As chills ran down his spine, James stood up slowly, feeling his knees shaking.
"I'm going... to die here," he murmured.
He suspected that a wild pokemon would probably kill him or he'd starve to death. Little did he know that there was another powerful unknown force wanting both him and Jesse dead.
At daybreak a Team Rocket stealth helicopter flew above the treetops of the forest, pinpointing Jesse and James's locations with powerful binoculars. The pilot of the chopper did not know why he was tracking down Jesse and James, or why, that once he had found them, The Boss requested him to only state their locations and not pick them up. He zipped around on his helicopter until he spotted the bright red R on Jesse's Team Rocket jacket with his binoculars. Immediately he mapped the location and began to scan for James.
Once he had spotted and mapped out both Jesse and James's locations, the pilot called Giovanni on the videophone and stated the locations.
"Boss, the female Team Rocket member is in sector 8, zone 5 of the Fog Forest."
Giovanni, smiling evilly, stroked his Persian as he examined his map of the forest that Jesse and James were in.
"Thank you. Update me when their positions change."
He could see the confused look on the pilot's face when he didn't mention doing anything else to the two.
"You see, I am going to retire Jesse and James early," he continued. "They have failed me much too often and I no longer need them to attempt to do Team Rocket's jobs. Now that they are finally apart, I can 'retire' them separately."
A look of horror came across the pilot's face, but once he saw the Boss's satisfied expression, he turned it into a sly smile. Trust would now be forcibly established between the Boss and the Rocket pilot.
Between videophone calls of updates on location, Giovanni locked himself alone in his office, trying to think of how to make Jesse and James's 'retirements' look like an accident. On his map, Pokeland was divided into even, organized sectors and zones and both Rocket members' locations fell into the zones and sectors on his maps. He pondered for a while and decided to kill off James first. With a cold look in his eyes, he spoke softly to himself his plan for James's demise.
"James is the more sensitive type. He's even less a Rocket than Jesse is. Butch told me that James was in love with Jesse. I wonder how hurt he'd be to find that Jesse loves someone else..."
Missing Weezing and Weepinbell already, James decided to retrace his steps to look for his dropped pokeballs. Cautiously he trekked through the forest staring at the ground for his footsteps. After ten minutes of not seeing any footprints, James's shoulders slumped dejectedly and he felt the tears coming on. The salty, stinging tears, crying about his new, lousy, drastically changed life. Crying for the decent life he ran away from. It wasn't so bad with Jesse. Yeah, she hit him a lot and was almost always angry with him, but as long as she was around him he was content. And he had destroyed it by blowing the fight out of proportion. Not paying any attention to where he was walking, he tripped over a thick clump of weeds in front of him as he thought about the times when Jesse wasn't angry. Well, there were times, usually when Ash and his Pikachu weren't around. It seemed that when Pikachu stepped out to attack them, Jesse got into her bad moods. That stupid Pikachu... James had a plan. Feeling confident in his efforts, he shouted the plan out loud.
"Well, I'm going to level up my Weezing, and blast that Pikachu off just like it does to Team Rocket all the time! Then, I'll find Jesse and tell her what I did! She'll love me forever!"
He then realized what a foolish proposition he had made. He stomped on the ground as he yelled.
"I can't defeat Pikachu! My Weezing is gone! Jesse is gone! Not only that, but she hates me, too! How could she ever love me!" Shaking his head sadly, James trod a little faster, hoping to find his way out of the vast forest without getting eaten up by a wild pokemon. His only plan now was to survive.
Jesse clipped James's pokeballs onto her belt with her pokemon.
"I must find him, Meowth, to apologize for the nasty thing that I did. He might get hurt by wild pokemon since he doesn't have any pokemon with him! And if he was kidnapped by Jezebel, he has no pokemon to defend himself against her!" Meowth could tell that she was in a state of panic, and tried to comfort her.
"Everyting will be alright, Jess; we'll find him."
The fateful update came several hours later, when James neared the edge of the forest. "Boss, the male Rocket will be approaching the road on the eastern border of the forest."
"Hmm..." Giovanni smiled and continued petting his Persian as he devised a foolproof plan to kill James.
