Today was a slow day. The day after we had caught Shimazaki, we decided to celebrate our very first caught Pokemon by having a huge party lasting the entire day. I was a bit wary about how alcohol would affect my body, especially alcohol in the Pokemon world, so I passed on that when it was passed around. A fact that I was infinitely grateful for later on, as Shimazaki decided to join in on our celebration by teleporting us all around Cerulean City. Even on top of the buildings. I have to say, I was never really into parkour originally, but after being on top of the structures that held me and seeing the view below, I could definitely see the appeal.

Unfortunately, Jessie and James were both too intoxicated at this point to properly enjoy the experience.

Let's just say that if there were complaints about vomit rain the next day, that would probably be the reason as to why. We should probably just stick to getting a cake next time we feel like celebrating a huge achievement.

Jessie and James were ecstatic though, vomit or no vomit, happily remarking about how they were finally doing their part for contributing to Team Rocket. I had tuned out of their drunken ramblings at this point, in favor of planning out our next move.

Right now, my priorities lie in taking down Team Rocket so that we could properly utilize Jessie and James's talents in robotics to its full potential. I was constantly annoyed by the fact that every time that the duo would invent something spectacular and grand, Team Rocket would just steal their technology on the down-low while barely paying them enough money to eat in return for their efforts, if that. It was criminal how James and Jessie were practically slaving away.

I could try learning Pay Day to help them, but I don't really think it even gave that much money to begin with, assuming it worked like it did in the games. Which it probably didn't, to be honest. So it probably wasn't worth it to try to learn it. There was probably a good reason why Team Rocket wasn't just spamming Pay Day every day.

Ignoring said money problems for now, I decided to use the free time that I had to train. Given the plans that I had in mind for Team Rocket, I was bound to run into conflict at some point, and I couldn't just rely on my teammates' Pokemon to bail me out all the time.

And that was just Team Rocket. Who knows if I would have to deal with the various different teams in the other regions, each with their own brand of crazy.

Hopefully not, because that was just way too much stress in my life.

So that was why I was up at eight in the morning the next day practicing my moves on a nearby tree. Jessie and James were still passed out drunk from the night prior, so I estimated that I had about an hour or so completely free to myself.

I winced as one of my claws nearly broke from a particularly vicious Scratch attack. It seems like Meowth at this point in the anime wasn't at all used to directly battling, and it sure as hell showed.

Based off of the few fights that he had throughout the entire anime, he clearly had some potential. But he just never used it. Probably because the anime executives didn't want to make him too competent and disturb the comfortable status quo of the series.

Back to my training, I was hoping to be able to use stronger moves like Slash, but apparently you had to train and battle a certain amount until you could actually use them. Go figure.

After simultaneously switching from using Fury Swipes to Scratch on the poor tree, I decided to test my speed and reaction times. I recall from watching Meowth's backstory that he ended up much slower than he was before because he switched from running on all fours to running on two legs, which is unnatural for his species. Which sucked for me, because my human mind combined with Meowth's bipedal muscle memory meant that running on two legs was practically ingrained into me.

I decided that I may as well utilize my training tree to it's fullest, and proceeded to cut off all the branches that I could reach. Then I ran as fast as my new body would carry me and tried to cut the branches before they hit the ground. My Fury Swipes attack cut through the thin pieces of wood like butter, which made my confidence grow a bit.

What made my confidence shoot right back down was the fact that out of the eight branches I cut off the tree, only two of them were sliced in half.

I sighed. Looks like more training would be needed to catch me up to speed. Which works perfectly for me, I was actually just starting to enjoy training. The workout helped me feel lighter and stronger.

It also helped to take my mind off of the fate of the original Meowth for the time being.

.

.

.

I decided to stop after about an hour of training to rest and recover. After about ten more minutes of relaxing by the Cerulean Cave river, James and Jessie started to stir.

"Ugh, my head feels absolutely dreadful. Like a Psychic Pokemon sifting through it a hundred times!" James exclaimed in pain.

Jessie wasn't fairing much better. "I swear I had a higher tolerance than that! Someone must have spiked my drink!"

"No one spiked your drink, Jessie. Trust me, I definitely would have smelled it before." Their heads shot towards me as I walked up to them.

Jessie narrowed her eyes, "And where exactly have you been, Meowth?"

"Training," I replied simply, "benefit of not being drunk."

Jessie just looked confused at this. "Why would you need to train? That's what we have Ekans and Koffing for! Not to mention the powerful teleporter that we literally just caught yesterday."

I shook my head, "They aren't always going to be there to save me, Jessie. Like it or not, I'm a valuable commodity because I can communicate with people, and people will want to kidnap me for that. I need to be able to protect myself."

Hell, N was able to talk to Pokemon, and Ghetsis ended up brainwashing him to take advantage of his gift. Even though the anime never touched on this aspect of Meowth, there would definitely be poachers out there who would target me.

"I guess so…" Jessie begrudgingly agreed, leaving the matter alone for now.

We all quietly and quickly ate our breakfast after that (which was just beans in a can and soup). After that, we started to discuss our next move.

"I want to go on vacation to the Cinnabar Islands!" Jessie started with stars in her eyes. "Just imagine all the hot gu-weather!"

"Well I've always wanted to go to Lavender Town myself. I've heard Pokemon and humans haunt that place when they die!" James gave a creepy laugh at the thought.

I shuddered in horror. To be reminded of Meowth so soon…

"Why would you even want to go there, James? That place is disturbing!" I silently agreed with Jessie on this one, although for vastly different reasons.

"Oh come on now, don't tell me you're not even a teeny-tiny bit curious about what happens to our souls when we die? I've always thought that we reincarnated as Ghost type Pokemon." Well, he honestly wasn't too far off the mark there if my knowledge about how Yamask are created is still correct.

"What about you, Meowth? Where would you like to go? Please tell me it's Lavender Town!" James suddenly asked me.

I thought carefully about it. Where exactly would I like to go? The Pokemon world was vast, but I'm assuming James was just referring to places within Kanto, as he didn't really consider other regions that much.

I think it was about time to broaden my teammate's horizons just a bit.

"I'd like to go to the Alto Mare in the Johto region." Not only does it house both a Latios and a Latias, which would be really cool to see in general, but I was also hoping to prevent the events that led to Latios's death.

James raised an eyebrow, "Johto? I've heard of the region, but I've never been. Where did you learn about that place?"

I just shrugged. "Researched it online."

"Well this is going nowhere, we all have different ideas on where to go." Jessie frowned, but she then suggested:

"Why don't we play rock paper scissors? Whoever wins against both people will get their place picked first, if you win once then we'll go to their place second, and the ultimate loser gets their place picked last."

James accepted this easily enough. "Works for me. You in, Meowth?"

"Sure." This should be easy for me, I was a master of this back in my world.

.

.

.

It was in fact, NOT easy for me.

Jessie sniggered, "Heh, looks like we won't be going to that Alto Air place anytime soon!"

My eyes twitched, "It's Alto Mare, and you totally cheated!" Why didn't I notice that I wasn't able to make my paws into scissors and rocks beforehand? I guess I was just too preoccupied with other stuff at the time to notice.

Jessie's sniggers subsided into a smirk, "It's not cheating if you agreed to the game."

"Ugh, you're impossible."

Meanwhile, James was just happy that we were going to Lavender Town first.

"Oh, I can't wait! I'm just DYING to meet the ghosts. Ahahaha!"

"And I'm here dying of your lame puns!"

"Don't be such a poor sport, Jessie! They say the spirits can detect negative energy! Wouldn't want them to possess you or anything like that!"

"... Possession?"

"Oh? Don't tell me you're still scared of ghosts, Jessie. Not at this age!"

"I AM NOT!"

I rolled my eyes at their bickering. I guess Alto Mare was off the table for now, but it WAS a long ways away, so I still had plenty of time to change Latios's fate. Also, it would make me a poor teammate to just constantly boss Team Rocket around to my whims. They were free spirits at heart, and I wanted to respect that.

So Lavender Town it was.

James's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "Oh, and one more thing. We need to start up the balloon later in the afternoon."

"...Why not now?" I asked.

"Because I want to experience the haunted Lavender Tower during the night as soon as we get there! I want to get the authentic, maximum spookage feeling!"

I just groaned, "Of course you would say that."

I guess we would just have to wait and see what the Lavender Tower held in store for us.