overlooked the hidden camera in the stony wall in front of her. Disappointingly, she couldn't find anything of that kind, and had to grudgingly accept that whatever satire she was part of was for real, and not the mental offspring of an eager television director.

She wasn't sure what should upset her more: The fact that she had been asked such a scandalous question without even hints of remorse, or the fact that she didn't feel any resentment about it.

"Okay." The first step to get actually back to reality was, in her case, to show a sign of life behind the sudden stony façade she had taken upon, as soon as her mind had stopped processing ways in which this statement could have been misunderstood by her. Finding no ways in the end, she decided to tackle the subject directly. Had she not been imprisoned, she supposed she would have tackled the woman directly, and, after her, the officers in the adjoining room, hoping to gain her freedom that way.

"Okay, okay…" She began to massage her temple. That was a gesture she would repeat a lot during the following hour. And days. "Why?" There was nothing that guaranteed her a right to know the circumstances which had brewed this scandal of an idea, but it couldn't hurt to ask. Not when she had not made up her mind yet if she would accept, or just plainly go back to sleep in an attempt to wake up in a more logical world.

Sabrina would have bit her lip if she had been closer to the habits of the average human. But she wasn't, and therefore, her façade didn't change a single bit when she was asked the question. Neither did she bat an eyelash when she answered J's question in an even, calm voice.

"You were the first person available. And you don't have any personal connections to me that could influence your decision and stain your later reputation once you've been seen in public with me."

J raised an eyebrow. Whoever worried about how a fake date might affect her reputation was either not right in his mind, or was something to actually be very wary of.

J was right in her assumption that Sabrina was both.

Still, the criminal had to actually consider the positive effects of this arrangement. She would be out of prison in a far shorter amount of time than she could ever have dreamed off. Some days, at most, instead of several years. She could be back into business by the end of the week, meaning that the financial losses were almost negligible. And all of that, just for the price of pretending to be some lonesome freak's girlfriend.

She guessed she could work with that.

"Okay, so, assuming- and I'm merely saying assuming, this is not a concrete consent yet…"

It was, Sabrina's mind reading told her, but she would leave J in the illusion of mental privacy for a moment longer.

"…what will be my rights and responsibilities?" She supposed she wouldn't have a problem with posing as her partner and answering inquiries accordingly, and her not soild yet hips would also not object some or the other dance prompt. But any further demands would be met with an iron refusal.

Again, if Sabrina had actually paid attention during her social studies lessons, which the league had required her to take after she had been healed only in the most basic form of and her social skills had been shown to be lacking severely, she would have underlined her lack of knowledge with a shrug. The way it was, though, she simply stared ahead and told J as much. "All the league requires from the gym leaders is to bring a suitable partner to the ball, and state their identity beforehand. You may be required to wear something fitting to the occasion, though." Sabrina paused. That might pose a problem both for her and her surprise date. She had never before been required to wear anything that was both formal and discernible female, and she hadn't taken into account the possibility that J didn't own such a garment, either.

J, though, just shrugged nonchalantly. "Okay. I can work with that." She paused, waiting for a reply from the psychic, which, obviously, didn't come. "When can I get out, then?"

Sabrina glanced to the side, checking mentally on the statuses of the nearby officers. They were all awake, and in different states of nervousness and anxiety, not sure how to deal with the interruption of their everyday life that was taking place.

"I can arrange for your release to be taking place today." That was an understatement. She didn't need any approval to do whatever the hell she felt like she wanted to. If she had really felt all that pressed for time, she would have been able to smash the ludicrous stone walls that were separating J from freedom into pulverulent pebble with ease. She just wasn't in the mood to destroy any more public property today.

"Once that has happened, you are free to reclaim your ship", or rather, what was left of her ship after being bombarded by several Porygon's Tri-Attacks as well as a good bunch of Shadow Balls from a petulant Haunter, " and return to wherever you call your home. I will inform you in given time about both the circumstance and the time and place of the ball. Be assured that it is useless to try and hide your whereabouts from me. I will find you regardless of your efforts. "

There were people who would have shuddered in sheer fear after hearing these words. It was never a good omen to be sought after by a psychic, nor was it reassuring to know that hiding proved to be as useless as most other defensive mechanisms.

J, though, had only momentarily considered the option of taking her ship and her heels and escape to Sinnoh or alternatively as far away as possible. But once she began to ponder the pros and cons of such an action, she became aware of the fact that going through with the date was a lot less of a hassle than having to prepare both her ship and crew for an emergency take-off.

Therefore, she only found the energy to shrug nonchalantly and uncaring, dismissing the option of fleeing entirely and telling the psychic as much. Sabrina gave the faintest hint of a nod, seeing nothing but the bare truth of that statement in the older woman's mind. It seemed to be one of the most basic lessons of human behavior that whatever was spoken most certainly didn't reflect the entity of what was thought or felt, and, most confusingly, most of the time not even the speaker himself seemed to be aware of this inconsistency, something which frustrated Sabrina to an incredible level. In J's case, though, there was simple not enough will to care to create a dissonance. She was glad to be free either way, and therefore, she didn't question her motives.

She would be fully busy questioning her sanity not much later.

J had assumed that now that the formalities were settled, the gym leader would inform the officers about her intentions and J would be let free, albeit most certainly grudgingly by the Jennies that had actually been hoping for a medal in honor of capturing a criminal that had escaped the law forces of Sinnoh for far too long. All of these childish assumptions were yet another sign that J had no idea yet of whom she was just dealing with. Instead, the psychic lifted her index finger and placed it above the sliding hatches mechanism, which promptly sprung to life and opened up the gates for the not yet convicted criminal.

J, most certainly ambushed by the sudden noise, and most certainly not startled by the way the situation was accelerating, sprung back a few feet, nearly making contact with the wall on her way. She glanced first at the open door to her left, fighting the impulse to rub her eyes at this miracle of coincidences piling up. Then she glanced back at the woman who had manipulated her cell with just the tiniest amount of supernatural energy, and shook her head to clear it of the uncertainties forming behind her eyes like rain clouds wafting together. She walked through the door just as easily as she had walked in, after she had kicked the haughty Jenny that had been daring to shove her through the grid in the groin. Which was a surprisingly good strategy even on women, J noted.

She walked past the psychic, still not quite believing what was just transpiring, and keeping her guard up in case any unexpected ambush took place. She supposed even then, she couldn't put up much of a fight, given how easily the psychic had bested her before, and how defenseless she was without her Pokemon and equipment, but it was better to keep up at least some illusion of self-defense then to admit that one was totally unprotected.

And now, speaking about…

"Your Pokemon will be provided to you once I can get them out of the custody of the evidence vault."

J blinked, once again shaking her head. She hoped she wouldn't have to get used to having her mind read. She had enough little dirty secrets she would not want to share with the public, but then again, if the psychic wanted to scroll through the indexed novel her mind was, it was her own fault.

She was still too dazed to consider that just passing by the officers without given a single care in the world was highly unusual, and therefore, a very clear indicator of things to come.

The officers, for their part, couldn't have done anything about it at any rate, since their muscles had been frozen in place for the past ten minutes, and the first of them were starting to experience painful cramps that would prevent them from running after J even after she had left the headquarters. All hope was lost, as random passersby who happened to walk by the headquarters either failed to recognize J- after all, a woman wearing a long trenchcoat, knee high leather boots and futuristic goggles was hardly a sight to be remembered in the capital city of Saffron. Or they actually recognized J's face from the news coverage, and decided that it was their best chance at getting a good mobile pic of a well-known thief.

And with that, J was free.

End Part I