At 6:39 pm, Standard Time, 13th October '01, explosions boomed through the
14th floor of the Serendipity Hotel, Masque City, PokeWorld.
They were followed soon after by screams.
"Who's been in my lab?!" demanded lil' Washu. Onscreen, Ryo-oki dashed out of the wreckage as fast as she could.
"Would you CHILDREN turn that down?!" Jessie shouted from the other room.
James darted for the remote. "Sorry, Jess-chan!" He lowered the volume and returned to his former position on the bed, face-down with chin resting on his forearms. "So, who would win in a fight, Washu or Ryoko?"
Kid hadn't budged form her spot on the floor, reclining against the bed, legs outstretched and crossed at the heels, folded arms cushioning her head. She pondered. "Who do you favor?"
"Washu, definitely. I would love to get my hands on some of her technology." James gleefully pictured typing in impish commands for all kinds of inventions doing his bidding, not aware he was miming away right there in the room.
Kid mercifully ignored this and simply scooted over when his "keypad" got in the way of her hair. "Washu might have powers, but I don't believe she can type faster than the speed of Ryoko's blasts. She'd be cinders before executing one directive ."
"Cinders, huh?" He put a forefinger in his mouth in concentration. "No, Washu would have a forcefield up before Ryoko could come near. Washu's supercomputer could turn Ryoko into a hatchling Psyduck." Then his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "Or did that already happen? I can't remember."
"Perhaps."
They watched in silence when a second episode came on. After a while, water could be heard draining, signaling the arrival that followed. At the sound of the opening door, Kid and James turned to see a lavender linen amass emerge from the bathroom. Steam poured from the bathroom opening, giving an impression of the wonders the hot soak including a warm damp washcloth over the face could do for skin, deep tissue, and attitude. The linen shifted to show Jessie swathed in a fuzzy hotel bathrobe; she dried damp hair with one end of the humongous towel and the rest of it piled up on the floor. "Yikes, I love this place," she murmured. "These are the softest pajamas I've ever been in, this towel could cover a twin bed, and they thought of everything. We need to open a chain of these hotels."
"Then again, if we had the money to open a chain, we wouldn't be staying here as someone else's guest," James reminded her.
"Which reminds me, I coughed earlier and obviously no one will want this bathrobe back since it has my germs on it." She adjusted the sash tied around her waist pointedly.
"Absolutely. For their own good, you must keep it," said Kid solemnly.
Thoroughly content, Jessie crawled into one of the other mattresses and lied on her side, head propped up, and hair spilling onto the bedspread and over the side. Her legs, bare from the knees, squirmed until she found the best angle.
Onscreen, the scene changed to a clip of two beautiful females pushing each other out of the way to get to some boy. Sparks snapped between their incensed profiles.
Jessie sighed. "Why would this boring, ordinary boy deserve two self- respecting females fighting over him?" Then the actual show came back on, a shot of several people preparing and sitting down for a meal. "Exactly why in the world are there SIX of them living with him?" If this kept up, Jessie's cheerfulness would sour.
"Back up a minute," James suggested.
"No, really. A plain, dull boy gets not one but half a dozen models. Talk about your basic baka man self-centered fantasy." She readjusted herself moodily.
Meowth coughed from his spot, sounding suspiciously like "grump" and "griping."
Kid relocated to Jessie's area and tried to explain. "To begin, he's not like the one I had on stage, Brock. Tenchi does not drool over these women. And they're not mindless lapdogs." Jessie relaxed a bit. "Plus, the boy is truly so kind and honorable, without being a, ah, twerp, he really does deserve a lot of respect." Jessie wavered between doubt and acceptance. "Trust me, a household of space pirates, mad scientists, and lunatics--" Onscreen, the boy told a whining, tanned blonde not to be so upset over yet another mistake, and rolled his eyes when she burst into tears. "--Is not that male's fantasy."
Jessie sighed; she no longer thought the show was about a stereotype. "I suppose you might be right."
Meowth snickered. "Too sedate to debate."
"James," Jessie coerced serenely, "I just finished arranging my body in the optimal position for ultimate comfort. Would you kindly get up and whack Meowth for me?"
James used none of her eloquence. "But Jessie, I'm too comfy too." He squirmed.
She stretched across the double-wide bed and lazily hurled a king-sized pillow in the cat's direction. Accurate aim was unnecessary, for the thing was both larger and heavier than the cat's body and he couldn't do a thing to stop it. Thirty pounds of feathers is still thirty punds, and Meowth felt like he'd been hit by a downy mallet.
James rolled over to a mirror pose of Jessie. Everything was quiet for a while, watching the alien females. "Suppose we steal Washu's inventions?" James was right on top of the next plan. "With any one of these, we could rule the world."
"Anything you say. But first, we require a human interplanetary teleporter," stated Kid. "If we could invent that, we wouldn't need to steal hers."
"Do I need to point out you two are having a tactical discussion about a cartoon?" mused Jessie. Her eyebrows arched mildly. "It isn't real, you know."
James, like a child, grew downhearted and a little watery-eyed. "Yeah... we know," he admitted.
"If it isn't real, why would you get so upset about six women living with Tenchi," Meowth muttered, then ducked in fear from another terrifying scowl. Just for that, she would pick a moment when he was on the brink of sleep, with not a whiff of his guard up, and then slam him hard with another round of thudding ammunition, at closest range possible, standing directly over him. Jessie chuckled in a tone that made Meowth's skin crawl.
Kid perked back up. "What about a fight between Ryoko and Jessie?"
James mulled it over. The entire battle took place in his mind, frame by frame, full of select camera angles and special moves, as he mentally drew the entire thing. "Hmm. Ryoko."
"What is this?" Jessie challenged.
"But... teleporting... floating... laser blasts... teleporting."
"Oh really?" Just to show she could, Jessie made her eyes sizzle and crack with electricity. The sparks sizzled half the distance to the other Rocket.
Meowth startled upright with a gasp, despite being safely distant. A low whistle escaped Kid. Surprisingly, James felt no fear. Fascinated and astonished maybe, but not afraid. "Wow, Jessie! You're so cool you could almost be animated!" He reached out a hand to feel the thin current and as it zipped through his body he took a deep breath. A dazed smile of pure bliss spread over him.((Quote from episode with the Eevee brothers in Stone Town: "Jessie's evolving into a Flareon!"))
The electricity shut off with a pop. Jessie was suddenly torn between cracking up laughing or cracking up shouting. James was enough to make her do both sometimes. As it turned out, there was so much wrong with his statement, she didn't know where to begin. (Cool enough to be animated?!) One thought came closest to mind. "James, dear," she began in her absolutely sweetest voice possible, in which only an ignoramus wouldn't know he was either about to be coddled and babied or about to be dead very soon. "Why would you do a thing like that? Don't you already have your fill of electricity from all the zaps we get on our missions?"
James, perched on the edge of the bed, was gesturing with his hands excitedly. "You were great! It was nothing painful like getting zapped by enemies; it felt incredible. Your--" he gasped, "-energy--"
Why was it that Jessie was the one stunned? For once, she really didn't know what to say. What do you say to a partner who's lost his mind?
He frenzied on, completely oblivious and thrilled. "Besides, I thought you could have evolved into a Jolteon." Tears sneaked out of the corner of his wobbly eyes; he was so proud of her.
Conveniently, the doorbell chimed, announcing the arrival of a bellhop and their meals. The employee served them at the suite's dining room table from the covered plates on his cart, then stayed to grind pepper and make sure they had enough of everything under the sun from melted butter to picante sauce. The service was beyond reproach but annoying. Jessie ordered a round of hot chocolate in hopes that he would go away and take a long time to come back.
The males dug in like wild animals, shoveling in food like it they wouldn't have a microsecond to spare. Kid handled her cuisine and chopsticks with poise and ettiquette. Jessie took one bite of her lobster and squealed in pleasure, followed by soft moans. She felt so good, she floated to the air, three feet above her chair, still frozen in she same seated posture.
James kept an eye on his quixotic partner and wondered if he should grasp her by the ankle and pull her back in line with the law of gravity. But in a moment she floated gently to her seat on her own. The others resumed eating.
"Earlier, you were speaking about why you are in this city," Kid began.
"And?"
"If I am to obey your orders, I should know what they are," she deferred.
Jessie relayed the mission background. "Remember those three kids who had the cop with them?"
"Of course. Two of those were on stage," she reminded him.
"We've been trying to capture their pokemon for years. Don't get me wrong, we take on other jobs, but we take a crack at them whenever we can." James and Meowth nodded. "And we win plenty of times -- we have captured Pikachu a lot -- but they always make a comeback." Her teammates silently agreed once more.
Kid took it in. "Besides a grudge and pride in your record, what is it about them?"
They related how they first decided Pikachu was a priority at an early run-in. "It used moves that were beyond its level, and the attacks it pulls off are stronger than they should be."
"That kid has the luckiest lucky streak ever," James decreed.
"He and Pikachu always overcome your calculations?" Kid guessed. "I have encountered a similar phenomenon with Gym Leaders that were said to be undefeatable. They had one thing in their favor -- a dire level of critical hits. In other words, nearly every strike was critical, much more than a pokemon's fair share. Take away that effect, and their strengths are nothing."
The Rockets easily got distracted from the analysis. "Remember our very first assault against Ash Ketchum? He blew up an entire Pokemon Center with pika-power in order to defend it from us," James reminisced, quite pleased with how they'd managed to turn a so-called good kid into a hooligan.
"That goes to show how dangerous we are." Jessie flashed a toothy, pearly grin.
"And we are so cool, even the twerps wanted to be us. Do you remember?" Jessie looked puzzled, so he continued. "At the House of Imite. ((Episode: Ditto's Mysterious Mansion)) All three twerps, plus Duplica, copied our entrance and loved it."
That struck a chord, and she recollected the occasion. "We were so mad when they mimicked us and got come words of of ours wrong."
From its place near the table, beside Kid, Spooky drew an image in the air directly in front of itself. It showed the four imitation Rockets, getting some of the details wrong on Duplica, but gave the overall effect. Since Jessie and James were so into themselves, Meowth was the only one who saw it, and erupted in laughter.
"Yes, but it's funny now,"James said smoothly in reply to Jessie, unaware of his coincidental timing with what the others were up to. "They stood around talking about how exciting and cool it is to be us."
"It sure is." She sat smugly, thinking about how much she and her team rule.
"Dat's right," Meowth cut in. "We're da bomb, and it's only a matter of time before da rest of da woild knows it."
"If you approve, assistance and strategy of mine may counteract their exigent bonus should you face them in battle once more," vocalized Kid.
Jessie largely ignored her. "You hear that, James? On our next fight, we will be victorious." She rose from her seat on her right foot; stretched her right arm skywards with fingers splayed; left leg bent close ot her body; left arm curled low alongside her waist, with balled fist; sparkling eyes closed in blithe arcs; and mouth provocatively curved.
James regarded her with an intense look, and matched her.
"To trap our prey no matter the cost."
"To get them all and impress the Boss."
"To achieve each prize we set our eyes on."
"To travel away over new horizons."
"Jessie!" she cried.
"James!" he blared.
"Everything I want in the world will be mine."
"Team Rocket will conquer one day at a time."
Meowth held up a square paper for olympic-style rating, and gave them a 5.5.
Besides setting up a pokemon guard, they turned in soon afterwards. Thus ended one day in the lives of Team Rocket.
Soliloquy: I know this is short and nothing much happens, but that's because I was stuck for a bit here until things got juicier, not to mention even weirder, later on. Coming next, within one week I promise, Chapter Three, "So if we... went... to a public bath... which room would you go into?"
They were followed soon after by screams.
"Who's been in my lab?!" demanded lil' Washu. Onscreen, Ryo-oki dashed out of the wreckage as fast as she could.
"Would you CHILDREN turn that down?!" Jessie shouted from the other room.
James darted for the remote. "Sorry, Jess-chan!" He lowered the volume and returned to his former position on the bed, face-down with chin resting on his forearms. "So, who would win in a fight, Washu or Ryoko?"
Kid hadn't budged form her spot on the floor, reclining against the bed, legs outstretched and crossed at the heels, folded arms cushioning her head. She pondered. "Who do you favor?"
"Washu, definitely. I would love to get my hands on some of her technology." James gleefully pictured typing in impish commands for all kinds of inventions doing his bidding, not aware he was miming away right there in the room.
Kid mercifully ignored this and simply scooted over when his "keypad" got in the way of her hair. "Washu might have powers, but I don't believe she can type faster than the speed of Ryoko's blasts. She'd be cinders before executing one directive ."
"Cinders, huh?" He put a forefinger in his mouth in concentration. "No, Washu would have a forcefield up before Ryoko could come near. Washu's supercomputer could turn Ryoko into a hatchling Psyduck." Then his brow furrowed in deep concentration. "Or did that already happen? I can't remember."
"Perhaps."
They watched in silence when a second episode came on. After a while, water could be heard draining, signaling the arrival that followed. At the sound of the opening door, Kid and James turned to see a lavender linen amass emerge from the bathroom. Steam poured from the bathroom opening, giving an impression of the wonders the hot soak including a warm damp washcloth over the face could do for skin, deep tissue, and attitude. The linen shifted to show Jessie swathed in a fuzzy hotel bathrobe; she dried damp hair with one end of the humongous towel and the rest of it piled up on the floor. "Yikes, I love this place," she murmured. "These are the softest pajamas I've ever been in, this towel could cover a twin bed, and they thought of everything. We need to open a chain of these hotels."
"Then again, if we had the money to open a chain, we wouldn't be staying here as someone else's guest," James reminded her.
"Which reminds me, I coughed earlier and obviously no one will want this bathrobe back since it has my germs on it." She adjusted the sash tied around her waist pointedly.
"Absolutely. For their own good, you must keep it," said Kid solemnly.
Thoroughly content, Jessie crawled into one of the other mattresses and lied on her side, head propped up, and hair spilling onto the bedspread and over the side. Her legs, bare from the knees, squirmed until she found the best angle.
Onscreen, the scene changed to a clip of two beautiful females pushing each other out of the way to get to some boy. Sparks snapped between their incensed profiles.
Jessie sighed. "Why would this boring, ordinary boy deserve two self- respecting females fighting over him?" Then the actual show came back on, a shot of several people preparing and sitting down for a meal. "Exactly why in the world are there SIX of them living with him?" If this kept up, Jessie's cheerfulness would sour.
"Back up a minute," James suggested.
"No, really. A plain, dull boy gets not one but half a dozen models. Talk about your basic baka man self-centered fantasy." She readjusted herself moodily.
Meowth coughed from his spot, sounding suspiciously like "grump" and "griping."
Kid relocated to Jessie's area and tried to explain. "To begin, he's not like the one I had on stage, Brock. Tenchi does not drool over these women. And they're not mindless lapdogs." Jessie relaxed a bit. "Plus, the boy is truly so kind and honorable, without being a, ah, twerp, he really does deserve a lot of respect." Jessie wavered between doubt and acceptance. "Trust me, a household of space pirates, mad scientists, and lunatics--" Onscreen, the boy told a whining, tanned blonde not to be so upset over yet another mistake, and rolled his eyes when she burst into tears. "--Is not that male's fantasy."
Jessie sighed; she no longer thought the show was about a stereotype. "I suppose you might be right."
Meowth snickered. "Too sedate to debate."
"James," Jessie coerced serenely, "I just finished arranging my body in the optimal position for ultimate comfort. Would you kindly get up and whack Meowth for me?"
James used none of her eloquence. "But Jessie, I'm too comfy too." He squirmed.
She stretched across the double-wide bed and lazily hurled a king-sized pillow in the cat's direction. Accurate aim was unnecessary, for the thing was both larger and heavier than the cat's body and he couldn't do a thing to stop it. Thirty pounds of feathers is still thirty punds, and Meowth felt like he'd been hit by a downy mallet.
James rolled over to a mirror pose of Jessie. Everything was quiet for a while, watching the alien females. "Suppose we steal Washu's inventions?" James was right on top of the next plan. "With any one of these, we could rule the world."
"Anything you say. But first, we require a human interplanetary teleporter," stated Kid. "If we could invent that, we wouldn't need to steal hers."
"Do I need to point out you two are having a tactical discussion about a cartoon?" mused Jessie. Her eyebrows arched mildly. "It isn't real, you know."
James, like a child, grew downhearted and a little watery-eyed. "Yeah... we know," he admitted.
"If it isn't real, why would you get so upset about six women living with Tenchi," Meowth muttered, then ducked in fear from another terrifying scowl. Just for that, she would pick a moment when he was on the brink of sleep, with not a whiff of his guard up, and then slam him hard with another round of thudding ammunition, at closest range possible, standing directly over him. Jessie chuckled in a tone that made Meowth's skin crawl.
Kid perked back up. "What about a fight between Ryoko and Jessie?"
James mulled it over. The entire battle took place in his mind, frame by frame, full of select camera angles and special moves, as he mentally drew the entire thing. "Hmm. Ryoko."
"What is this?" Jessie challenged.
"But... teleporting... floating... laser blasts... teleporting."
"Oh really?" Just to show she could, Jessie made her eyes sizzle and crack with electricity. The sparks sizzled half the distance to the other Rocket.
Meowth startled upright with a gasp, despite being safely distant. A low whistle escaped Kid. Surprisingly, James felt no fear. Fascinated and astonished maybe, but not afraid. "Wow, Jessie! You're so cool you could almost be animated!" He reached out a hand to feel the thin current and as it zipped through his body he took a deep breath. A dazed smile of pure bliss spread over him.((Quote from episode with the Eevee brothers in Stone Town: "Jessie's evolving into a Flareon!"))
The electricity shut off with a pop. Jessie was suddenly torn between cracking up laughing or cracking up shouting. James was enough to make her do both sometimes. As it turned out, there was so much wrong with his statement, she didn't know where to begin. (Cool enough to be animated?!) One thought came closest to mind. "James, dear," she began in her absolutely sweetest voice possible, in which only an ignoramus wouldn't know he was either about to be coddled and babied or about to be dead very soon. "Why would you do a thing like that? Don't you already have your fill of electricity from all the zaps we get on our missions?"
James, perched on the edge of the bed, was gesturing with his hands excitedly. "You were great! It was nothing painful like getting zapped by enemies; it felt incredible. Your--" he gasped, "-energy--"
Why was it that Jessie was the one stunned? For once, she really didn't know what to say. What do you say to a partner who's lost his mind?
He frenzied on, completely oblivious and thrilled. "Besides, I thought you could have evolved into a Jolteon." Tears sneaked out of the corner of his wobbly eyes; he was so proud of her.
Conveniently, the doorbell chimed, announcing the arrival of a bellhop and their meals. The employee served them at the suite's dining room table from the covered plates on his cart, then stayed to grind pepper and make sure they had enough of everything under the sun from melted butter to picante sauce. The service was beyond reproach but annoying. Jessie ordered a round of hot chocolate in hopes that he would go away and take a long time to come back.
The males dug in like wild animals, shoveling in food like it they wouldn't have a microsecond to spare. Kid handled her cuisine and chopsticks with poise and ettiquette. Jessie took one bite of her lobster and squealed in pleasure, followed by soft moans. She felt so good, she floated to the air, three feet above her chair, still frozen in she same seated posture.
James kept an eye on his quixotic partner and wondered if he should grasp her by the ankle and pull her back in line with the law of gravity. But in a moment she floated gently to her seat on her own. The others resumed eating.
"Earlier, you were speaking about why you are in this city," Kid began.
"And?"
"If I am to obey your orders, I should know what they are," she deferred.
Jessie relayed the mission background. "Remember those three kids who had the cop with them?"
"Of course. Two of those were on stage," she reminded him.
"We've been trying to capture their pokemon for years. Don't get me wrong, we take on other jobs, but we take a crack at them whenever we can." James and Meowth nodded. "And we win plenty of times -- we have captured Pikachu a lot -- but they always make a comeback." Her teammates silently agreed once more.
Kid took it in. "Besides a grudge and pride in your record, what is it about them?"
They related how they first decided Pikachu was a priority at an early run-in. "It used moves that were beyond its level, and the attacks it pulls off are stronger than they should be."
"That kid has the luckiest lucky streak ever," James decreed.
"He and Pikachu always overcome your calculations?" Kid guessed. "I have encountered a similar phenomenon with Gym Leaders that were said to be undefeatable. They had one thing in their favor -- a dire level of critical hits. In other words, nearly every strike was critical, much more than a pokemon's fair share. Take away that effect, and their strengths are nothing."
The Rockets easily got distracted from the analysis. "Remember our very first assault against Ash Ketchum? He blew up an entire Pokemon Center with pika-power in order to defend it from us," James reminisced, quite pleased with how they'd managed to turn a so-called good kid into a hooligan.
"That goes to show how dangerous we are." Jessie flashed a toothy, pearly grin.
"And we are so cool, even the twerps wanted to be us. Do you remember?" Jessie looked puzzled, so he continued. "At the House of Imite. ((Episode: Ditto's Mysterious Mansion)) All three twerps, plus Duplica, copied our entrance and loved it."
That struck a chord, and she recollected the occasion. "We were so mad when they mimicked us and got come words of of ours wrong."
From its place near the table, beside Kid, Spooky drew an image in the air directly in front of itself. It showed the four imitation Rockets, getting some of the details wrong on Duplica, but gave the overall effect. Since Jessie and James were so into themselves, Meowth was the only one who saw it, and erupted in laughter.
"Yes, but it's funny now,"James said smoothly in reply to Jessie, unaware of his coincidental timing with what the others were up to. "They stood around talking about how exciting and cool it is to be us."
"It sure is." She sat smugly, thinking about how much she and her team rule.
"Dat's right," Meowth cut in. "We're da bomb, and it's only a matter of time before da rest of da woild knows it."
"If you approve, assistance and strategy of mine may counteract their exigent bonus should you face them in battle once more," vocalized Kid.
Jessie largely ignored her. "You hear that, James? On our next fight, we will be victorious." She rose from her seat on her right foot; stretched her right arm skywards with fingers splayed; left leg bent close ot her body; left arm curled low alongside her waist, with balled fist; sparkling eyes closed in blithe arcs; and mouth provocatively curved.
James regarded her with an intense look, and matched her.
"To trap our prey no matter the cost."
"To get them all and impress the Boss."
"To achieve each prize we set our eyes on."
"To travel away over new horizons."
"Jessie!" she cried.
"James!" he blared.
"Everything I want in the world will be mine."
"Team Rocket will conquer one day at a time."
Meowth held up a square paper for olympic-style rating, and gave them a 5.5.
Besides setting up a pokemon guard, they turned in soon afterwards. Thus ended one day in the lives of Team Rocket.
Soliloquy: I know this is short and nothing much happens, but that's because I was stuck for a bit here until things got juicier, not to mention even weirder, later on. Coming next, within one week I promise, Chapter Three, "So if we... went... to a public bath... which room would you go into?"