Interlude
Four travelers are seated in adjacent aisle seats on the bullet train from Fuchsia to
Viridian City with a connection to the backwater of Pallet Town. Jessie and Joy sit on the sunny north side of the train, Cassidy sits on the aisle next to Butch at the window on the south. All are silent, lost in their thoughts as the train hums by an alternately wooded and pastoral landscape.
Joy has come along because her first grandchild is the reason for the unexpected reunion and journey. Joy is also pleased, if anxious, about having the company of the two strong young women she had some hand in raising. The differences she noticed years ago still hold. Cassidy is cool, intellectual, calculating; a lot like her scholarly father. Jessie is willful, impulsive, and emotional; more like Joy herself. Joy wishes Cass and her father had gotten on better, but Geoff was too wrapped up in his career, and Joy herself just couldn't relate to her distant brainy daughter. When Jessie had arrived it had been tumultuous, however Joy sensed the advent of a kindred spirit, hurt and angry, but cut from the same cloth. Joy fears that Jessie's friendship with her was the last straw that separated her from Cassidy. This was especially so after Jess had slashed Cass. Cass could sense Joy's heartbroken sympathy for Jessie, and resented it so much she had run off with Butch. Joy looks uneasily at the slouching, but pensive, green-haired young man next to her daughter. She wonders how she will ever get to know the father of her grandchild. She turns away, looks past Jessie through the window at the sunny landscape flashing by and sighs.
Butch covertly notices Joy staring at him and slides lower in his seat. He's uncomfortable having Cassidy's mom around. He never fit into the Yamato's comfortable middle class world. He was a tough, sharp, unpolished guy from the low income housing across town. Butch is trying to sort things out, being a dad, trying to figure out how to quit Team Rocket, and straining to feel at ease being anywhere near Jessie and Joy. When he received his scholarship to Pokémon Tech he mostly felt relief in escaping his father's drunken rages. The hazing at school had nonetheless been ridiculous, he developed a hatred for those rich kids. That was when a wily and elegant but lonely girl and her fiery foster sister took notice of his charm and good looks. They asked him to join their shoplifting larks at the local mall. Cassidy and Jessie were talented thieves, brash and funny. Unfortunately, at fourteen, he had a lot to learn about girls. He had no inkling that the reserved Cassidy would be jealous of a snuggle with Jess. Boy was he wrong. It cost his friends too. Cassidy lost some of her beauty and what was left of her naiveté, Jessie lost a home and all sense of trust in others. Cassidy whined about her folks and home life so much Butch hunted up some guys from the projects who had joined Team Rocket, and offered Cass escape into the gang. They robbed her mom's Pokémon Centre, and had been on the road ever since.
Butch looks gently at Cassidy. He never really understood why Cass so hated her suburban home and parents, he would have given anything to live like she did. Perhaps that was the reason he treated her so badly their first couple of years in Team Rocket, or maybe it was his dad's bad example. At first he considered her spoiled and stuck up. He yelled at her, treated her coldly when it suited him, drank too much, and hit her. For some reason she put up with him. One night he slapped her and called her something really low. She simply stared at him with profound hurt in her eyes and tears on her face. It suddenly hit him that he didn't have to act like his dad, that Cassidy was brilliant, beautiful, strong and totally dedicated to him for no earthly reason he could understand. He said to himslf, "I'll never forgive myself if I lose her. I need her." It took an effort of months, even years, but he did change. As soon as he had changed they became a smooth and successful team, rising swiftly in Team Rocket. Cassidy took the end of her first pregnancy hard. At first Butch had been relieved that she got rid of that kid, but he saw how it ate away at Cass and he realized he had lost something too. He hasn't told her, but he's happy, if scared, that she wants the new child. He is spooked that he might be too much like his father, he prays he won't. He looks at Jessie she worries him too. He can almost smell a doublecross coming from that vindictive woman. He'll keep a watchful eye on her.
Cassidy is scheming, it's what she does best after all. She occasionally steals a glance at her companions, particularly Jessie with whom she has a special bond of distrust and envy. Cassidy has usually masterminded the crimes she and Butch executed, now she must devise a plot to get them out of the gang they have served so well. The turmoil in her chest won't subside, it makes it hard to think. She knows one thing, any plan she devises has to humiliate and hurt Jessiebelle. That woman! If it was not bad enough she looked like Jessie, she proved jealous, imperious, controlling, and cruel. All hope for advancement died with the rise of the red haired, whip toting sycophant. What did the Boss see in her? The plan also must involve tempting Team Rocket with an array of distinctive and rare Pokémon. Few places have that attraction, but one in Pallet does, the Oak Lab. She stares coldly at Jessie and wonders if the retired thief has enough pull in Pallet to get Oak to risk his precious Pokémon menagerie as bait. She will find out soon enough she decides, and turns her thoughts inward as she suddenly becomes acutely aware of her stomach.
Jessie catches Cassidy staring at her, she shifts uncomfortably and stares right back at her, hard. Jessie wonders about herself, is she the same woman who spent so much time "protecting the world from devastation" with James and Meowth. She has obtained much that her forlorn heart desired: wealth, love, comfort, and a successful endeavour, the fashion emporium "Pokémon Fashion Flash". She even has something she never realized she wanted, a daughter, and she thinks fondly of little Miya. But she is still a stormy soul, with a white-hot anger and cutting tongue. She realizes this when Miya cowers in a closet after making a mess in the living room. Jessie's future seems so secure she spends too much time obsessing about her flawed past and trying to right some of the wrongs of her life. Perhaps this is why she has foolishly offered to help the unforgiving, embittered Cassidy. She is terrified she is being conned by Cass and Butch. Maybe Cass isn't pregnant, she sure doesn't look it yet. This could be a horrible trap. Somehow Jessie needs some ironclad proof before she can let down her guard and really help Cassidy. Otherwise the cost to James, Miya, Meowth, and Pallet Town could be grievous, and she has had enough of grieving to last a lifetime.
As the train hurtles onward toward Viridian, no one is falling asleep, nor do their thoughts stray from their obsessions. Although the day is sunny and the fields and forests verdant, inviting the eye to enter them, the travelers have turned their vision inward to bleaker landscapes of their rueful souls. None really look forward to the arguments of the meeting in their future. The train starts to slow four miles outside the station, and Jessie, Joy, Cassidy and Butch heave a collective exasperated sigh.