Team Rocket Dives Down For Real

by BbK2442

Team Rocket has blasted off again, but this time, they've been blasted off a lot further than they realize. Can they survive and thrive in the alien oceans of 4546B? Or will they be devoured by the residents like so many others?

Author's Notes: Just a random plot bunny that hopped into my head one day. Enjoy.

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Chapter 1 – Where in the World is Team Rocket?

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The bright light faded almost as immediately as it had flashed into existence.

The first thing Jessie, James, and Meowth noticed was a feeling that they were falling, as though they'd reached the high point of one of their "Blasting Off" sessions with the twerps and were now beginning their descent to earth once more. This sensation lasted mere moments before the trio were jolted out of their seats atop Meowth's Pedal Generator by a sudden and violent collision, accompanied by a loud CLANG!

Meowth had mere moments more to ponder installing seat belts into the Pedal Generator later, before the second impact slammed them all into the opposite wall of their Gyarados submarine and plunged them into darkness.

James was the first one to awake, and for a few moments, he wondered if he'd died and gone to heaven. Then his rational mind chided him for that, arguing that heaven wouldn't be pitch-black. James then countered that he was likely in hell then for all the bad things he did while he was in Team Rocket, but his rational mind countered that it'd then be a lot warmer.

James then concluded that he was, in fact, still alive and kicking, and the reason for the darkness was that the power was out. So he did the only thing he could think of at the moment: call for help.

"Jessie? Meowth?" he called out in a tone that he would've adamantly denied was plaintive.

A groan sounded out from very close by. "James, shut up. Don't you know a lady needs her beauty sleep?"

James sighed first in relief, and then in exasperation. "Uh, Jessie, do you remember that we're still in the submarine?"

"Yeah?"

"And that something…happened?" His memory was a bit fuzzy on what exactly had happened, but clearly something had happened to them.

"Ye-oh, shi-YOW!" said Jessie's voice, with the last word coinciding with a meaty clunk.

"Uh, Jessie? Are you alright?"

A litany of curses sounded forth in Jessie's voice, making James blush in response to their content.

"-and when I get my hands on that thing that hit me, it'll be sorry!" she finished.

It was a few moments after her tirade had ended that a nasally voice asked: "Well, if you're going to smash dat something up, could ya at least wait and let me see if it's important first?"

James breathed out his second sigh of relief of the day. "Meowth, you're alright!"

"Well, for given values of 'alright'. Who turned out da lights?"

"I don't know, and I don't care. Meowth, get those lights back on," Jessie ordered.

"Yes, ma'am. Just let me find dat circuit box first."

James felt a warm weight leave his leg, and knew that Meowth was now on the move.

"Let's see, here's the Pedal Generator, and now let's see…okay, the seat is facing this way, so forward is that way, and…okay, and now left must be this way and…okay, here's the bed, so now I just gotta climb up and…yes! Got the fuse box. Now let's just open her up and…" Clunk. "Yes! Now for Fuse #1." Click. "And a-two." Click. "And a-three." Click.

"Meowth! When are those lights coming back on?!" Jessie asked irately.

"Hold ya Ponyta, Jessie. Gotta turn them all on in order, but now for Number Four." Click.

The bright, white light from the wire mesh-encased light bulbs installed in the ceiling was welcoming after all the darkness, even if James ended up spending several seconds doing nothing but blinking. The light also revealed that the sub was tilted at a roughly 45 degree angle, possibly explaining both why Jessie currently had a growing bump on her forehead, and why the section of the Pedal Generator next to her head had a very shallow dent in it.

Several more clicks went by before Meowth finally turned around and looked smugly at them both. "Alrighty, I'm happy ta report dat all lighting in all da compartments have been restored!" He bowed in Jessie and James' direction, expecting some sort of applause for his accomplishment.

"Great, you turned on the lights. Now can you hurry up and check the rest of the sub for leaks?" Jessie asked impatiently.

Meowth sighed. "An engineer's job is never appreciated, or over fer dat matter," he muttered as he made his way forward to open the watertight door that led to the forward compartments.

James pointed at himself. "Um, what about me?"

"Check our supplies and equipment to see if they're still usable. I'm going to see where the twerps have blasted us off to this time," Jessie said, making her way to the forward-most seat on the Pedal Generator. She reached up to the ceiling, and pulled down the periscope to eye level.

James looked thoughtful. While it was true that every time they were blasted off somewhere by Ash and co.'s antics they had to stop to regain their bearings, there was something odd this time around. "Jessie, are you sure it was them who blasted us off?" he asked.

"Of course it was them!" Jessie said as she looked around through the periscope. "Who else would've blasted us off again?"

James hesitantly nodded. "But how did they…where did that light come from? I don't remember them having any Pokémon that could do that…did they?"

Jessie stopped looking through the periscope for a moment to glare at James. "How they did it this time doesn't matter! All that matters is that they blasted us off yet again, and now we have to deal with the consequences again as always! Now hurry up and check everything out!"

James nodded more confidently this time. Jessie's words did make sense, even if it was through the lens of the twerps. So he went about his job.

The first thing he checked was the sub's evaporator, on the port side aft of their shared fold-out bed. Without that, they had no potable water, which would be a bit of a problem on the open seas. He flipped on the switch that turned it on, and frowned when silence emerged rather than the steady hum it usually made.

"Meowth?"

"What?"

"The evaporator won't turn on."

Meowth froze in the act of opening the watertight door, and then shook his head. "Okay, dat's bad, but not immediately bad. I'll take a look at it later once I check the rest of da sub. Meanwhile, see if da water in da tank is still fresh," he said before disappearing through the door and shutting it behind him.

James nodded. He immediately went over to the 500-gallon water storage tank that filled its section of the sub from floor to ceiling, climbed up the ladder on its side, and opened it up. It was a bit hard to tell exactly how full the water tank was due to the sub being tilted, but it looked as if it was about a fifth of the way full.

He sighed. Running the evaporator took up a lot of electricity, and all of them had to man the Pedal Generator just to run it at a mere 20 gallons per hour. It took 25 hours of continuous pedaling for all 3 of them just to fill the tank from empty, and working it for anything more than a few hours at a time was just too tiring. Add in the fact that the sub was limited to ¼ speed while the evaporator was running and the fact that they had to pursue a Lapras that maintained a steady speed of 10 knots indefinitely even when loaded down with twerps, and the result was that they tended to only run the evaporator either when the twerps had stopped somewhere or when the water supply was down to less than 100 gallons, which would've been soon.

James sighed, wondering if this is going to bite them in the rear soon, and closed the tank back up. He grabbed his mug (in a bright, cheery yellow color) from a nearby cupboard on the right side, filled it half-full of water from a faucet connected to the water tank, and took a drink. Fortunately, it still had the fresh yet flat taste of distilled water.

Satisfied that the water was still drinkable, he returned the mug to its place in the cupboard and then opened the cupboard next to it. Inside was a small chest. He pulled the chest out, undid the latches on it, and opened it up. Inside, nestled in blankets, were several glass jars of various sizes. The only similarity they all shared was the fact that they each contained spices: sun-dried cheri berries, tamato berry powder, spelon berry flakes, etc. James sighed with relief when he examined each of them in turn and found no damage to the jars. Jessie and Meowth had given him odd looks when he'd insisted on stealing them, but he paid them no mind. He'd received an extensive education in Kanto history, amongst other things. There was a reason why such spices had been once worth their weight in gold.

Satisfied once more, he returned the spice chest to the cupboard, and then walked over to the fridge just aft of the stove. He popped the door open, only to reflexively catch the three plastic containers that fell out before they could hit the floor. Sighing in relief, he looked over the containers to make sure they had no cracks or leaks.

One container contained the filleted remains of one of the largish Kantonese mackerel he'd caught earlier that morning. The other one, he'd grilled it with salt for their breakfast. Fortunately, sea salt was the one thing they had in plentiful supply, given that they regularly scraped out spoonfuls of the stuff whenever the evaporator had to be cleaned.

The second container contained the fish stock he made by simmering the heads, fins, and bones of said fish. The stock made a delicious and healthy soup with the addition of other ingredients to it, and could also be used for flavoring other foods.

The third and final container contained fish parts that would normally be thrown out: mainly gills and offal (not counting the liver and roe/milt, which he'd prepared for breakfast as well). Unlike the others, he had no desire to eat them unless they were really desperate. Instead, this was to be bait to catch more fish. Putting them in the fridge was just to extend their lifespan.

Unfortunately, those containers of fish and fish stock (minus the bait) currently represented their only supply of fresh (for a given value of "fresh") rations, at least, until they can fish up some more.

Putting the containers back in the fridge, he went to check on the only other supply of food they had. He went forward into the arm maintenance room, and then went down through a hatch in the floor to the storage room to check on their long term provisions: a crate of salt-cured fish they'd stolen from a random grocery store that'd ticked off Jessie, a pair of 50 lb rice bags, a box of hardtack, and a 100-gallon plastic tank of water that made up their emergency water supply they'd stolen from a grocery store that'd annoyed Jessie.

It took him a moment to realize that A) he was standing ankle-deep in what smelled like seawater and B) said crate of salt fish, one bag of rice, and the plastic water tank had split open and spilled their contents into the ankle-deep seawater. The other bag of rice and the hardtack box was intact though, but that was small comfort.

"Oh, no!" he cried out as he quickly grabbed the hardtack box and dragged the intact rice bag over to the ladder. He couldn't do anything about the spilled rice and emergency water, but at least he could try to save their other emergency rations.

It was then that he heard pounding noises coming from the partially open door leading aft into the track maintenance room. A quick pull and a look revealed the sight of Meowth holding a mallet, and pounding what looked like pieces of wood into an area of the floor that was spurting out a miniature fountain.

"Meowth! Are we flooding?! Do we need to evacuate?!" James asked worriedly.

"No! Quit looking fer excuses to abandon sub again!" Meowth yelled, never stopping his pounding the entire time. "It's just a leak! I've already got it almost fixed anyway!"

"…Oh," was all James could muster, before he shook his head and resumed gathering up emergency rations. After putting the hardtack box and bag of rice on the floor of the arm maintenance room where they'd at least be dry for the moment, he then gathered up a half-dozen of the now-thoroughly soaked fish under one arm, placed them next to the hardtack and rice, and then climbed back down and picked up another half-dozen before he noticed that the sounds of water splashing on water had now ceased, and he saw Meowth rush over to help pick up salt fish as well.

"That quick?" James asked.

"I said it was just a leak, didn't I?" Meowth asked caustically.

James nodded. "That you did," he replied simply.

With his armful of salt fish, James climbed back up the ladder and laid his cargo down. James looked down the hatch to see Meowth carrying one of the largish fish (James was fairly certain that they were cod of some type). Meowth's size meant that he could only carry one or two at a time, but it was a fairly simple affair for him to toss the fish up to James, who began laying them in stacks next to the other salt fish. After only a few minutes, when James now had some two dozen of the salt fish laid in four stacks, Meowth climbed up the ladder and shut the hatch.

"Okay, dat's all of them, unless you want me to scoop up that rice too," said Meowth, panting from the effort. "Who knew dat a bunch of fish could be so heavy?"

"Well, you are a little on the small side," James noted.

Meowth raised a finger of his paw-like hand as if to protest, but then stopped with his mouth open as he realized that he had to crane his neck up to meet James' eyes, and then closed it with a snap. "Alright, ya got me dere. Now let me go check da engine room. It's the only place I haven't checked for leaks yet."

James nodded, and together they headed back to the bridge, which was on the way to the engine room. There, they discovered Jessie still looking around through the periscope, scowling and muttering to herself all the while.

"Any luck, Jessie?" James asked.

Jessie folded the arms of the periscope mount up and pushed it back up into the ceiling with a grunt. Whether it was from effort or frustration, James couldn't quite tell. He had a feeling though that it was both.

"Yes, and no," Jessie growled out. "We're still on the ocean somewhere, that much I can tell. And it looks like we're stuck on some rocks or coral."

Meowth face-palmed. "Is it rocks we're stuck on, or coral? Dat could be very important. Are we high and dry, or have we run aground on something just below da surface?" he asked in a tone of strained patience.

"It looks like coral. Pretty sure rocks don't grow in trumpet shapes," Jessie replied. "And I can't tell if we're either because the periscope doesn't give me a big enough view around us. All I know is that the propeller isn't moving us and it keeps making this weird noise whenever I crank up the throttle."

Meowth stiffened. "What sorta noise?"

Jessie demonstrated by taking hold of the lever of the throttle, and pushing it up to where it was marked "Full Ahead". Immediately, a high pitched whirring sound could be heard from the aft end of the sub where the engine room was, instead of the deep thrum they were all accustomed to.

Meowth's eyes widened. "Stop it! Pull it back to 'Stop', NOW!" he screeched.

It was a mark of Jessie's trust in Meowth that she immediately did just that instead of snapping at Meowth's tone, causing silence to return to the sub. "Okay, so what's wrong with the engine?" she asked.

Meowth rubbed his charm for a bit before answering slowly, controlling his usual accent as much as possible: "Okay, ya know water is thicker than air, right? A lot thicker?

Both James and Jessie nodded in sync.

"Well, all ships' engines and propellers are designed to work in water, not air. If ya try, ya get excess heat buildup in the engines due to it running at higher RPMs than normal, especially when you set the engine to 'full ahead' like that. If left unchecked, that will eventually cause, guess what, a fire in the engine due to engine lube catching fire from the heat buildup. And guess what, fires are really bad for a ship."

"We can guess that, thank you very much. No need to get sarcastic on us," Jessie ground out, although she didn't give Meowth a bonk on the head, as per usual.

James raised up a hand, as though he was in a classroom.

Meowth gave him a look. "Really, James?" He sighed. "Well, alright, what's your question?"

"Um, so is there a fire in the engine right now from that?" James asked.

The silence suddenly seemed quite loud to the trio right now.

"Jessie, how long did you have the sub on 'full ahead' before you stopped?" Meowth asked nervously.

"Not long. Only a couple of seconds at a time," Jessie replied just as nervously.

"And how many times did you try it?"

"…a couple of times."

The silence was quite deafening now.

"Okay, James, grab da fire extinguisher. It's right dere next to the engine room door," Meowth explained as he made his way to said door.

As James opened the cabinet and pulled out the fire extinguisher, Meowth carefully touched the small handle near the bottom of the door, right below the bigger human-sized handle above it.

Meowth breathed out a sigh of relief as he did so. "It's cold, so da fire hasn't spread to da rest of da engine room, if dere is a fire dere." Before either Jessie or James could react to that comment, Meowth grasped the handle, twisted it, and pulled the door open.

The first thing they noticed was that big electric engine that dominated much of the room was not on fire. The second thing they noticed was that the shaft leading out the back of the engine to the propeller was glowing a dull red.

James immediately ran over to the shaft and primed his fire extinguisher-

"No wait-"

-and a jet of white foam emerged from the nozzle, spraying the red-hot propeller shaft and covering it with a hiss.

James stopped spraying only when the shaft was completely covered in foam. He turned back and gave a look of triumph at his two compatriots. "Now that's what I call a Super Soaker! Now what were you saying, Meowth?"

The Meowth in question sighed. "I was going to say dat since the engine wasn't on fire, that we could wait for it to cool back down again naturally."

James's look of triumph turned into a downcast one. "Was that bad?"

"Depends. Going to have to look it over later, after I check out what our situation is outside."

Jessie nodded. "Good point. I can get a better view of our surroundings on top of the sub, rather than trying to look through that dinky periscope."

"And I need to dry out the fish, so I need to go outside too," James added.

Jessie stared at James in confusion, pointedly ignoring the glare Meowth was levelling at her for the "dinky periscope" comment. "What fish, and why do you need to dry them out?" she asked.

James rubbed the back of his head. "Umm, you know that crate of salt fish, the bags of rice, and the hardtack we took from that store for provisions?"

Jessie nodded.

"Well, that crate broke, and one of the rice bags split too. All the salt fish and the rice in that bag fell out into the water."

Jessie grumbled. "Great. I knew that guy was running a cheap gig when he was selling his stuff out of plywood boxes-wait, what water?! Why is there water in our sub?! The water is supposed to be outside the sub!"

"Calm down, Jessie!" Meowth shouted. "It's just a leak in da track room doors. I already got it plugged up, so dere's nothing to worry about now. This baby's going to need a trip to a dry dock, but she'll hold for now."

Jessie sighed. "Well, there's that."

"Kinda funny that it was da track doors that sprung a leak and not da airlock room," Meowth muttered. "Woulda dought dat was a natural weak point."

"Anyways!" Jessie interrupted, and then turned to James. "The salt fish. You rescued them all?"

"As many as I could find. If there's any more of that salt fish left, they're in bits too small to be worth the effort, really," James reported.

Jessie breathed out a sigh of relief. "Well, that's a relief."

"But um, also, our emergency water supply also…broke. It's all spilled out into the seawater, and I don't think any of us can un-mix them."

Jessie groaned. "Ugh, fine! We'll just have to depend on the water in the evaporator, and worry about fixing it later. Meowth, what's the total damage report?"

"Just the leak in the track room doors. Everything else I could examine is fine, though I'm still waiting on that propeller shaft to cool before I can take a real look at it. Not to mention that I still need to head out to check on the sub from the outside."

James started to raise up his hand again, but then stopped and just spoke out his concern. "And um, I still need to dry out that salt fish. I don't want all the effort gone into rescuing them to go to waste because due to mold from the dampness."

Jessie groaned. "Alright! I get it! We're going to go stir-crazy just sitting in here anyway. Let's just get out there already. So James, get going."

"Alri-wait, what?"

Jessie glared at James. "Meowth is too valuable to risk being the first one out, and I'm certainly not climbing up first with you under me."

"Why would that matter-" James suddenly cut himself off as he looked at Jessie's outfit, and took the hint. He sighed at his lot in life, being the only male human in this team. "Alright, alright, I get it," he said as he trudged off forward to the arm maintenance room.

Once there, he climbed up the ladder in the middle of the room, undogged the hatch in the ceiling, and pausing only for a calming breath, slowly lifted the hatch up.

His first sight was a black feathered face immediately turning to face him, a pair of white eyes staring at him from either side of a black beak. Man and bird stared at each other for an indeterminable moment.

"Uhhh," said the man.

"Raaak!" replied the bird, moments before it took off with a wild flapping of iridescent wings.

The sounds of further flapping clued James in to the presence of more of the birds, and he flung open the hatch just in time to see a small flock of them fly off into the sky.

"James, what was that?" he heard Jessie ask from below.

"Um, I think I just found a new bird Pokémon," James replied.

"What?!" came the outraged cry from Jessie. "Move over so I can see!"

James eagerly complied, hastily climbing onto the deck as Jessie scrambled up the ladder and onto the deck with him. Growling as she saw the strange bird Pokémon wheeling high in the sky above them, too high for any of them to throw a pokeball, she turned to James and angrily asked: "Well, why didn't you try to catch it if it was new?!"

"Uh, it was right in front of me, it flew off when it saw me, and I couldn't reach down to pull out a pokeball because the hatch is too small."

Jessie's glare lessened in intensity as she thought about those conditions. "Fine, you're excused."

She stared out at the stretch of blue ocean in front of them, mostly unbroken up to the horizon save for bits of rock and/or coral sticking up out of the water at random. The sounds of waves were ever-present, interrupted only by the "Raaaks" of the bird Pokémon overhead, and the sounds of Meowth clambering up the ladder behind them.

"Now where have we been blasted off to this time?" she muttered angrily.

"Probably somewhere pretty far from Kanto," James mused. "I didn't recognize that bird Pokémon at all."

"Uh, guys?" Meowth asked.

"Call me crazy, but maybe these are just a new type of shiny Pidgey?" Jessie asked semi-hopefully.

"Guys?"

"No way. I've seen a lot of pictures of Pidgey. Those looked nothing like Pidgey. They don't even look like Hoothoot from Johto," James insisted.

"Guys?"

Jessie blew out a breath. "Well, there goes that hope."

"GUYS!"

Both Jessie and James turned as one to Meowth. "What?!"

Meowth just pointed in the opposite direction from where they'd been looking at as a reply.

The duo turned around, and their jaws dropped open. In front of them, stretching across a big chunk of the horizon, was a massive…the only word they could use to describe it was: "spaceship". It was roughly oval-shaped, with a rounded bow and massive engines visible in the back. A tall tower-like structure rose out of a bulge in the dorsal section of the ship, while a large circular bulge amidships seemed to scream "Great Big Door". It was, all in all, a very impressive-looking spaceship, even in spite of the gaping wounds in its side spewing out fire and pillars of smoke that rose into the sky.

"Meowth? How big do you think that thing is?" Jessie asked.

"Can't tell," Meowth replied. "I don't know how far away it is without a rangefinder, so I can't tell how big it is."

"Why don't we have a rangefinder?" James asked. "It sounds pretty useful."

"I wanted to install one on da periscope, but you and Jessie nixed that idea. Said it made da sub's fin not look anything like a Gyarados fin anymore."

"Yeah, I remember that," Jessie replied. "It made the fin look like it had ears. People tend to notice mutant Gyarados."

Meowth shrugged. "And dat's why I left it at dat," he replied simply.

They watched the distant fires burn.

"You think that thing was responsible for our current blastoff session?" James asked.

"It has to be. Something that big crashing down on us would've knocked us for a loop. Probably also flung us into another region entirely," Jessie replied.

"But if she did dat, why is she still here?" Meowth asked. "Shouldn't she be back where she crashed, and not here with us?"

"That's…that's a good point," Jessie admitted.

They watched the fires burn some more.

"You think the boss will give us a reward if we gave it to him?" James asked.

Meowth scoffed. "If I were da boss, I'd give us da biggest bonus I could dink of, and make us 'Employees of da Century' of Team Rocket while I'm at it. Also, pretty sure dat's a she, not an it."

"Oh yeah, I've heard of that. Why are ships called 'she' anyway?" James asked.

"Who knows? All I know is dat's just how it's done," Meowth replied.

"Ah."

The fires seemed to be losing their visual allure, especially for Jessie, who stretched and made a fist. "Right, let's get going to that ship!"

James and Meowth looked at her like she was losing her mind.

"You mean that ship?" James asked, pointing at the distant wreck.

"Da ship dat's on fire right now?" Meowth also asked.

Jessie gave them a look of naked greed, her eyes practically sprouting Pokeyen signs. "Don't you see?! Like you said, the boss will give us the biggest bonus in Team Rocket history if we present him with that! He might even make us admins for this! We'll never have to eat out of trashcans again!"

James and Meowth looked at each other before looking back to Jessie.

"Yeah, but…" James began.

"Dere's still da matter of her being on fire, and I don't dink our dinky little fire extinguisher's going to help dere," Meowth continued.

"Not to mention, like Meowth said, we don't know how far away it-she is. She could be miles away, and our sub is kind of stuck here."

"And besides, the boss will probably pay us a nice bonus for dat too. No need to try to swim all the way over to dat ship."

Now both James and Jessie stared at Meowth. "That?" they asked.

Meowth's only reply was to point towards the distant ship. "Dat ding over dere. Don't tell me you guys didn't notice it?"

It took Jessie and James a few moments to notice that Meowth wasn't quite pointing at the ship, but rather at a point below it at something floating in the water a short distance away. It looked like a white dome wearing an orange life preserver as a skirt. Ladder rungs could be seen leading up its sides, and someone had apparently decided that it needed a big splotch of dark red paint on its upper side for some indeterminable reason.

"How did we not see that?" James asked in disbelief.

"I can see how you didn't see that, but how did I not see it?" Jessie asked in as much disbelief.

"Youse two were too busy gawking at the big burning ship like a bunch of country hicks, I bet," Meowth quipped, finally earning a bonk on the head from Jessie.

"Anyway," Jessie said, rubbing her fist. "How far away would you say that is?"

"Probably 20, maybe 30 feet away from da looks of it," Meowth replied as he rubbed his head in turn. "A bit far to swim."

Jessie snorted. "I could swim that distance easily."

"Maybe for you, it is," Meowth countered.

"What's the matter? Cat afraid of getting a little wet?" Jessie taunted.

"Dat's stereotyping, is what it is. I ain't afraid of a little water. It's a lot of water that I have trouble with, especially da things that swim in it."

At that, all three of them looked into the water. They couldn't see a thing due to refraction, but it didn't stop their imaginations populating the world beneath the surface with Gyarados and Seakings waiting to snap them up.

Jessie shook her head in annoyance. "Well genius, unless you can pull a boat out of your mouth, we're going to have to swim over there one way or the other."

In response though, Meowth grinned. "I can do one better," he said smugly.

Before anyone could react, Meowth ran over to a bulge on the sub behind the fin, grabbed a latch on it, and pulled. The entire bulge sprang open, launching out what looked like a large beige, arrow-shaped whoopee cushion with an outboard motor on top of it that landed on the water with a splat. As Jessie and James watched, the whoopee cushion began rapidly expanding with a hissing sound. In less than a minute, an inflatable boat just big enough for three and decorated with a Meowth face on its bow floated upon the water's surface, connected to the interior of the bulge by a rope that had already been connected to it upon launch.

"Ohhh!" both Jessie and James exclaimed.

That reaction only intensified Meowth's smug expression. "Gorgeous, ain't she? She's got a 50 Rapidash-power electric engine capable of driving her at speeds of up to 20 knots or up to 100 miles, depending on wheder you're willing to trade speed for range, and she's sized purrfectly for all three of us. And in case da electric engine cuts out and can't be repaired, dere's a pair of collapsible oars stowed away in da sides."

"Well, what are you waiting for then?" Jessie asked in an annoyed tone from her position standing at the Meowth boat's bow, where she'd scrambled down onto while Meowth was explaining. "Get on!"

"Meowth, how do you turn this on?" James asked not-plaintively from the Meowth boat's aft, having followed Jessie's example.

Meowth sighed. "Oh well, action is better dan talk anyways," he muttered to himself as he untied the rope mooring the Meowth boat to the sub, jumped down into the Meowth boat with them, coiled the rope and tucked it away in the bow, and calmly walked over to the electric engine, and flipped a switch on it.

"…Is it on?" James asked.

"Yes, it's on! It's an electric engine, not a gas engine. Just use that joystick on the starboard side of the engine to-Myah!"

Meowth hastily got back up from where he'd been bowled over due to the sudden acceleration from James pushing the joystick forward, and glared at the offending party.

"Uh, whoops. Sorry," James said sheepishly.

Meowth sighed once more. "How about you lets me drive, and you can watch?"

James nodded quickly, and moved over to allow Meowth to take the joystick.

"Now dat dat's settled, we can-hey, where's Jessie?" Meowth asked, looking around suddenly at the distinct lack of Jessie.

The question was answered immediately by the sound of spluttering and coughing, and the sight of a pair of waterlogged, gloved hands reaching over the side of the Meowth boat and pulling the rest of Jessie back onboard.

"What happened to you?!" Meowth asked.

After another round of coughing, Jessie glared at the duo and demanded: "Alright, which of you thought it was a wonderful idea to drive the boat forward so suddenly?!"

Meowth instantly and unashamedly pointed at James.

James just as instantly began waving his hands wildly. "But-but you were standing on the bow in the first place!" he yelled out in a panic.

Jessie paused with her fist cocked in the air, thought about it, and settled for a light tap on James's forehead that still bowled him over. "Alright, fair enough," she said finally before sitting down. "Meowth, get us to that…dome-looking thing then."

"Aye, aye, Jessie. Plotting course to da dome-looking thing," Meowth said dryly as he, carefully, pushed the joystick forward.

In minutes, the trio were floating right alongside the dome. Meowth took out the rope coil and jumped onto the dome to moor them to it, while Jessie and James stare at the big splotch of dark red on the upper half of the dome.

"What a horrible clash of color, and the paint is obviously new. It hasn't even had a chance to dry," Jessie commented. "Whoever painted this should be fired."

"Uh, Jessie, are you sure that's paint?" James asked nervously.

Jessie blinked and looked at James. "Yes? I mean, what else could it be?"

Meowth returned from where he'd tied the rope to one of the ladder rungs and stared up at the dark red splotch.

"Okay, sorry to break da news to you guys, but…dat's not paint," Meowth said, with a nervous tinge in his voice. "Dat's blood."

"Blood?!" said Jessie and James in shock, now staring at the dripping splotch in a new light.

"Are you sure?!" James asked.

"Yeah, I know what blood smells like. It's got this iron-ey tang that paint doesn't," Meowth replied.

They looked at the bloodstain once more.

"That's…a lot of blood," Jessie noted, trying to keep calm.

"But whose blood is it?" James asked, even more nervous than before.

"And more importantly, are dey still around to complain about it?" Meowth asked just as nervously.

"…I'm not sure if either a 'yes' or a 'no' would make me feel better about it," James replied. "But…can't you tell?"

"I ain't no Growlithe!" Meowth snapped, making James wince for many reasons. "My sense of smell ain't dat good. I can tell dat it's blood, and it's probably human, but dat's it."

Jessie took a deep breath before speaking: "Alright, the pattern of the splatter suggests that whoever made that splatter fell into the water, and the fact that the blood is fresh suggests that whoever fell not too long ago. That means that, in all likelihood, they're still in the water nearby."

James gulped. "So that means…"

"That mean we need to go diving. Now," Jessie declared.

"Just the three of us? Searching a whole seabed?" James asked.

"Not quite." Jessie pulled out a pokeball, which expanded as she pressed the button on its face. "Arbok, come on out!" she called out, causing the pokeball to split open like a clam shell and spit out a white flash of light.

The light resolved into a massive purple cobra, over twice as long as a man is tall, and decorated with a frightening visage on the inside on her hood, shaped vaguely like a grinning demon. The cobra opened her mouth and cried out: "Char bok-SPLASH!"

A moment later, Arbok surfaced and shook her head dry, giving a sullen look at her owner in the process.

"Sorry, girl," Jessie said with an annoyed look, directed at herself for forgetting her surroundings. "I was a little distracted," she said, motioning at the blood splatter.

Arbok looked at the macabre sight, and nodded in acceptance.

"Anyway," Jessie said, shaking her head to clear it. "I need you help us search the local area for a body, living or dead, probably human. Oh, and it's going to be bleeding a lot, if that's any indication."

Arbok gave an eye-roll before nodding and diving back down into the water.

"Aright, you two search the seas, and I'll investigate in here," Meowth said, climbing nimbly up the ladder rungs of the dome.

"Tch! Fine, do your engineer thing in there! We'll do our jobs out here!" Jessie shouted before she dived off the side of the Meowth boat.

James looked up at Meowth on top of the dome for a moment, apparently pondering how to get in, before he shrugged, took a seat on the edge of the Meowth boat, and slipped into the water with nary a splash.

The water felt quite warm to him, with a tropical feel similar to that the seas of the Orange Islands. When he opened his eyes though, all hope that they were still in Kanto waters evaporated like ice in a desert at high noon.

The area they'd landed in consisted of sand-covered plateaus and rocky outcroppings, all in waters so shallow that he can clearly see the bottom of the seabed even in his current position just below the surface. It wasn't just bare rock and sand either. The area was teeming with life. Colorful plants, corals, and things he wasn't sure were either competed for space on every available surface. Huge tubes of coral shaped like double-ended trumpets seemed to dominate the area, and were even being used by the other corals and plants as living space to grow on. Some of those trumpet corals were so large that he'd swear that he, Jessie, and Meowth could swim into them side-by-side, and still have room to stretch out their arms.

What caught his attention the most though were the animals. Fish swam around everywhere here. There were dark-colored fish with big yellow eyes dominating their heads, orange fish with their eyes on stalks paddling around with large fins, yellow and blue fish that appear to be shaped like boomerangs, and more. He thought he noticed plastic bags floating around in the current, until one swam up closer to him and he realized that they were also fish. In the distance, he could even see big paddling things that looked like Dewgongs that'd had a bit too much fish to eat, and apparently had caught a tail infection as well.

And the noise! Chirps, clicks, groans, warbles, and a weird hur-hur-hur sound that sounded vaguely like a guy laughing filled the water around him like really weird birdsong in an underwater forest. He felt like he could just hover there and listen to the symphony forever.

It was unfortunately clear though, that none of this life was anything similar to what he saw underwater in the Orange Islands.

'Meowth would love this, if he could ever be persuaded to get into the water in the first place,' James thought.

He then also realized something else: he needed air. Now.

Some frantic motions of his arms and legs later, James broke the surface of the water, exhaling explosively and then quickly began getting as much air circulating into and out of his lungs as fast as humanly possible.

He then saw Jessie break the surface near him, also taking deep breaths.

"Jessie! Did you see?!" James yelled out like an excited little boy.

"Well of course I saw! I was just there!" Jessie snapped.

"Wasn't it wonderful?!" James yelled back, undeterred. "I've never seen so many new fish! Or maybe some of them were new Pokémon?"

"…I can believe I'm saying this, but not now, James!" Jessie replied. "Body first, then focus on catching new Pokémon for the boss!"

James blinked, and then rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Right, okay, let's do that," he mumbled.

It was at that moment that Arbok broke the surface of the water and, after shaking her head dry, she cried out: "Bok! Char arbok!"

"Meowth, what did she-" Jessie started, only to realize that their feline companion wasn't around to translate. She gave a Look to Arbok. "Well, looks like we're playing charades for the time being."

Arbok hissed in resignation. She then nosed at the water, and dived back down. Jessie and James took the cue to dive down with her.

Once below the surface, they saw that Arbok had straightened herself and was using herself as an arrow, pointing at whatever it was she'd found. She then slowly swam forwards in a serpentine fashion, allowing Jessie and James to easily swim alongside her.

Once at their destination, it became clear to James why it'd caught Arbok's attention. A swarm of some strange creatures had gathered around something. The creatures looked like a bizarre combination of a Tentacool and a Krabby, but dyed purple with orange stripes. The main body was roughly cylindrical, with three jointed legs tucked up against its body at one end, and three flipper-like tentacles at the other end that were apparently being used to grip whatever it was the things were swarming.

As the trio swam closer to the swarm though: James realized two things. First, the creatures' legs were apparently protecting what appeared to be a single, very large eye that swiveled to look in their direction as they approached. The second thing was that the thing the creatures were swarming appeared to be wearing clothes, visible in between the gaps in the swarm. They'd apparently found their man, or possibly woman. It was hard to tell.

Jessie, James, and Arbok surfaced above their target.

"That doesn't look good," James commented.

"No, you think? Maybe he…she…it is letting itself get munched on for fun and profit?" Jessie replied with all the sarcasm in her soul, before shaking her head. "Right, looks like we got some pest control to do. Arbok?"

Arbok hissed and nodded before she and Jessie dived back down. James took a deep breath, and then poked his head into the water to enjoy the show. There was a reason why (aside from the other Pokémon) he and Meowth usually left the fighting to Jessie, and she was about to demonstrate it.

Incredibly, Jessie somehow managed to reach the feasting swarm of creatures first, and the first thing she did was lash out at the closest one with a kick that spun her in a circle, sending the creature flying away about a foot or so.

'Note to self: physical attacks have less force underwater. Much less.'

Arbok reached the swarm a moment after Jessie did, and she didn't bother with anything fancy. She just bit down one of the creatures, tore it away from its meal, and gulped it down in a single smooth motion.

'Uh, that thing was eating someone, right? Does she realize that?'

Regardless though, it seems as though the creatures had no stomach for fighting. As soon as the attack began, the swarm immediately dispersed in all directions, each creature swimming away as fast as their flippers could paddle them away and making angry/fearful drumming sounds as they did so.

After Jessie had righted herself from her kick, Jessie looked around at the retreating swarm, looked up, and flashed a thumbs up at James. James returned the thumbs up, raised his head to take a deep breath to get as much oxygen into his body as possible, and then dived back down into the water. He passed Jessie swimming up on the way down, and it was mere moments before he was close enough to the target to closely examine it.

He immediately regretted it. It was now pretty clear to him that the thing had once been a human being. A man, judging from the bulge in the thing's crotch. Possibly youngish, judging from what was left of the skin on his face. In fact, there wasn't much of anything left on his face. It seemed that the creatures had gone after the soft parts of the face first: the eyes, the nose, and the ears. James turned a bit green and felt like losing his lunch at the gruesome sight. Since he really didn't want to do that underwater, he forced himself to turn his gaze away from the man's face and examined the rest of him.

He noted that the rest of the body was covered in what looked like a grey, black, and yellow wetsuit. The wetsuit itself appeared to be undamaged, but the body underneath…not so much. It looked squashed, for lack of a better word, like it'd been hit by a falling tank.

'Or a falling sub,' a thought in his mind whispered to him. He shook that thought off before it got too distracting, since being distracted underwater could be…troublesome.

He'd seen enough of the man's corpse and was about to swim back to the surface when something shiny caught his eye near the man's right hand. He quickly swam down to pick it up before scrambling to the surface.

"Well?" Jessie asked as James was recovering from his dive.

"He's dead. Very dead. Deader than dead. If he were any deader, he'd be a Ghost-type," James spewed out to Jessie.

"Okay, I get it. He's dead, end of story. Anything useful on him?"

"Um, just this thing." James held up the object. "It was near his hand, so he must've been holding it when he…well, died."

Said object appeared to be a white cylindrical object with a black grip on it, roughly the size of a large ballpoint pen. What made it different from a ballpoint pen though was the thin, transparent blue material extending out the entire length of the object for about 6 inches. It looked suspiciously like a screen of some kind, even if it was showing nothing at the moment.

"What is it?" Jessie asked, peering suspiciously at it.

"I'm…not sure," James said distractedly, as he was intent on examining every bit of the strange object. He tapped on the transparent screen to see if it did anything, but nothing happened. It sounded like he'd tapped on some plastic, but otherwise, it told him nothing useful.

Jessie scoffed. "Must be broken."

James was a bit doubtful. It looked undamaged, but then again, he didn't know what this thing was or how it worked in the first place. It could very well be broken.

"Anyway, did he have anything else on him?" Jessie asked.

"Uh, what?"

"The dead guy. Did. He. Have. Anything. Else. On. Him?"

"Um, I didn't look."

"You didn't-" Jessie slapped her own forehead. "Why not?"

James looked at her as though she was speaking an alien language all of a sudden. "Um, because he's dead?"

Jessie made a sound that was somewhere between a sign and a groan. "Never mind. I'll look for myself." Before James could protest, Jessie had taken a deep breath and dived back down into the water.

James was feeling a bit conflicted on what he assumed Jessie was doing, since he didn't have the guts to actually look for himself. Yes, they were criminals. James didn't even try to fool himself in that regard. But all they've done so far is theft, attempted theft, armed robbery, breaking and entering, intimidation, destruction of property, poaching, possibly assault too if you stretched that definition…okay fine, assault, and assault on police too if you wanted to make that distinction; but murder? He knew that Team Rocket occasionally murdered people, but as far as he knew, he, Jessie, and Meowth had never murdered anyone, even indirectly. And in his mind, searching a dead guy that they'd possibly killed for reasons beyond their control was pushing it.

"It just doesn't feel right," James thought out loud.

"Char?" Arbok asked.

"Oh, I meant Jessie taking a dead guy's things."

"Bok."

"I mean, doesn't it feel a bit wrong to you?"

"Ar?"

"Like violating the dead guy's…sanctity, or something like that?"

"Char bok."

"And I have no idea what you're saying without Meowth around."

"Char-ar."

It was at that moment, Jessie broke the water's surface.

"Well, aside from his clothes, all he had was this." Jessie held up some kind of silvery metal… backpack?

"Who makes metal backpacks?" James asked.

"Someone who wanted to make sure that the stuff inside was safe, I guess. Which is odd, since all he had in the backpack was this." Jessie opened one of the bigger compartments and pulled out-

"A fire extinguisher?!" James asked in disbelief.

"I know, right?" Jessie with a sardonic grin. "Well, at least now we have a spare, provided this thing still has fuel…or whatever it is fire extinguishers have in them. And at least we have some new duds."

It took a moment for James to process what Jessie had said. "You…you took the dead guy's clothes?!"

Jessie raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. And?"

"But, but…isn't that…you know, desecrating the dead?"

Jessie rolled her eyes. "James, if desecrating dead people were an issue, those weird scavenger things were doing a lot worse than me."

"Well, yeah, but-"

"Not to mention that we're stuck in the middle of the ocean somewhere, with no land in sight, aside from a burning spaceship that's the closest thing to it. We've got to look out for us first. The dead can wait in line."

James looked down at the water, hoping that his reflection would give him a rebuttal. None came. "Yeah, I guess," he said finally.

"Besides, there's something weird about these clothes." Jessie put the fire extinguisher back into the backpack, and then pulled out the roughly folded set of clothes the dead guy was wearing. "Look, the guy looked like he got run over by a truck, but these clothes don't have a mark on them."

Curiosity overwhelming his depression, James swam closer for a look. He quickly saw that Jessie was right. The cloth was completely undamaged, despite what its wearer had clearly been through. He gripped a segment of sleeve between his forefinger and thumb, and tugged on it. The cloth felt…weird. Kind of like rubber, but also kind of like silk, but it was also a little like…plastic? It stretched when he pulled on it, and when he let go, it instantly snapped back to its original shape without any visible marks on it.

"Huh, weird," was James's only comment.

"You say 'weird', I say 'bonus material'. I have a feeling the Boss will give us a nice, juicy bonus for this thing. Maybe Meowth can even make something of it so that we can get the Boss to give us a bigger bonus for it," Jessie cheerfully said before stuffing the clothes back into the backpack and putting it on. "Speaking of which, let's see what that little feline has found out about that floating dome thingy."

James nodded. Anything to get away from the dead guy.

Arbok then did something peculiar. She swam up in between them and said: "Char-arbok!"

Jessie looked at her Pokémon curiously. "Hmm? What is it, Arbok? What are you trying to tell me?"

The Cobra Pokémon used her hood to nudge both of their hands in turn. It didn't take long for Jessie to notice that Arbok was using a specific part of her hood, nearest her head, to nudge said hands.

Jessie nodded in approval. "Good, thinking, Arbok. Saves us a lot of swimming if we just ride on your hood," Jessie said to her Pokémon.

The Cobra Pokémon nodded, swimming up alongside the duo and letting them attach themselves to either side of her head before taking off. James had to admit: this was much faster than if they'd swam on their own. It took but a minute before they were alongside the dome thingy again.

"Thanks, girl," Jessie said gratefully as she and James climbed into the dome's life preserver skirt. "Do you want to go back into the pokeball, or do you want to go hunting for a while?"

As an answer, Arbok did a somersault before gracefully reentering the water with nary a splash.

Jessie grinned. "I suppose that answers that question," she said before climbing up the ladder and standing on top of the dome.

James scrambled up with her a moment later, just as Jessie pulled open what was clearly a hatch.

"Meowth, are you still in there?!" Jessie called down into the dome's interior.

"Yes! No need to shout!" Meowth called up from inside the dome, next to a ladder extending down from the hatch.

"What's taking you so long?! There can't be that much stuff in there, right?!" Jessie said irately.

"You'd be surprised! Come in, it's better if I just show you this!"

"Oh, fine!" Jessie said before she slid down the ladder.

James opted to just climb down the normal way, allowing him to look around as he did so. The inside of the dome was small. Very small. He recalled once that Meowth had had an idea to make a Magikarp minisub for them as a cheaper alternative to the Gyarados minisub, and had made a wooden mockup for them to climb into to see how it'd be like. Their collective opinion on it had not been spectacular. James vividly recalled having closets that were bigger than the Magikarp sub's interior. Even Meowth had thought that it was a tad on the tight side, and he was the one who'd designed the thing! In the end, they'd decided to just raise the wreck of their old Gyarados sub rather than use the new one.

The interior of the dome was, if anything, actually slightly smaller than what was available in the Magikarp mockup. It was also very dark, and there was a distinct scent of smoke in the air. The far wall as he was climbing down the ladder was occupied by what looked suspiciously like a radio, with the only thing wrong with it being the crack running through it spitting out sparks and smoke in turn. He suspected that he would not get to use that radio today.

The area on either side of the damaged radio was occupied by a pair of chairs set into the wall. Each chair was equipped with a crash harness that looked like it was designed to fold down onto the occupant, and each chair had some kind of display next to it that probably listed status conditions or something similar. Each chair also had, oddly enough, a single armrest with some kind of console on it, possibly for adjusting the chair.

When he reached the bottom of the ladder and turned around, the first thing he saw was a giant screen taking up a good portion of the wall. Said screen was also covered in text that did not look anything like Kantonese. The right side of the screen also had 3 cylindrical objects sticking out of it, each with a set of glowing lights on their rims.

To the screen's left was some kind of cabinet set into the wall. The cabinet's door had a red latch emblazoned with a white cross on its left side, and a pair of blinking light on its lower right side.

Immediately below the screen was some kind of elongated bench extending from one side of the all to the other. In the middle of the bench was a very conspicuous red section that looked suspiciously like a door, suggesting that the bench was actually a large locker or chest.

To the screen's right was an exposed fuse box with a detached cover lying nearby on the bench. The fuse box's interior was blackened with soot, and several wires hung out of it still spitting out sparks. He edged away from it a few steps, as any sane person would do.

To the fuse box's right was something that looked like another cabinet, but of a different design to the other one. He wasn't sure why this place needed two different types of cabinets, but then again he didn't design it.

And lastly, set in the floor in front of the bench was a hatch with a handle in the middle. It looked like something that would be very handy to remember, should they need to enter or exit this place from below.

As for Meowth himself, he was seated on the bench, right on top of the red door in the middle, looking rather…troubled? Thoughtful? Contemplative? It was sometimes hard to tell with his feline face.

"Well, spit it out. What do you want to show us here?" Jessie asked irately.

"I'm dinking about it, okay? Dere's just so many dings here," Meowth said distractedly. "But foist, did ya find whoever was bleeding?"

"Well…yeah," James replied.

"…And?" Meowth pried further. "Is he still mad about it?"

"Dead people can't get mad," Jessie said bluntly, making James wince.

"Wait, he's dead?!" Meowth asked in shock. "Oh, no. Does…does dat mean we're in trouble now?"

"Only if someone finds out about it, and given how quickly those scavengers were working, it's pretty unlikely," Jessie replied just as bluntly as before, making James wince once more.

Meowth wiped an imaginary sweat drop off. "Dat's a relief, kinda. I mean, it wasn't our fault da sub fell on him, but I think an Officer Jenny wouldn't take dat as an acceptable excuse to not toss us in da slammer."

Jessie nodded, before finally glancing at James and noticing how pale he looked. "So what did you find in here, Meowth?" she asked him quickly.

Meowth took one look at James and nodded. He then pointed at the strange cabinet to the right of the fuse box. "You see dat ding?"

"The cabinet?" James asked.

"Dat…dat ain't no cabinet. I don't know what it is, but…here. I'll just show you." Meowth got off the bench, leapt onto the ladder, climbed partway up, jumped on top of the cabinet, and then scrambled around before finally managing to secure a firm grip on its rounded top.

"You know, you could've just asked us to hold you up to it," James noted.

"Tanks. When I gots no legs to stand up on, I'll hold ya to it," Meowth said sarcastically before reaching down and pressing a bar on the cabinet.

Said cabinet suddenly opened up by itself, with the top half folding upwards and the bottom half downwards. The top half revealed a pair of odd nozzles, while the bottom half further unfolded into a rather decent sized table.

"So, it's an automatic folding table with…what the heck are those?" Jessie asked, pointing at the nozzles.

"Dat's what I'm having trouble figuring out, because I can't read the stupid words on dis ding!" Meowth said with some frustration, pointing to…what appeared to be glowing pictures and text that'd spontaneously appeared on the inner surface of the strange cabinet.

Jessie peered at them. "This…doesn't look like Kantonese," she said.

James peered in next to her. "Hmm, I think…this might be Unovan."

"Unovan?!" Jessie and Meowth asked at once.

"Possibly Galaran. I can't tell just from this."

"When did you learn to speak Unovan or Galaran?" Jessie asked.

"Well, let's just say that my education was…extensive," James replied flatly.

"Wait, so we're in Unova?!" Meowth asked worriedly.

"Or possibly Galara. I'm not sure just from the wildlife alone," James admitted.

"Ugh, whatever. So what do they say?" Jessie asked.

"Um…okay, if I'm reading this right, this top icon here says 'Resources'. And then going down, it says 'Sustenance', 'Personal', and 'Deployables'."

"What do those mean?" Jessie asked irately.

"'Sustenance'? Dat means food, but…how?" Meowth asked in a puzzled tone.

"I…really don't know the answer to either of those questions," James replied. "I don't even know how this thing works, or what I'm supposed to do with this."

"Oh, just touch da word dat says 'Sustenance'. You'll see."

James did as Meowth said, and immediately, all the words but 'Sustenance' disappeared. 'Sustenance' rose to the top, and more text appeared below it.

"Huh, so this whole black part here is a touchscreen?" James asked Meowth.

"Yep, you just touch da words, and it does things. Things dat I don't know what because I can't read Unovan, so hurry up and tell me what it says now!"

"Umm…okay, the top part says 'Sustenance'. The words below it says: 'Place food item on Fabricator plate.'"

"Huh, so dis thing is called a 'Fabricator'?" Meowth muttered.

"More importantly, this thing isn't actually going to give us food? It just wants us to put food in it? What's the point?" Jessie asked irately.

"Hmm, maybe it wants to cook it for us?" James suggested.

"Not a bad idea, but maybe before you try cooking with it, you could try seeing if you can switch it to Kantonese?" Meowth asked with mixed impatience and hopefulness.

"Sure, but um…"

"To go back, you just touch dat little left-facing arrow in da top left corner."

"Oh, alright." James did just that, and it returned to the previous screen layout, which seemed to be a main menu of sorts. James looked at the words and icons, but none of them screamed 'Change Language' to him. "I don't see anything that looks like it'd do it, Meowth."

"Well, what about dat gear icon in the top right?"

James' eyes followed where Meowth was pointing until he saw said gear icon, before he finally pressed it. A bunch of different words showed up in response.

"Let's see…'Systems Maintenance', 'Reboot Options', 'User Interface Options'-"

"Ooh, try dat one!" Meowth said.

James dutifully pressed "User Interface Options", which revealed even more words. "And now we have…'Text Options', 'Audio Options', 'Border Options', and ooh, 'Language Options'!"

Without even bothering to wait for Meowth, James pressed that last option. This brought up a list of what appeared to be many, many options for languages, just as advertised.

"Let's see…'English', 'Espa…nol'? What's that weird symbol above the 'n'…never mind. 'Chuubun'? No idea what that is."

"Any Kantonese in there?" Meowth asked, somehow sounding even more impatient than before.

"Hold on, hold on," James muttered, scrolling down the list of languages for a bit. And then a bit longer. After a while, James stood up and said: "Huh, that's odd. No Kantonese."

"Wait, none?!" Meowth shouted, almost plaintive.

James just shook his head. "The closest I could find was that 'Chuubun', and a 'Nihongo'. I've never heard of either."

"Well, just try 'em out. No harm in it," Meowth suggested.

James shrugged, and pressed on the "Chuubun". At first, he was overjoyed when it returned to the User Interface Options menu and it was written in kanji, but then he looked closer and realized that the pattern of the kanji made no sense. Also, no hiragana or even katakana. It wasn't Kantonese. Although, the pattern of the kanji did seem familiar from his lessons about foreign languages…

"Wait, is this Hoennese?" James exclaimed in surprise.

"What? Why'd ya pick that one?"

"I didn't mean to, but why would this thing list it as 'Chuubun' instead of 'Hoenn-hua'?" James wondered aloud.

"Who cares? Just go back and try da other one. 'Nihongo', you said?"

James nodded briefly before going back to the language selection screen, and pressing on the "Nihongo" option. To both James and Meowth's enormous relief, the Fabricator now showed the familiar script of Kantonese.

"But…why 'Nihongo'?" James wondered aloud still.

"Again, who cares?! Now I can finally see what dis thing does-"

"Well, it's about time! I was thinking that you two were just going to continue messing around with that thing until nightfall," Jessie complained, twirling around something as she spoke.

"Wait, nightfall?! It's already night?!" James said in shock, looking around and realizing that the complete lack of windows in this dome thing was a pretty big disadvantage in situations like this.

"Not yet, but the sun's going down, so it's going to be nightfall soon," Jessie replied, still twirling something in her hand, which upon a closer look, seemed to be a brown bar wrapped in a transparent wrapper.

Ignoring it for now, James breathed out a sigh of relief. "Okay, then we still have time to get back."

Jessie smirked. "What, you're afraid of the dark now?"

"A little, but mostly I'm afraid of what might come out in the dark. I really don't want to be on a Gyarados' menu simply because I didn't see it coming."

Jessie's smirk instantly fell off her face as she chewed on that thought. "Fine, let's head back then. We can check this thing out in the morning."

James and Meowth nodded, the latter with less enthusiasm, but in the end Meowth still clambered up the ladder after James, into the orange light that definitely indicated sunset.

Moments later, all 3 of them were in the Meowth boat, with Jessie calling out for Arbok to come back while James and Meowth stared at their Gyarados sub in the distance. It was apparent that she was still grounded, but there seemed to be something…off about her.

"Meowth?"

"Yeah?"

"I may be imagining things, but does the sub look like it-she's a bit further away than before?"

Meowth stared harder at the sub for a few moments. "I…think? I can't tell from here. It does look a bit farther than usual…but if dat's the case, den we're drifting!"

James blinked at Meowth's tone. "Is it really that bad? I mean, surely this thing can't drift all that far, right?"

"If we're drifting, even only a little at a time, then dis ding could end up out of sight by the time we wake up tomorrow."

"Oh," was James' only reply. "But then, how do we stop it from drifting? Couldn't we just tie an anchor to it and toss it overboard?"

"Do you see any anchors here big enough to stop dis ding from drifting?" Meowth shook his head. "We gotta tow dis ding back to the sub, and then tie it to her. Our sub should be heavy enough to keep it from drifting off."

"But…." James looked from the big dome thing to their dinky little Meowth-shaped lifeboat. "Can our Meowth boat even tow it?"

"Well, dere's only one way to find out," Meowth said, not sounding all that confident as he reached over and pushed the joystick all the way forward.

Immediately, there was the sound of the Meowth boat's propeller. This time though, they didn't seem to be going very fast. In fact, it barely seemed like they were moving, if at all.

"Hey, Arbok hasn't come back yet!" Jessie complained.

"Well, look on the bright side: even if she comes back late, she wouldn't have to look very far to find us at this rate," Meowth said wearily, gamely keeping the joystick pointing forward.

As if in response, Arbok chose that moment to surface near the boat.

"Char?" asked the Cobra Pokémon.

"Well, about time," Jessie said. "I guess you were having a nice meal?"

"Char-bok char-ar bok bok-char-"

Jessie looked to Meowth for a translation.

"She says dat she found a whole bunch of tasty fish, including dis really tasty black and blue one with orange ears. She also says dat dere are a bunch of tasty sour purple and pink mushrooms growing all over da place."

"Well, that's good to know."

"Bok-char bok-"

"She also adds dat da black and blue fish and da purple mushrooms are both really poisonous, so we shouldn't eat them. Victreebel probably can though. She also says dat if she ever finds any more poisonous dings, she'll tell us."

Jessie made a face, before nodding. "Well, that's still good to know. At least we won't be accidentally poisoning ourselves."

Arbok nodded before looking curiously at them. "Char?"

"Now she's asking what we're doing, and I can tell you that we're trying to move dis ding back to da sub before it drifts away from us."

Arbok flicked her tongue out in thought before asked: "Char-bok?"

"Now dat would be appreciated, dank you very much."

Before either Jessie or James can react, Arbok submerged once more. She then popped up behind the dome thing, and then began pushing. Slowly, they began to pick up speed. It wasn't much speed, but it was still a bit faster than they were making before.

Jessie sighed, and then pulled out the collapsible oars to un-collapse them. "Well, if Arbok's going to do her part, might as well do mine," she muttered as she attached the oars to the rings on either side of the Meowth boat, and began rowing in a nice, steady rhythm.

James, feeling a bit useless but unable to really do anything to help, just sat there in the middle of the boat, watching the sun slowly sink beneath the horizon.

Eventually, they managed to reach the sub once more, with the dome thing in tow. Meowth wasted no effort in untying the mooring line from the Meowth boat, and then running the line through the Meowth boat's mooring hook before leaping up onto the Gyarados sub to tie the line around the big dorsal fin periscope on top.

Jessie thanked Arbok for the job well done, returned her to her pokeball, and then pointed for James to climb back up the sub. Sighing, James did as he was bade, but as he was climbing up, he stopped right in the middle.

"James, what are you doing?" Jessie asked impatiently.

"Uh…Jessie?"

"What?"

"This might be a really weird question, but…"

"Oh, just spit it out already so that we can get back in the sub!"

"Well, since when did we have two moons?"

"What are you talk…ing…about…," Jessie trailed off as she too looked up at the night sky.

"What are you two star…ing…at…," Meowth trailed off as well as he too, looked up at the sight above.

Hanging there in said night sky were unmistakably a pair of moons. One moon was small and glowing white, pretty much identical to the moon they all knew, if maybe slightly larger than they were used to.

The other moon though was a completely different beast. It was massive, taking up a good chunk of the sky, and was colored a luminescent orange with black splotches all over it. It was also noticeably moving, slowly drifting across the night sky and obscuring the stars as it went like a giant, round, orange cloud.

The trio stared at the sight for a while.

"You know, I don't think we're in Kanto anymore," James said quietly.

"Forget Kanto. I don't think we're on Earth anymore," Meowth replied just as quietly.

Jessie pulled at her hair in frustration. "Are you telling me that the twerps blasted us off so hard that we're on another planet?!"

Both James and Meowth just turned to stare at Jessie, distracted from the celestial sight above by sheer incredulity.

"Jessie? Do you really think that the twerps could've blasted us off into outer space? Onto another planet? Without us noticing the in-between bits?" James said slowly.

Jessie opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out, and she slowly closed it again. "But then how…no, it doesn't matter now. What matters is that we just get through the night, and then find out how we got here, and what do we do tomorrow. Agreed?"

James and Meowth could only nod. What else could they do?

Jessie clapped her hands together in reply. "Right, first things first: I'm starving. Let's get some dinner and then get some shuteye. We all need them."

This time, the nods from James and Meowth were much more enthusiastic, and they all clambered into their Gyarados sub.

A short time later, they'd unfolded the sole bed in the bridge and had taken the futon off. With the addition of some folding chairs, it made a decent dining table. James had already taken the plastic container of mackerel fillets, cut them up into chunks, and then stir-fried them with some vegetable oil, dried green onions, and spelon berry flakes to make a nice spicy mackerel stir-fry with a side of fish stock miso soup to have as their only courses to go with the bowls of rice. In fact, given how little fish and soup was actually left, it might've been more accurate to say that the rice was the main course instead.

"Huh, the rice tastes a bit better today, if a little on the salty side," Jessie commented.

"Huh, I guess soaking rice in seawater for several hours is a valid cooking technique after all," James commented right back.

Jessie paused with a clump of rice half-raised to her mouth. "Wait, this is the rice that was just lying in that seawater in the sub? All day long?"

James shrugged. "Well, I couldn't stand to see it go to waste. Might as well use it before it spoils. Besides, it's not like we've eaten worse before."

Jessie thought for a moment, and then shrugged right back before popping that clump of seawater rice into her mouth and chewing with relish.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask for a while, but what is that brown thing you put on the table?" James asked, pointing at the aforementioned brown thing wrapped in some kind of transparent package.

"Oh, this? While you and Meowth were busy geeking out over that whatchamacallit-"

"Fabricator," Meowth interrupted in between mouthfuls of fish and rice, mostly the latter.

"Whatever. I was busy looking through all the rest of the place. Turns out, there was a container built into that metal bench underneath that big screen. I found two of those brown things in there, along with what looks like a pair of water bottles, what looks like a first-aid kit, with another one in that blinking cabinet on the wall, and a pair of these." Jessie reached into her backpack (the one she'd looted from that poor guy's corpse), and placed a pair of items onto the table.

They looked like white metal cylinders. One end was red and looked like a cap, and the other end was black and ribbed and looked like a handle. In between, there was something that looked like a dark grey button on the white handle, but it was hard to tell.

"What are they?" James asked.

"Don't know. Didn't want to mess with them until Meowth had a look at them."

While munching on seawater rice, Meowth picked one up and carefully examined it. "Dunno either. Going to have to experiment on it a bit to find out. Later. After a good meal and a good night's sleep."

Jessie's only response was a nod before she picked up the brown thing and examined it closely. "Well, at least I'm fairly certain that this is food of some kind. You don't normally put oats in things you don't eat."

James blinked in surprise, and peered more closely at the brown thing in its transparent wrapping. Sure enough, there did appear to be oats in among the brownness, along with some other unidentifiable grains.

"Maybe it's like a granola bar?" James posited.

"It's a pretty thick granola bar then. It's thicker than my hand. Heavy too. I could almost use it as a doorstop," Jessie commented, raising it up and down to make her point.

"Well, if it's basically a granola bar den, why don't we have it for dessert?" Meowth asked. "It's been a while since we had anything sweet."

Both Jessie and James nodded in agreement. James vaguely recalled a bit of chocolate cake that was stuck to the inside of a cardboard box they found in a trash can somewhere in Celadon City. All 3 savored that brief flicker of sweetness they got from that bit of cake.

"Okay, that's it. Let's have our first dessert in a long, long time!" Jessie shouted as she pulled apart the transparent wrapping and pulled the "granola bar" out. She then broke the bar apart into 3 pieces, and handed a piece to James and Meowth each.

"Hey, why's my portion so small?" Meowth complained, waving around a tiny piece that was less than half the size of the one Jessie gave to James.

"Meowth, you're less than half our height, and even less than that in weight. What I'm giving you is already more than fair, so pipe down and eat your dessert," Jessie said, already biting into her portion of the bar.

Meowth sighed and also bit into his bar piece at the same time James did. The trio then started chewing their mouthful.

And continued chewing.

And chewing.

And chewing some more.

Until finally, they swallowed their well-chewed chunk of "granola bar".

"This…," James began.

"Is…," Meowth continued.

"Awful," Jessie declared with finality.

"It tastes faintly sweet and of oats," James commented.

"But it's got da texture of wet cardboard mixed with mud and oats," Meowth chimed in.

"If a chef actually made this, I'm going to cram as many of these I can find down his throat and see how he likes it," Jessie said nastily.

"What makes you so sure the chef who made this is a 'he'?" James asked.

"If a woman made this, at least she would've mixed a whole bunch of chocolate into it to make it go down better," Jessie replied.

James thought that logic was a bit dubious, but with Jessie's mood right now, he didn't want to argue the point.

Jessie pulled out the other bar. "Anyone want this one?"

Meowth frantically shook his head, while James looked thoughtful. "Maybe I can use it for bait if we run out?" he wondered.

Jessie response was to toss the remaining bar at him. "Here. All yours. It'll be a miracle if any fish go for that anyways."

James merely laughed nervously and pocketed the bar.

Sometime later, the trio had finished their meals, and cleaned up their dinner table so that it was now back to being a bed once more.

"Well, time to get my beauty sleep. Night," Jessie muttered as she climbed into the bed.

James thought about it though. "But, isn't it my turn to get the bed?"

No reply came from Jessie though, nor would it ever come. Her snoring was clear evidence of that.

James only sighed and pulled out his futon from the storage cabinet. He started to put it on the floor only to see that Meowth was busy looking through his cupboard.

"Aren't you going to get some sleep too?" James asked him.

"Later. I gotta do one last check of da engines, and den I hit the hay."

James nodded, only to smack a fist into his open palm in realization. "Shoot, you reminded me! I need to dry out the fish before they start rotting."

Meowth nodded in sympathy. "Well, better hop to it den. If you need some company, I'll be in da engine room," he said before proceeding aft to that very compartment.

James immediately went forward to grab an armful of still-wet salt fish, and then headed above to lay them out on the deck under the night sky, still dominated by the pair of moons. It was then that he realized that he had a problem. He couldn't just leave the salt fish lying there while he went to fetch the rest. If he did that, they'd just get eaten by something, likely those bird Poké…alien bird Pokémon. Same if he just went to sleep. So either he got Meowth to watch the fish while he managed to lay them all out, or…

As if reading his mind, one of James' pokeballs suddenly opened on its own, and out popped something that looked like a nearly man-sized yellow and green-spotted pitcher plant with a large leaf covering the trap. The only things that made it differ from a normal pitcher plant was a pair of large leaves at the bottom of the pitcher body serving as "arms", a long vine-tail extending from the top of the trap, a pair of sharp fangs circling the bottom of the trap, and most importantly: a pair of eyes poking out from just below the trap.

Before James can even say "Victreebel" though, the Flycatcher Pokémon had already jumped up and latched onto James' head, giving him gentle love bites in their usual fashion. A muffled "I love you too, but could we save it for later?!" could be heard from inside the Pokémon's gullet, but the Pokémon ignored it for now.

A few moments later, after their routine was over, James was petting Victreebel on their leaf cover and wondering why he didn't think of this sooner.

"Victreebel, do you mind staying here and guarding the fish while I go back and lay out all the rest?" James asked.

Victreebel screeched happily in reply, which earned another pet on the leaf from James before he went off to collect the salt fish.

A few minutes later, James had the entire collection of salt fish laid on the submarine deck, with his futon laid out nearby at the base of the dorsal fin to keep it from potentially sliding off into the sea.

"Okay, Victreebel, we need to take turns guarding this fish, or else our emergency rations might end up in something else's belly. Do you want to take first watch, or should I?" James asked.

Victreebel's reply was to tap themself with one leaf-arm.

James smiled, and patted Victreebel once more on their leaf cover. "Thank you. If anything comes, just try to knock them out. It looks like there's lots of new Pokémon here, and catching some for the boss could be worth it."

Victreebel screeched happily in reply, while shaking their "head" up and down in an attempt to do a nod.

Satisfied, James slipped into his futon, still in his Team Rocket uniform for convenience in case he was disturbed. The only concession he made to comfort was to remove his gloves, socks, and boots; and to loosen his belt. Those, and changing into a spare uniform instead of the one he'd been wearing for the whole day, which he'd done before going to prepare and eat dinner.

Said uniform was currently hanging on a line stretching from the topmost dorsal spine to the top of the middle crest spine at the submarine's bow, with Jessie's uniform hanging next to it. The reason? They had been completely soaked with seawater from their little diving expedition earlier, and thus he needed to dry them both out. They could stomach many things, including eating literal garbage, but the one thing they could not stomach was walking around in soaking wet clothes. Plus, he was sure that would just earn them a cold on top of the discomfort, so the spare uniform it was.

"Just wake me up in-Yaawn-about 6 to 7 hours, or unless something comes along you can't handle. Whichever comes first," James said as he closed his eyes.

A few moments later, James said: "And no love bites, please. I've had a really long day, and I really need to sleep, so…nighty-night."

Victreebel gave a low whine of disappointment as they leaned over James' face with their mouth poised over his face, but did not attempt to nom on him as per normal. Instead, they simply hopped a few steps away, and went to guard duty mode, looking around and hopping in place to get a better view every so often as James drifted off into Slumberland.

Meanwhile though, unbeknownst to both James and Victreebel, the strange device James had picked up next to the dead man was sitting in the depths of James' right pants pocket, with the transparent screen still fully extended. Inside the device, the mind inside transmitted the data it'd collected on these strange beings to the distant shipwreck still looming (and burning) on the horizon, and then sat back and got to work analyzing the data for itself.

It was sure that once it had finished, it and the mind it had sent the data to would have more than enough data to determine if these beings were, in fact, guilty of murdering its former owner.