AN – I forgot to mention this last chapter. Shouldn't the secret base have better security? It probably should, but when has that ever stopped Ash? As for the mystery Pokemon, you'll just have to wait and see on that… I will say though, it is a very important part of the story… now for more plots and cliffhangers…

Black

Chapter 5: An Old Friendship

Back and forth, up and down, mechanical, like a clock's 'tick-tock', the Rocket minions were hard at work. There was a greater income of stolen 'goods' than ever before, and it all needed sorting, moving, using. The pokemon complained when they first entered their cages, but by the time of their sorting, they'd all subdued, giving up on being let free.

All movement made by the Rocket test subjects was perfect. They were truly Giovanni's army; they would do anything at his bidding. And overall, the experiment seemed to be working successfully. There'd only been a couple of instances of… drawbacks. But the scientists were able to repossess their command over the slip-ups.

Jessie, James, Cassidy, and Butch worked together, yet separately, as they took care of relocating the trapped pokemon. This was only possible because of their lack of emotion and perfect, individual movements, although they were all working on the same assignment. And they were like the others, heading back and forth, back and forth across the large room.

Without warning, the pattern was broken. Cassidy fell down, clasping the front of her suit. Her eyes dilated, her breath shortened with panic, and beads of sweat trickled down the side of her face. She couldn't think. Blurry images appeared in her mind and she couldn't tell if they were what she was seeing, or if she was dreaming; what was happening?

At about the same time, Jessie faltered and almost tripped over Cassidy. She slowly regained a bit of control over her thoughts and dropped in pain as she did so.

"Where – oh… I'm still trapped…" she panted as she focused all her energy to thinking.

Somehow, she couldn't understand how or why, Jessie had found her senses again. The room was blurry, the sounds of movement blended with the buzzing drone of the unnatural chemical in her mind, the ground was almost cold, almost smooth, and almost numb to her fingers, but with these added abilities, her mind grew stronger with confidence, fighting against the biologically engineered enemy present in her body. She heard it before her eyes detected the fuzzy picture of Cassidy sprawled on the floor beside her, fighting the same adversary with ragged breath.

"Heh… nice… to… see you… again," Jessie articulated as loud as she could muster, which wasn't all that loud. But Cassidy heard her.

Cassidy felt extremely weak and the blackness was threatening to overtake her once more, but she knew who she was as she suffered like this, and that was something she was afraid of losing. She heard Jessie speak, and was amazed that there was someone else with her. Or was Jessie watching her ache? Letting her mind wander to these thoughts almost let the droning take her away again, and she decided to keep her thinking minimal.

"Je-Jessie…?" she tried to say. It was so hard to keep her own mind and speak at the same time.

"Funny… the way… things turn out… sometimes… isn't it?" Jessie laughed softly.

Why was she laughing at their situation? It was horrible to Cassidy that she ended up 'drinking her own poison', as they say. This feeling of anger developed within her and Cassidy became stronger. She realized that Jessie was using humour to do the same. Perhaps that's how Jessie was always able to keep her head, even when she was losing. What was it? 'The top of the bottom'? Her temporary free flow of thoughts slipped again and Cassidy refocused her energy to speech.

"W-what… what can… we do?"

Jessie listened, processed Cassidy's words, then thought of an answer. It was so tedious, but she wasn't going to give in to the drug.

"Stay… ourselves. Don't… let go… hope for… help… don't give up… and… maybe… we'll get… strong enough… to help… ourselves…" Jessie was fading fast with the incredible effort she was putting into her message to Cassidy. "Don't… give up… don't… don't… let… go…"

"As long… as… you don't… let go… either…" Cassidy confirmed with a hint of humour.

The two girls chuckled gently as they ended conversing, saving their energy for their inner battles.

-

"What is this?" Giovanni stood up behind his desk, walked around it and towards the four people who had just entered his office. Ash was pinned between the scientist's assistant and a Rocket minion who had a blank expression and an abnormally straight stance. Behind them was another Rocket minion, who looked a bit unsettled holding an expression of aggravation, and who was wearing charred clothes. In his gloved hands squirmed a distressed Pikachu.

"Sir, we found him sneaking around the labs on third floor," replied the assistant, Mark. "We don't think he got far enough to know what's going on, but he did get to lab 3-11…"

Mark stared at a spot on the wall to the right and down of where Giovanni stood, some guilt and apprehension written on his face.

"Here," said the expressionless Rocket Grunt in a monotonous voice, "We retrieved this from the intruder." And he placed Ash's pokeballs and pokedex onto the desk.

Giovanni gave a calculated stare around at each person present. Then he reached down and picked up the pokedex.

"This pokedex belongs to trainer Ash Ketchum," said the pokedex to the room at large when Giovanni prodded a button. He shut his eyes, clearly displeased. But before getting angry, he calmly asked in an authoritative tone, "How did you get in?"

Ash chuckled for the first time since arriving and then he spoke. "Guards going soft? Security lax? It was a piece of cake…"

Giovanni felt like yelling, trying to find the person responsible for this, to punish the one who was to blame, but he couldn't let his composure slip in front of a guest – how would Team Rocket look if its boss couldn't appear to be always in control of things? Bosses who blamed their underlings for mistakes were among the weakest, most incompetent type of people, and Giovanni would not stoop down to that level today.

"Lenny, once we're done here, would you please contact security and tell them I want a little chat, oh and to raise the defenses a bit."

The mechanical Rocket Grunt nodded.

"Now, now, child, what are we going to do with you?" Giovanni indicated to Ash. "Whether you've seen too much, or not much at all, I'm going to have to put you somewhere where you'll be out of trouble…"

Mark and Lenny's grasps on Ash tightened as they prepared to drag the whelp away. Realizing that, Ash began to struggle again and shouted at the Boss, "You'll never get away with this!"

"My dear boy, you can't even begin to comprehend the lengths to which I am venturing to ensure my success," stated Giovanni simply.

"Oh I understand alright," Ash retorted. "You're just going to ruin a lot of lives in the process. And for what? Power? Please – that's nothing. You're missing out on a lot if you think that power is the only thing that matters."

"We have very different opinions on the issue it would seem. Well, no matter. You'll see it from my point of view one day."

A confusion settled over Ash to this last comment. It sounded almost as if the Boss endeared him. Before he could think of anything else to say though, another person entered the room.

"Yes, Charlie?" Giovanni asked.

"Sherman wanted me to tell you that our side experiment is done and ready to go," he began immediately, "All the explosives are perfectly aligned. Bernard also says his main project is going well, and that it is ready for the training stage. I came here because we've had two more instances and perhaps you might like to see them, figure out what we should do with them… that experiment isn't as clean cut as it could be…"

Charlie was still standing in the doorway, a hurried manner set in his posture, as if there was little time for discussion.

Giovanni pushed back from his desk, sighed, then stood up.

"Fine, Charlie, I will be right there. Lenny, Mark, could you please take our guest here to the holding cells until I find better use for him, and then Lenny, you're to go to security, and Mark, you can return to Bernard. I'm sure you'll have some fun with that. Devon, take that Pikachu down to the loading zone and put it in a cage."

Giovanni and the others made their way out the door.

"Ok, Charlie, lead the way."

-

It was such a silly fight, if you really thought about it. A simple misunderstanding that had escalated into the hatred that it now is today. But was it really hatred or mistrust? Perhaps it was neither but an underlying jealousy from both sides. In any case, that bond of friendship it once used to be was no more and yet here they were, sprawled on the ground side by side, gasping in feverish delusions, and clinging to each other for support, lest they lose themselves forever.

It had been several long minutes since they spoke. And all they were aware of was each breath they took, their hearts beating too fast, and most importantly, that they had to do everything they could to keep their sanity, if you could call it sanity… waking up to this world full of pain, realizing that they barely had a grasp on who they were, dreading every moment, lying in fear, but knowing above all that they must never let go, never bow down to the enemy trying to steal their souls… if that's insanity, then so be it. Better to be insane than to be lost obeying all commands.

Unfortunately, with the amount of energy and effort it cost to retain that much information, there was no room to think up a way out of the situation. Here the truly insane reside, they would not give up even though they had no chance of finding an escape. Hope was all the power they needed to cling to, to save them. But time was not on their side – they would have to fall deeper before being able to reach back up again.

"Here they are, Boss," came Charlie's voice.

Jessie and Cassidy were two pitiful figures lying on the floor. Both looked to be in the worse shape. Giovanni towered over them.

"Well, now, what have we here? Another couple of slip-ups, eh?" he said staring down at them. He didn't know if they could hear, or whether they were aware of anything. It didn't really matter. His scientists would be able to perfect the 'potion', he was sure of it.

To his surprise, Jessie spoke up, "Bad day? …Heh… you… don't know… the worst… of… it."

"See what I mean, Boss?" Charlie said. "I saw them talking and I thought that perhaps the matter should be looked into. We're not sure exactly what kind of mental reaction they should be having from this, apart from obedience. It's supposed to work sort of like a sedative, but only on the mind. They aren't supposed to be thinking, dreaming, or anything. What's happening now means our calculations are off somewhere, and they could either be hallucinating or experiencing some warped form of pain. I've got the other scientists trying to work out the problem at the moment, and now that Sherman is done his side project, he'll be of great help for fixing this. You know how disorganized he can get, I'm missing some of his notes for the earlier attempts at creating the substance, and I think that maybe we'll have some luck by returning there to investigate. But don't worry, we will have this under control again in no time. It's probably just a problem with the concentration percentage. I just thought you'd want to know."

"Yes, thank you for keeping me informed," said Giovanni, staring curiously at the wretches at his feet. "Well, don't keep them waiting. They look dreadful in this state, I'm sure they'd be much happier to be back under the influence of my power again."

"Yes, Sir," responded Charlie as he took out two syringes and briskly did the small task.

Jessie couldn't feel the needle enter her upper arm. She couldn't feel the liquid quickly spreading along her veins and throughout her body. The only thing she could feel was her mind being ripped away from consciousness once more…

"Miss Mary had a steamboat, her steamboat had a bell ding, ding. When Mary went to heaven, her steamboat went to hello operator, please give me number 9 and if you disconnect me I'll kick you from behind the yellow curtain, there was a piece of glass, when Mary sat upon it, she broke her little…"

Cassidy suddenly burst out giggling and stopped playing the clapping game with Jessie. Jessie herself fell to the ground in laughter. She looked up at the sky, and tried to see shapes in the clouds.

"That was fun!" exclaimed Cassidy as she collapsed beside her friend.

Jessie nodded in agreement, an innocent smile on her face. Then she took on a thoughtful expression.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked Cassidy.

"Anything? I want to be an astronaut, or a teacher, or a ballerina… or… oh, I can't decide!"

"I want to be a star!" affirmed Jessie.

"Yah, that would be cool! I want to be a star too!"

The two friends sat talking for a while longer. The clouds shifted above them giving them different shapes to describe as they passed overhead, and constantly changing, like life itself as they would learn later on in theirs. Jessie glanced once more at the last shape she saw, a rose, before returning home from playing.

And all went black.

-(-)-

AN – a little disclaimer, though it is public material, I didn't write the childhood hand/clapping game that Jessie and Cassidy were playing… I remembered it (with some difficulty) from my childhood days. Anyways, now we're almost halfway into the story. The next chapter is going to be full of background information. I hope you guys are enjoying this. I really wasn't sure when I began posting whether it was worth it to post, but since I've got it started, and there seems to be some response to it, I will finish it. And besides, I'm having fun – that's all that really counts in the end, eh? Oh, and don't be shy to push that review button, I don't mind hearing what you think of my story, and I accept anonymous reviews too.